Kat pointed out I’d missed her intent on some things she wrote in her last rebuttal. Be sure to read her response if you have not yet done so, before proceeding.

Here’s some things I take away from her clarifications. First, we both despise hypocrisy in the church. It’s perhaps a bit easier for me to agree on this point than it is for some people of faith, given that as a messianic, I’m not exactly in agreement with all things in mainstream Christianity or mainstream Judaism.

I’m also relieved to see that Kat doesn’t view all churches as equally hypocritical and that some serve great purposes. She mentions several that causes that some churches involve themselves in, like area food shelves, shelters, food banks and, I imagine, even fund-raising for good causes like cerebral palsy, for example.

I can see her point, but I would like to point out that social justice causes and “giving back to the community” aren’t the only forms of good that churches or temples can do, though that is one good type of service they can perform.

But there are other types of services that are more spiritual in nature that also serve equally valued and valuable functions. For example, one cause my messianic congregation supports is a program that helps Jewish people who are stuck in Russia or other countries, who want to move to Israel, to return to their homeland. There’s no agenda to the program, it doesn’t require them to even listen to a messianic message at all, because the program is one run by Jews, for Jews. The extend of our messianic involvement it to offer financial support. As a congregation, we want to be a blessing to the Jewish community, so it’s a program we support and donate to.

Another example, perhaps more personal, is that we sponsor a yearly trip to Israel. It always fills up and we do it regardless of the terror conditions at the time because most of the areas we visit aren’t much affected by that sort of thing; not that listening to the evening news would ever offer the impression that anything happens in Israel except military violence and terrorism. Not so.

It can even be as simple as offering ministry and counseling services to those who need them. Of course, we do have a food shelf and other forms of help for those in need as well.

None of this is to deny the point that there are those who use faith as a shield to hide unholy motives. But I am glad we agree that not all churches are like that.

I also appreciated Kat’s explanation on what she meant about theology versus science. It’s true that even in messianic Judaism, the Torah and the B’rit haDashah are our primary sources, whereas science is more fluid. To use medicine as an example, only a couple hundred years ago, leeches and bleeding people were considered cutting-edge medical science methods of treatment for all sorts of maladies. Fortunately, science has come a long way since then. A course of leeches, for example, can’t suck out a brain tumor.

However, I think this brings us to the fundamental difference between the realm of science and the realm of theology. By its very nature, true science is concerned only with the physical world; that which is observable, measurable, repeatable and disprovable. If a field of study doesn’t meet those criteria, it’s not a true science.

Religion, by contrast, concerns itself not only with the observable, but the invisible world. Religion is about matters of faith, ethics, beliefs, the afterlife, the nature of good and evil and more.

I do have a lot of thoughts about the relationship between science and religion. I do want to go into them in more detail at some point. Possibly soon. But I think we’ve spun a bit off-course from the source of the original focus of this first round of this debate, and I enjoy the dynamic way bringing in an essay by another source can refresh exchanges of ideas like this, and breath new life into the dialog.

So Kat has found an essay that has her fired up, and she’ll do the initial post on that, then allow me to respond. So stay tuned! It’s about to get even more interesting!

Oh, and responses to Kat’s question about why I tend to leave the vowels out of any reference to Adonai, such as G-d or L-rd, have been responded to on Kat’s comment page; I did not ignore her!