Follow the Rabbi

Before we visited Israel the first time in 2001, we did a little homework so that we'd have some historical background. We used the video series, That the World May Know, by Ray van der Laan. Truly, the next best thing to being there. And the beginning of a revolution in how we see God through the words of the Bible and the cultures through which he spoke and wrote.

RVL - what his students call him - has a day job as a middle-school teacher. He's also a PhD and ordained minister in his Reformed church. But that isn't what makes him interesting. What makes him interesting is that he did his masters work at Hebrew University in Jerusalem with a classroom of about 30 other students, all of which were Israeli Orthodox Jews. (The guys with black hats, tassels, and so on.) He immersed himself in learning the history, customs and cultures of the peoples of the Bible. He learned the first day in class that everyone in there knew their scriptures far, far better than he did. And the teachings around them. Like, everyone else had memorized the entire Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament. RVL said, "I didn't know anything!"

Since then, I've heard him speak in person on three different occasions. He's a fantastic speaker, storyteller, teacher, and on and on. "Energetic" is a mild word for him. If you ever get the chance, go see him. Get a preview at his website, followtherabbi.com.

But I digress. Why should you find these videos, and the additional ones in the series, and watch them? (Lots of church libraries have them...) RVL opens his talks with two little parables.

So let's say that you and I are looking through two different windows, east and west, into the same room of a house that's for sale. I'll see my side of the furniture, rugs, and pictures on a couple of walls. I can describe the room from one vantage point. You, on the other hand, see different sides of things, different pictures on the walls. Which one of us is right? Well, both, kind of. The reality is more than either of us can fully realize.

RVL compares this to us having a Western (civilization) point of view in reading scripture: we expect it to be organized, chronological, logical, always literal, and so on like some kind of instruction book. But it was lived by and written by Eastern people: much more symbolic, storytelling, personal and context-sensitive.

His second story is comparing what you'd get if you told a Western-thinker and an Eastern-thinker to go study a frog. The Western thinker would catch a frog, take it apart to see what made it run, analyze it, document it, and bring you back a dissertation on frogs. The Eastern thinker would go to a swamp, observe frog behaviors like feeding, singing and reproduction, and also bring you back a dissertation on frogs. Both would be true and well-researched, but completely different. And believing you had the whole story from just one would be silly.

RVL opened an Eastern window on scripture that I had never seen before. Previously, all my thinking was limited to Western thinking, and it was desperately inadequate to understand God's word. To the point that I see American Christians misunderstanding and mis-teaching the Bible out of context all the time on TV, radio, pulpits, you name it. (By the way, Eastern-only thinking is also thoroughly inadequate. A semi-political illustration: look at some of the stuff going on in the Middle East; they could use a dose of Western thinking to balance their Eastern, in my opinion.) God said, "My ways are higher than your ways," and he really isn't kidding.

This guy's teaching - completely independent of any "church" program - has revolutionized the biblical understanding of many thousands of Christians. I'm so glad we decided to do some homework, back ten years ago. We're still enjoying the payoff, and wish everyone else could, too.