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My Experience with Kabbalah
I am a sucker for books on healing. I will buy them by the basketful. A year and a half ago I ordered a book called 'The 72 Names of God: Technology for the Soul' by Yehuda Berg. It was recommended to me by a health care provider that I trusted. I also bought his book 'The Power of Kabbalah'. Berg teaches Kabbalah lite and heads up the Kabbalah Center (www.kabbalah.com). I read them both. Once I got over the 'can this book help me' phase I realized that they were not for me. I found them overly slanted towards the occult in the sense that they were really a system of magic dressed in religious clothing. They involved a method of staring at Hebraic text (the Zohar) in order to receive the 'inner' meaning of the words. It didn't matter that one could not read the Hebrew. Logical understanding didn't matter. The words would mystically change your life. Although this sounds far-fetched our own doctrine of divine inspiration and the work of the Holy Spirit in interpreting scripture isn't so far afoot. It was this type of rationalization that led me to keep the books for two weeks. The type of Kabbalah espoused by these two books was really just a system of magic. My struggle with many fantasy novels such as Harry Potter is that they treat the Higher Power or God as a credit card. One does some sort of incantation and the Higher Power is forced to respond to the applicant. The Higher Power becomes subservient to the supplicator. There is no relationship between the two. When one removes relationship it becomes magic, something Christians are commanded to avoid. Needless to say the books were returned.
Slade and David have both pointed out that there is a good form of Kabbalah, just as there is a good form of Christian spirituality. I hope that as time permits we can examine these.
JBH
-----Original Message-----
Thanks David. I spent a couple of hours at the bookstore last night and noticed a couple of books about Kabbalah in the Jewish/Chanukah section. This surprised me because I thought Kabbalah was a big secret of some kind. So I did some speed reading (wasn't about to buy them!)and could tell that they believe in reincarnation and in a God who is a "force", etc., which is very New Agey. And the goal is apparently to "become like God", which reminded me of what satan wanted to do. (However, we ARE to become like Christ aren't we?) I also knew that Madonna is into it now, which tells me how bad it is. But what surprised me was that the theories seemed to hold a whole lot of good truth! I know that satan uses a little truth to deceive, but this was truth that seemed like a lot of what Jesus taught, too. So I was pretty puzzled as to whether there is any "good" group of Kabbalah teaching, or if it is all definitely off limits. Any other info is appreciated on the topic. Izzy
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Miller Sent: Friday, November 19, 2004 3:00 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [TruthTalk] Kabbalah
Izzy wrote: > Then what is Biblical Kabbalah? Is it also occult?
Some might quibble about what I am going to say, but I think it will help put you on the right track. Christianity has had its "charismatic" participants, some solidly on track but others off into spiritism and occultism. In the same way, think of Kabbalah in Judaism. Some of it is very good, but not all. Whatever you do, don't believe everything you read.
Peace be with you. David Miller.
---------- "Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man." (Colossians 4:6) http://www.InnGlory.org
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---------- "Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man." (Colossians 4:6) http://www.InnGlory.org
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