A.D. 30

by Ted Dekker

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  MY JOURNEY INTO A.D. 30

  It is said that true spirituality cannot be taught, it can only be learned, and it can only be learned through experience, which is actually story—all else is only hearsay. It is also said the shortest distance between a human being and the truth is a story. Surely this is why Jesus preferred to use stories.

  For ten years I dreamed of entering the life of Jesus through story, not as a Jew familiar with the customs of the day, but as an outsider, because we are all outsiders today. I wanted to hear his teaching and see his power. I wanted to know what he taught about how we should live; how we might rise above all the struggles that we all face in this life, not just in the next life after we die.

  We all know what Jesus means for Christians on a doctrinal statement in terms of the next life, and we are eternally grateful. But we still live in this life. What was his Way for this life other than to accept his Way for the next life?

  So I began by calling Jesus by the name he was called in his day, Yeshua, and I once again set out to discover his Way through the lens of a foreigner—a Bedouin woman who is cast out of her lofty position in the deep Arabian desert by terrible tragedy. Her epic, unnerving journey forces her to the land of Israel, where she encounters the radical teachings of Yeshua, which once again turn her world upside down.

  As they did mine.

  Although I grew up in the church and am very familiar with Christianity, what I discovered in Yeshua’s teachings staggered me. It was at once beautiful to the part of me that wanted to be set free from my own chains, and unnerving to that part of me that didn’t want to let go and follow the path to freedom in this life.

  I grew up as the son of missionaries who left everything in the west to take the good news to a tribe of cannibals in Indonesia. They were heroes in all respects and taught me many wonderful things, not least among them all the virtues and values of the Christian life. What a beautiful example they showed me.

  When I was six years old, they did what all missionaries did in that day and for which I offer them no blame: they sent me to a boarding school. There I found myself completely untethered and utterly alone. I wept that first night, terrified. I don’t remember the rest of the nights because I have somehow blocked those painful memories, but my friends tell me that I cried myself to sleep every night for many months.

  I felt abandoned. And I was only six. I was lost, like that small bird in the children’s book that wanders from creature to creature in the forest asking each if they are his mother.

  Are you my mother? Are you my Father?

  I see now that my entire life since has been one long search for my identity and for significance in this life, though I was secure in the next life.

  As I grew older, all the polished answers I memorized in Sunday school seemed to fail me on one level or another, sometimes quite spectacularly. I began to see cracks in what had once seemed so simple.

  I was supposed to have special powers to love others and turn the other cheek and refrain from gossip and not judge. I was supposed to be a shining example, known by the world for my extravagant love, grace, and power in all respects. And yet, while I heard the rhetoric of others, I didn’t seem to have these powers myself.

  During my teens, I was sure that it was uniquely my fault—I didn’t have enough faith, I needed to try harder and do better. Others seemed to have it all together, but I was a failure.

  Can you relate?

  Then I began to notice that everyone seemed to be in the same boat, beginning with those I knew the best. When my relationships challenged all of my notions of love, when disease came close to home, when friends turned on me, when I struggled to pay my bills, when life sucked me dry, I began to wonder where all the power to live life more abundantly had gone. Then I began to question whether or not it had ever really been there in the first place. Perhaps that’s why I couldn’t measure up.

  So I pressed in harder with the hope of discovering God’s love. But I still couldn’t measure up.

  And when I couldn’t measure up, I began to see with perfect clarity that those who claimed to live holy lives were just like me and only lied to themselves—a fact that was apparent to everyone but them. Did not Yeshua teach that jealousy and gossip and anxiousness and fear are just another kind of depravity? Did he not say that even to be angry with someone or call them a fool is the same as murder? Not just kind of–sort of, but really.

  So then we are all equally guilty, every day.

  How, then, does one find and know peace and power in this life when surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses who only pretend to be clean by whitewashing their reputations while pointing fingers of judgment?

  So many Christians today see a system that seems to have failed them. They have found the promises from their childhood to be suspect, if not empty, and so they are leaving in droves, leaving leaders to scratch their heads.

  What about you? You’re saved in the next life as a matter of sound doctrine, but do you often feel powerless and lost in this life?

  Think of your life in a boat on the stormy seas. The dark skies block out the sun, the winds tear at your face, the angry waves rise to sweep you off your treasured boat and send you into a dark, watery grave. And so you cringe in fear as you cling to the boat that you believe will save you from such suffering.

  But Yeshua is at peace. And when you cry out in fear, he rises and looks out at that storm, totally unconcerned.

  Why are you afraid? he asks.

  Has he gone mad? Does he not see the reason to fear? How could he ask such a question?

  Unless what he sees and what you see are not the same… Peace.

  Yeshua shows us a Way of being saved in the midst of all that we think threatens us on the dark seas of our lives here on earth.

  When the storms of life rise and threaten to swamp you, can you quiet the waves? Can you leave that cherished boat behind and walk on the troubled waters, or do you cling to your boat like the rest of the world, certain you will drown if you step on the deep dark seas that surround you? Do you have the power to move mountains? Do you turn the other cheek, able to offer love and peace to those who strike you?

  Are you anxious in your relationship or lack thereof? Are you concerned about your means of income, or your career, or your status? Do you fear for your children? Are you worried about what you will wear, or how others will view you in any respect? Do you secretly suspect that you can never quite measure up to what you think God or the world expects of you? That you are doomed to be a failure, always? Are you quick to point out the failures of others?

  I was, though I didn’t see it in myself. As it turns out, it’s hard to see when your vision is blocked by planks of secret judgments and grievances against yourself and the world. It was in my writing of A.D. 30 that I discovered just how blind I was and still often am.

  But Yeshua came to restore sight to the blind and set the captives free. The sight he offered was into the Father’s realm, which is brimming with light, seen only through new vision. And in that light I began to glimpse the deep mystery of Yeshua’s Way, not only for the next life, but for this life.

  His Way of being in this world is full of joy and gratefulness. A place where all burde
ns are light and each step sure. Contentment and peace rule the heart. A new power flows unrestricted.

  But Yeshua’s Way is also 180 degrees from the way of the world and, as such, completely counterintuitive to any system of human logic. The body cannot see Yeshua’s Way for this life—true vision requires new eyes. The mind cannot understand it—true knowing requires a whole new operating system. This is why, as Yeshua predicted, very few even find his Way. It is said that nearly 70 percent of all Americans have accepted Jesus as savior at some point, but how many of us have found his Way for this life?

  Yeshua’s Way is letting go of one world system to see and experience another—one that is closer than our own breath.

  It is surrendering what we think we know about the Father so we can truly know him. It is the great reversal of all that we think will give us significance and meaning in this life so we can live with more peace and power than we have yet imagined.

  In today’s vernacular, Yeshua’s Way is indeed the way of superheroes. In this sense, was he not the first superhero, and we now his apprentices? Would we not rush to see and experience this truth about Yeshua, our Father, and ourselves?

  In the Way of Yeshua we will bring peace to the storms of this life, we will walk on the troubled seas, we will not be bitten by the lies of snakes, we will move mountains that appear insurmountable, we will heal the sickness that has twisted our minds and bodies, we will be far more than conquerors through Yeshua, who is our true source of strength.

  It is the Way of Yeshua for this life that I found in A.D. 30. Whenever we find ourselves blinded by our own grievances, judgments, and fears, we, like Maviah in A.D. 30, sink into darkness. But when we trust Yeshua and his Way once again, we see the sun instead of the storm.

  This is our revolution in Yeshua: to be free from the prisons that hold us captive. This is our healing, to see what few see. This is our resurrection: to rise from death with Yeshua as apprentices in the Way of the Master.

  So enter this story if you like and see if you can see what Maviah saw. It may change the way you understand your Father, your Master, yourself, and your world.

  All teachings spoken by Yeshua in A.D. 30

  are his words from the gospels.

  (See appendix.)

  PROLOGUE

  I HAD HEARD of kingdoms far beyond the oasis that gives birth to life where none should be, kingdoms beyond the vast, barren sands of the Arabian deserts.

  I had lived in one such kingdom beyond the great Red Sea, in a land called Egypt, where I was sold into slavery as a young child. I had dreamed of the kingdoms farther north, where it was said the Romans lived in opulence and splendor, reveling in the plunder of conquered lands; of the silk kingdoms beyond Mesopotamia, in the Far East where wonder and magic ruled.

  But none of these kingdoms were real to me, Maviah, daughter of the great sheikh of the Banu Kalb tribe, which presided over Arabia’s northern sands. None were real to me because I, Maviah, was born into shame without the hope of honor.

  It is said that there are four pillars of life in Arabia, without which all life in the desert would forever cease. The sands, for they are the earth and offer the water where it can be found. The camel, for it grants both milk and freedom. The tent, for it gives shelter from certain death. And the Bedouin, ruled by none, loyal to the death, passionate for life, masters of the harshest desert in which only the strongest can survive. In all the world, there are none more noble than the Bedu, for only the Bedu are truly free, living in the unforgiving tension of these pillars.

  Yet these four are slaves to a fifth: the pillar of honor and shame.

  And upon reflection I would say that there is no greater honor than being born with the blood of a man, no greater shame than being born with the blood of a woman. Indeed, born into shame, a woman may find honor only by bringing no shame to man.

  Through blood are all bonds forged. Through blood is all shame avenged. Through blood is life passed on from father to son. In blood is all life contained, and yet a woman is powerless to contain her own. Thus she is born with shame.

  Even so, the fullness of my shame was far greater than that of being born a woman.

  Through no will of my own, I was also an illegitimate child, the seed of a dishonorable union between my father and a woman of the lowest tribe in the desert, the Banu Abysm, scavengers who crushed and consumed the bones of dead animals to survive in the wastelands.

  Through no will of my own, my mother perished in childbirth.

  Through no will of my own, my father sent me to Egypt in secret so that his shame could not be known, for it is said that a shame unrevealed is two-thirds forgiven.

  Through no will of my own, I was made a slave in that far land.

  Through no will of my own, I was returned to my father’s house when I gave birth to a son without a suitable husband. There, under his reluctant protection, I once again found myself in exile.

  I was a Bedu who was not free, a woman forever unclean, a mother unworthy of a husband, an outcast imprisoned by those mighty pillars of the desert, subject of no kingdom but death.

  But there came into that world a man who spoke of a different kingdom with words that defied all other kingdoms.

  Some said that he was a prophet from their god. Some said that he was a mystic who spoke in riddles meant to infuriate the mind and quicken the heart, that he worked wonders to make his power evident. Some said that he was a Gnostic, though they were wrong. Some said that he was a messiah who came to set his people free. Still others, that he was a fanatical Zealot, a heretic, a man who’d seen too many deaths and too much suffering to remain sane.

  But I came to know him as the Anointed One who would grant great power to those few who followed in his way.

  My name is Maviah, daughter of Rami bin Malik.

  His name was Yeshua.

  DUMAH

  “I tell you, do not resist an evil person.

  If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”

  Yeshua

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE DESERT knows no years. Here time is marked by three things alone. By the rising and the falling of the sun each day, to both bless and curse with its fire. By the coming of rain perhaps twice in the winter, if the gods are kind. And by the dying of both young and old at the whim of those same gods.

  I stood alone on the stone porch atop the palace Marid, high above the Dumah oasis, as the sun slowly settled behind blood-red sands. My one-year-old son suckled noisily at my breast beneath the white shawl that protected him from the world.

  That world was controlled by two kinds: the nomadic peoples known as Bedouin, or Bedu, who roamed the deserts in vast scattered tribes such as the Kalb and the Thamud, and the stationary peoples who lived in large cities and were ruled by kings and emperors. Among these were the Nabataeans, the Jews, the Romans, and the Egyptians.

  Two kinds of people, but all lived and died by the same sword.

  There was more war than peace throughout the lands, because peace could be had only through oppression or tenuous alliances between tribes and kings, who might become enemies with the shifting of a single wind.

  One of those winds was now in the air.

  I’d named my son after my father, Rami bin Malik—this before I’d returned to Dumah and become fully aware of the great gulf that separated me from my father. Indeed, the sheikh tolerated my presence only because his wife, Nashquya, had persuaded him. I might be illegitimate, she’d cleverly argued, but my son was still his grandson. She insisted he take us in.

  Nasha was not an ordinary wife easily dismissed, for she was the niece of King Aretas of the Nabataeans, who controlled all desert trade routes. Truly, Father owed his great wealth to his alliance with King Aretas, which was sealed through his marriage to Nasha.

  Still, I remained a symbol of terrible shame to him. If not for Nasha’s continued affection for me, he would surely have sent me off into the wasteland to die alone and raised
my son as his own.

  Nasha alone was our savior. She alone loved me.

  And now Nasha lay near death in her chambers two levels below the high porch where I stood.

  I had been prohibited from seeing her since she’d taken ill, but I could no longer practice restraint. As soon as my son fed and fell asleep, I would lay him in our room and make my way unseen to Nasha’s chambers.

  Before me lay the springs and pools of Dumah, which gave life to thousands of date palms stretching along the wadi, a full hour’s walk in length and half as far in breadth. Olive trees too, though far fewer in number. The oasis contained groves of pomegranate shrubs and apple, almond, and lemon trees, many of which had been introduced to the desert by the Nabataeans.

  What Dumah did not grow, the caravans provided. Frankincense and myrrh, as valuable as gold to the Egyptians and Romans, who used the sacred incenses to accompany their dead into the afterlife. From India and the Gulf of Persia: rich spices, brilliantly colored cloths and wares. From Mesopotamia: wheat and millet and barley and horses.

  All these treasures were carried through the Arabian sands along three trade routes, one of which passed through Dumah at the center of the vast northern desert. Some said that without the waters found in Dumah, Arabia would be half of what it was.

  The oasis was indeed the ornament of the deep desert. Dumah was heavy with wealth from a sizable tax levied by my father’s tribe, the Banu Kalb. The caravans came often, sometimes more than a thousand camels long, bearing more riches than the people of any other Bedu tribe might lay eyes on during the full length of their lives.

  So much affluence, so much glory, so much honor. And I, the only dark blot in my father’s empire. I was bound by disgrace, and a part of me hated him for it.

  Little Rami fussed, hungry for more milk, and I lifted my white shawl to reveal his tender face and eyes, wide with innocence and wonder. His appetite had grown as quickly as his tangled black hair, uncut since birth.