Lessons From the Historical Christian Anti-Jewish Prejudice

How Christians perceive Jewish “No” today

Today’s Christian-Jewish Relations have been built on many painful lessons of history but also on many positive encounters between two faiths and peoples. Generally, Jewish people are not seen as a disturbing phenomenon by Christians anymore. Yet, many Christians still struggle greatly with Jewish disbelief in Jesus. Some, like dispensationalists for example, have incorporated the Jewish people and the State of Israel in their end-time scenarios as fulfillment of their understanding of Old Testament prophecies.

It seems that they want to conquer and explain theoretically the presence and prosperity of Jews (actually for them still a “threat of disbelief”) by quite imaginative interpretations of the Bible which for real experts in biblical research are exegetically completely bogus. I do not doubt these explanations offer comfort. But at least one should first ass Jews themselves how they explain and understand their own prosperity, religion and attitude to the Land of Israel, and how they themselves project their future, before boxing them into the preconceived simplistic explanations which they would never endorse.

Attitude towards a religious “other” in general

The story of Christian prejudice towards the Jewish people only shows how difficult it is for all of us to explain the presence or wellbeing of people who do not share with us some very basic beliefs which are among the most important we hold. “How can he be happy if he is a “disbeliever” and does not share this deep blessing of knowing God as we know Him?” This is a general question which many serious and well meaning believers of any of the three monotheistic religions have had to encounter.

My Christianity simply had to develop and transform through years of thinking and dialoguing with non-Christians from which I have learned so much, also about God. In the process it simply lost its exclusivist edge and enabled me to incorporate prosperity of several other religious traditions as God’s gifts to others in a special way which I do not necessarily fully understand. Not now anyway.