I try not to believe in a messiah. To me, messiah is not important. I would be a disappointment to many Christians, Muslims and fellow Jews, due to my beliefs. In fact sometimes I question the validity of the messiah due to 1 Samuel 8, implying that reliance on an anointed king, like the pagan nations, who will exploit us and destroy the Jewish people. Pagan cultures around Israel had messianic anointment rituals. We should not want to be subjected to an anointed king like the peoples around us. So despite reciting the Qaddish frequently, to me messiah is of no importance. Instead of "may messiah come quickly", I would think "don't come yet". There is a more important concept a Jew has to abide by.
The human race is the chosen race. Jews are merely the chosen people to expose the primordial framework on which humankind will work on to assemble every member of the Universe into a infinite and massive "chaotic* order - an order that is too complex for current human intelligence. I meant the mathematical concept of Chaos, not the colloquial one.
Maybe I am too indulgent with Kabbalah and yet not knowing enough of it. I believe that our Creator has the human race being groomed to play-god. It is our responsibility to play-god. G'd would be extremely unhappy if we refuse to learn to play-god. To overcome diseases, to control the weather, to tame germs, bacteria and molecules. To conquer the Universe.
In my less than expert playing around with numbers and equations, I notice a framework of rest and quiescent in the dynamic systems around me. I am not attracted to gematria, because it does not make sense to me. The ordering of "Bible code" is also nonsense - it does not survive the random basis subjected by a mathematical perspective.
OTOH, I believe that the Sabbath is the primordial framework. The Sabbath defines the Jew. And one day would ultimately define all humanity. An example is the Jubilee. I do not agree with the general rabbinic decision that Jubilee observance is not necessary. Kondratieff's observations of the repeating massive collapse of the world economy every 60 - 80 years. If we do not observe the Jubilee, the swinging pendulum of the Sabbath will pull us into her tailend turbulence.
Kanban is a mechanism invented by a Toyota engineer, to function as currency to facilitate the smooth flowing of the miniature economy of a factory. Money is but a kanban to facilitate the flow of economies. The value of money needs to be reset every generation, like a kanban reboot. The ideas of tired old men, and women, need to be supplanted by the next generation's. Change every generation - steam power needs to give way to combustion. Combustion needs to give way to electric propulsion, which would one day give way to luminal propulsion. The fallowing of fields, the rotation of crops - such beauty, such elegance. Especially if applied to modern industrial management.
My current obsession is the study the Temple of Yehezkiel. I am believing that the Temple blueprint, the distances and nodes, is a paradigm - a paradigm that is a guide to humankind in our conquest and assembling of the Universe. I seem to be drifting in the direction that if the world understands the paradigm modeled by the Temple blueprint, even Saudi Arabia and Iran would throw money at us urging us quickly build the Temple in Jerusalem as a monument to that paradigm.
I had been deeply involved in fundamentalist Christianity before. I had been trained in rescuing Christians from "cults", though I wasn't very good at it. I was very good in telling people which verses say what but I wasn't very good at expressing them in lay terms. I was so adept at explaining Pauline basis of Romans 5, I dare say church leaders were impressed and urged me to train as assistant pastor.
In short, I had once long ago too believed that Jews had to accept Jesus as god and messiah. In short, I might have to revise on it, but I was trained on all the Bible verses to that persuasion. You can't expect too much from an autistic person like myself. The theology of sacrifice of Jesus and Pauline theory were completely in disagreement with my obsession with understanding the Sabbath.
Salvation by faith alone, and the very idea of Christian salvation did not make sense and is out of sync with my obsession. Those who say that I should not depend on human reasoning, don't be too smirk - I am or at least had been very familiar with the obfuscated human reasoning used to explain many basic Christian theologies. I eventually grew tired of those complex human reasoning - it was more believable listening to the Taoist fairy tale of people tempting the kitchen god with candy to shut his mouth.
Christians not exposed to the deeper end of theology would innocently urge "Just believe". But you can't just believe, because there are moral decisions to be made and you would want to see which scripture constrains your decision and then there you go into the bottomless pit of Christian theological application of human reasoning. Convoluted and obfuscated, compared to the elegance and beauty of the Sabbath framework. Christianity has effectively retired the relevance of Leviticus and Deuteronomy except when convenient to their life-styles to pick one or two verses out. It is also terribly annoying to an autistic person obsessed with the Hebrew Bible, when someone tries to convince her using the KJV, NASB or NIV.
My obsession would expose my lack of understanding of the Talmud, Midrash and Halakha. After all, I am not expected to understand them. Personally, I feel there are sufficient number of medieval decisions needing to be updated. Like mixing of chicken meat with dairy. And rabbis would say it is dangerous to study Kabbalah without a firm foot on the Talmud. OK, I guess I have crossed that threshold. Anyway that holds true only for men. Also, for the little exposure I've had, I find understanding the Talmud requires your mind to work like a lawyer and not a scientist - quite difficult for me. I am not against the Talmud, but I would need a good teacher to understand its decisions. And I don't have the time or necessity.
I am hoping to grasp the architectural implications of the Temple and that it would justify my belief that the Sabbath is the only path of salvation for humankind.
