Puddleglum

Monday, February 27, 2006

How you doin?

Listened to this song from Matisyahu on the radio today. Immediately afterwards heard this story of a lady who's daughter is suffering from a disease which makes the stomach so irritable that it's most of the time impossible to keep down any food. The song was really upbeat and fast and the lyrics included something like, "give yourself up and then you become whole... I come to you from the essence of my being, and I sing to my God this song of love and healing." I was basically using my steering wheel as a snare drum and my shifter as a symbol and I was rocking out, totally pumped after trying to sing along. And then to hear that story about the mother, where she ends the description of what has been done to try and treat the disease, she says, "right now we're just praying for God's will with this disease, wondering why He's given us this challenge." I was staring at the alternative radio station's frequency wondering whether I was believing what I was hearing. And so I decided I would believe it, and then look and find out who this "Matisyahu" was, and see what he stood for, besides what I heard in his lyrics.
Come to find out, he's Jewish; and, come to find out, the radio station who put on the air the mother of the sick daughter was only one station of several which were working to provide donations for the UC Davis medical centers childrens hospital.
I was pretty satisfied to find out both of those things, but still a little bit thrown in my mind trying to come to terms with some things. First of all, I don't know a thing about modern Judaism. There's a lot I can deduce about Judaism from reading the Bible, but I don't really know much at all about Judaism in the world today. How is Matisyahu reacting to the gospel of Jesus and modern Christianity?
So I researched and found this:
"The word "mashiach" does not mean "savior". The notion of an innocent, semi-divine (let alone fully divine) human being who will sacrifice himself to save us from the consequences of our own sins is a purely Christian concept that has no basis in normal Jewish thought, though it seems to have been invented or adopted by Jewish apostates in the early Church. Unfortunately, this Christian concept has become so deeply ingrained in the English word "messiah" that this English word should probably no longer be used to refer to the Jewish concept. Thus, we prefer to use the less familiar word "mashiach" throughout this page."

And "mashiach" is also found in the lyrics of Matisyahu, whose name is the ancient Hebrew for Matthew, the singer's first-name.

Anyhow, just some interesting thoughts roused by alternative radio. I've been interested in hearing a lot of "this works for me; what works for you" statements going around, as if to be a member of modern society it's important to know how to answer that statement. The other day a man asked what I was reading, and then, to my amazement, after he recalled that C.S. Lewis wrote The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, he continues: "I think Santana has this spiritual connection when he plays his guitar. In the way he plays, you can see on his face -- just seems like he's connecting with God. I love seeing how different people connect spiritually." He didn't ask me my opinion afterwards. He just stared off in a direction, using his hand gestures in a circular pattern to depict "the spiritual world". Sometimes I wonder if my thoughts must look so ridiculous like his hands if ever I were to visualize them; the ridiculousness of how the thoughts are moving around.

Real love must seem ridiculous to watch, but it's the real love that wonders how the other person is doing, not how the other person is connecting.

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