The Most Essential Thing A Believer in Jesus Can Do

 

By our dear friend, Babbazee

The most important thing a Jew can do 
(Also, any believer in Jesus, too!) 

according to the biblical covenant

 is  TOV* (literally in Hebrew  "good")

TOV means acts of  loving kindness,

 doing "good"

but it also means much more than just acts of loving kindness 

or doing good

 because Hebrew is a deep language

and the context around a word shades a word's meaning in situ

apparently if we read Genesis correctly 

the entire reason for our existence

 is to do TOV,

 God makes us a speaking (generative) presence 

created in his image

 to carry out this TOV on the earth. 

So if like Jesus I want to be a good Jew and do TOV in the world, 

which is what "serving God" actually means,

what does that mean? what can I do? 

Jesus said his only command is "love " (John 13)

which has been interpreted collectively as weak willed performance art, 

a hippy dippy flower trip, 

something so shallow self centered, full of Satan and tied to sexuality

 that even Charlie Manson's girls were dead into LOVE...

whereas the reality is that what Jesus was commanding 

was the hardest and most impossible thing we could possibly try to do. 

TOV,  good, kindness, love.... even when they are nailing you to a tree,

 stoning you to death in the street, throwing you in the ovens.

 Do TOV said Jesus regardless of what they do. 

He also said if we enter a place 

where the people are so immune to TOV that you can make no dent

you should shake the sand from your sandals and split, (Matthew 10)

further he told us only those who have endurance can accomplish this TOV doing

https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Enduring

Other than that, he never offered any other solution or instruction. 

No revolutionary plan, no practical guideline,

 no government policies or social services,  

no political or secular solution.

 Just TOV. Go do TOV.  And endure to the end.

So we go.

And there's the Ha Satan, (literally translates from Hebrew as THE ADVESARY)

Satan! our old friend, the author of almost everything we "love", 

deeply woven into everything earthly surrounding us, 

sympathy for the devil if you please... 

We do sympathize, we love him, we don't even know we love him, 

today more that ever he is an all encompassing presence in our daily lives 

so fully integrated as to go unnoticed. Our silent partner. 

Our groomer, our abuser. 

Our "Love" is full of the Ha Satan. 

How to do TOV then 

when we have been groomed to be the lovers of Ha Satan

 and are completely immersed in his world?

How to do TOV when we don't even know what TOV is?

You are surrounded in life by people that you "love"

 and that ostensibly  "love" you. 

Husbands, wives, parents, children, brothers, sisters, friends. 

They all say they love you

 and they believe that they love you. 

You say you love them, and believe you love them too.

 Proof or expressions of that love 

are largely tied up in appearances

and the acquisition of "things",  emotional or material

 which the lover and the loved each respectively perceive as "expected"

But that love is not the TOV, not the "love" that Jesus commanded us to do.

That love is full of the SELF, full of conditions and needs,

full of distorted expectations, 

full of shit.

How to do TOV at all then,

as unwilling unconscious lovers of  Ha Satan ourselves,

among the unwitting and willing lovers of Ha Satan 

who will not thank us for our TOV 

no, they will eat our TOV, spit it out in our faces 

and then nail us to the nearest tree.

It's impossible. 

But we have to try. It's the only direction we have been given.

We can not do it out of our own powers, 

which is where the negating of self thing comes in.

It has to be done outside of ego, intellect and our own needs

 therefore it has to be done by retracting our "selves" enough

 to allow God's presence a path through to do it for us. (Isaiah 35) 

Then it becomes easy....

"My Yoke is Light" (Matthew 11)

This is not my power,

this is the power of my God (Genesis 41)

The kabbalistic interpretation 

of the begininng of the universe is called "Tzim Tzum"

It is a retraction.

The idea is that there is GOD and nothing else.  

GOD retracts a portion of himself

 in order to clear a space

 for the existence of the universe

"The kingdom of heaven is within" (Luke 17)

Likewise 

made in his image

we must retract a portion of ourselves in order to do TOV .

*TOV is pronounced with a long O.