Recent events in Lebanon have led to a spectrum of responses in the Christian community (apart from apathy fuelled by ignorance). At one extreme: let Israel get on with exterminating the ‘terrorists’ without interference because she is God’s chosen people; and at another extreme: Israel has shown scant respect for the value of human life (of Lebanese civilians), and the nation is built on a continuing violation of the rights of Palestinians, out of which the conflict with Hezbollah has arisen.
Attitudes to Israel today can sometimes be defined by political boundaries. This is probably more true of the US than the UK - although like all generalisations, is open to many exceptions.
Jim Wallis recently came to this country from the US to launch his book ‘God’s Politics’, which highlights the topic of the Christian’s relationship to the public, political world (although not the Israel/Lebanon issue in particular). It is worth reading.
This extract from another book, The Sinner’s Guide to the Evangelical Right, by Rob Lanham, published by Penguin, sits in a US context to which Wallis has spent his life bringing a radical critique. It also bears uncomfortable relevance to the UK Christian experience.
Whilst it is possible to smile at the absurdities of others, the question of God’s politics was never more relevant and pressing to the Christian community here - at a time when contemporary currents may be encouraging an inward-looking drift, isolating God’s people from the public and political upheavals which are tearing apart our world.
Are both sides missing the point?
I am by no means a fundamentalist - most of the time, if I have to label myself, I proudly call myself a libertarian…but…I am by no means a fan of what folks like Jim Wallis and Rob Lanham advocate, which really is: get the government to do what the Christian Right does not do.
Coming from a Communist country, I have seen firsthand the disasters that government intrusion create in people’s lives - while religious fundamentalism is at one extreme, the redistribution of income by force (since they advocate government’s power of taxation to do so) is just as hypocritical on the progressive side of things.
Both sides miss the point – governments should step out of people’s lives and try to do what makes the most sense: taxing less not more, encouraging altruism through economic incentives, economic freedom and financial independence from government and from others. Whenever I hear the very wealthy celebrities say that we should help the poor, I want to ask them “What are you doing about it? How much of your income are you giving away, and why are you still living in a multi-million dollar mansion in Hollywood while children are starving in Africa?” Those questions tend to put things back into perspective a bit. Of all celebrities I can think of, Bono is the only one who has any moral claim to speaking on behalf of the poor since he usually turns his own pockets inside out for them.
Where is the church on this?
The conflict in the Middle East has many trying to make sense of the violence and destruction. There is surprisingly very little coming out from the church on this conflict. At best, what you will hear from the church in America is that violence conflicts in the Middle East points to the coming of Jesus Christ. The best we can do is to sit and wait.
Here I will propose some points to consider regarding this conflict between Israel and Lebanon.
1) Evangelicals must be aware of interpreting the current conflict through dispensational lens. A corollary of this is that the church in America has historically supported Israel with no questions asked.
What has crippled meaningful dialog regarding the situation in the Middle East is the tendency to interpret history through the lens of dispensationalism. For much of the 20th century (and even now in the 21st century), dispensational eschatology has colored the church’s view of Israel and her place in geopolitics. Much of dispensationalism’s influence on the church in America have led evangelicals to naively support Israel’s political agendas (Six-Day War, Yom Kippur War) without question. It can be argued that U.S. foreign policy regarding Israel has largely been influenced by dispensationalism and lobbying groups (evangelicals) who hold such views.
I will outright say that the theological system of dispensationalism is deeply flawed. There isn’t room to go into details on this subject here. For one thing, dispensationalism sees a discontinuity between the Old and New testaments. This way of interpreting Scripture leads to a radical dichotomized view of Israel and the church as two distinct entities. According to dispensationalism, biblical prophecies about future events refer not to God’s heavenly people (i.e. the church), but they refer to Israel, God’s earthly people. God has a distinct plan for Israel which includes the restoration of the nation of Israel at the end of history. In this view, Israel has a special place in the history of redemption. Thus it’s not difficult to see why every time Israel is involved in a conflict, evangelicals flock to support that country without questioning the ethics of her actions.
Specifically, dispensationalism holds these views regarding Israel in the end time:
* The church (God’s people) would be secretly raptured before the tribulation (premillennialism)* The nation of Israel is fully restored to her original orders* Antichrist rises to usher in tribulation* Then Armageddon will occur between the forces of the antichrist and Christ* Christ is victorious and ushers in the thousand-year reign
Thus the nation of Israel has an important role in the end time. The restoration of this nation means that end time is near. And for Israel to give up her land to the Arabs is to go against what God has ordained (this is at least according to the dispensationalist interpretation).
2) Not supporting Israel’s geo-political agenda does not equate to anti-Semitism. In other words, anti-Zionism does not mean anti-Semitism. Even if dispensationalism is the correct way of interpreting Scripture, there is still the issue of what “Israel” constitutes. In the dispensational framework, evangelicals have long confused the current nation-state of Israel to be the Israel of this eschatology. There is no reason to think that the state of Israel today is the nation of Israel Scripture speaks out in Revelations.
3) U.S.-based reporting of this conflict is inadequate and a-historical. What is problematic about the current reporting of this event is that U.S.-based news outlets rarely examine the historical context of the Israeli-Arab conflict. This has always been the weakness of U.S. news organizations. In order to understand the current conflict, one must examine the history behind it. For example, the weekend attack by Israel on the Lebanese border town of Qana has historicity to it. In April 1996, Qana was shelled by Israel to root out Hezbollah. The town sustained severe damage and causalities. Two months later, Hezbollah bombed the Khobar apartments in Saudi Arabia which at the time housed American military personnel. It is widely known that the Khobar Towers bombing was done in retaliation for the Israeli shelling of Qana. And the reason why this particular target was picked is because of unwavering support given to Israel by the U.S. throughout her existence. One has to wonder why Qana was targeted again over the weekend and whether the U.S. had input in this. And one has to wonder whether the U.S. is providing intelligence to the Israeli Defense Force in her attack on Lebanon.
The upshot of this is that watching cable news will not give one the complete picture of what’s happening. To get a better picture on the ground, one has to puruse both Western (non-U.S.) and Arab media.
4) The real issue at hand is not whether Israel has the right to defend herself in a heavy-handed fashion; the issue in this ongoing conflict is a deeply historical issue. This is a corollary of the above point. Much of the discussion has been on Israel’s right to defend herself in the face of terrorist attacks. But to say that Israel has the sovereignty and right to defend herself (thereby giving the right to attack her neighbors) furthers the vicious cycle of violence and hate in that region.
To further compound this problem, Bush’s diplomatic approach to this conflict is two-faced. The Bush administration has been calling for an immediate end to hostilities but will not step in to broker and call for a complete cease-fire on both sides. It’s clear that the Bush also wants Hezbollah to be dismantled and sees this as the prime opportunity for this to happen. While diplomatic feet-dragging is taking place, hundreds of people are dying at the expense of U.S. and Israel geopolitical agendas.
5) The Arabs have a legitimate claim to the land just as Israel does too. While the West recognizes the state of Israel, the Arab world does not. The history behind these two perspectives is complex. The violence and strife in this region dates back hundred and thousands of years and cannot be unraveled here. I will quickly point out that historically, both sides are to blame for the violence in this region. We equate terrorism with fanatical Muslims and Arabs who want Israel out of the their land. This is only half of the picture. Israel is guilty of terrorism as well. Before the founding of her borders in the 1930’s, Jews in Palestine perpetrated assassinations, murders, and outright terrorist acts (without provocation) to drive out the Arabs living in the land. The Arabs retaliated and thus the violent cycle continues today.
One must remember that there are no good guys in this, only bad.
For a good introduction into the relationship between dispensationalism and the church’s unwavering support of Israel, read Timothy Weber’s On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel’s Best Friend.
wider issues
NT kingdom ethics do cause me a lot of heartache precisely because they stand worldly ethics upside down.
Take slavery as a good example. It was accepted though not condoned. Slavery was ‘in’ for our early fellow Christians for it accurately mirrors our attitude to our Lord - we prefer to be doulos! Then why not be servants/slaves in real life also?
The onus is on the ones who believe and have power, to exercise their power and free the slaves (Philemon). It is the powerful who have to redistribute their power and in the process realise that they themselves need to become doulos.
The same sort of logic also applies to poverty and the rich. It is not for the poor to seize but for the rich to voluntarily give away their riches and become poor.
So, how then do we become active in politics and how should we act? The main clue comes from the way Jesus dealt with politics: preach the good news of the kingdom, exercise the gifts and abilities that God has given to redress the suffering of the people. Teach them how to become children of God and to live in love especially towards the worst off in society but also to the common man who finds all this too frightening and responds to you with violence and hatred.
At the same time Jesus also challenged those in power to be just, to be merciful and He concentrated particularly on the religious leadership (who as the custodians of the law should have known better) challenging them to rethink their power hungry and oppressive ways.
The consequences will be nasty! This is not a formula for worldly success, but a path that leads to direct confrontation with satan. The darkness hates the light, it always will.
Live to serve : Serve to live
Pity the nation
In response to Theophilus’s 5th point - there is a very legitimate claim of Arabs to the land, from those whose property was expropriated by Israel in 1948, along with the ethnic cleansing of villages and exodus from towns of up to 700,000 Palestinians.
Christians tend to frame the middle east conflict over Israel in some form of dispensationalism (as Theophilus has described). They also tend to see the conflict as Islam = Arab = evil versus Judaeo-Christianity = west = good. There is a fear of criticising Israel in case of being accused of anti-semitism, and every world leader and western tour group is taken at some point to Yad Vashem, the monument to anti-Semitism and ‘the holocaust’. How can one deny the moral right of the Jewish people to their own homeland in the light of such unparalleled atrocities against the Jews?
The problem is that the very people who suffered in WW2 Europe have themselves become the oppressors - of the Palestinian people who were evicted in 1948, and of those imprisoned in unsustainable enclaves in the West Bank and Gaza. Figures show that at the independence of the new state the Jews were not a majority people in the area claimed as its historic territory by Israel , and the UN came up with an artificial plan to give the Jews a bare majority in a state whose borders did not make sense.
To this day, Jewish immigrants in a suburb of Jerusalem have no idea that it was the site of a massacre of Palestinians in a village which no longer exists - called Deir Yassin. All over Israel, former Palestinian villages have been erased from the map, to be replaced by Israeli settlements. History is being rewritten, with a Palestinian history air-brushed out of existence.
Injustices do not disappear so easily however, and tend to be passed down through the generations. Until the fundamental injustice on which the foundation of Israel as a nation is addressed, there is little prospect of peace for Israel.
From a poitical point of view, it is time that Christians showed more understanding of the cause of the mostly muslim Arab Palestinians, and that Hezbollah, for all its reprehensible refusal to fully engage in peaceful nation building in Lebanon, did not spring out of some demonically inspired woodwork, but can be traced back to rather timeless issues of justice and injustice in the region.
Some say the region is waiting for its Nelson Mandela. That may be so, but an effective start could be made by ordinary Christians in the west looking more critically at their pop eschatology in relation to the middle east, and taking time to absorb the historical context of current problems. I would also recommend Colin Chapman’s “Whose Promised Land?” and Robert Fisk’s “Pity the Nation” and “The Great War for Civilisation” are essential reading from one with an inside knowledge of Lebanon and the middle east generally.
English vs. American perspective
I suspect the British are surprised at how vehemently America supports Israel. Few Americans know that, before the founding of Israel, Palestine was an English colony or protectorate or something. After WWII the Zionists perpetrated terrorist acts against Britain. The USSR and the USA were the first nations to recognize Israel, even before GB did — I imagine to Britain it seemed that America was legitimizing terrorism. America and Palestine were the two strong refuges where European Jews fled from Hitler’s massacre. America itself began as a haven for religious exiles, a kind of Zion in its own right. As a people the Jews have been incredibly important contributors to American society. There remains a significant anti-Semitism in American culture, but I think the support for Israel runs deeper than just the money and power realpolitiking taking place behind closed doors at high levels of government.
Hot Spots and the gospel
This world is full of political hot spots where atrocities are committed (sometimes in God’s name) and people live in constant fear. Some areas, like the M/E and Iraq have a higher profile simply because the media find that it sells - how many articles have been written recently about the civil war in the Congo or even about the continuing horror of Darfur? At least in the M/E It sells mainly because of the morbid interest of the religious right in Israel. The M/E is also ‘hot’ because Israel is a rich and powerful nation.
There are no simple solutions waiting to be implemented. What is missing from our side is the real involvement as peacemakers that is such an important part of our mandate in the kingdom. The church has failed miserably to apply the basic principles taught in the NT. We have contributed to the problem by our silent hand wringing and even worse, where we have taken sides, we have exacerbated the suffering.
One basic principle is justice. ur God is a just God. Some sort of partial Justice can be enforced from the outside (eventually the UN did call for a ceasefire in Lebanon) but much more important than enforcement is that Justice has to have a voice. That voice has to be impartial and it has to respond to the concerns of all affected parties.
Why have Christians neither the basic humanity nor the broad unanimity to make the voice of Justice heard? Involvement, understanding, love and mercy and prayer - if we could model just a little of this - even just one or two of us - it will make a difference.
There is no magic bullet. We have to get in there and suffer with those that suffer. For those of us who have a voice, let’s raise it against injustice and let’s raise it for peace.
Practical matters: We have to begin with ourselves, meeting, discussing and uniting before we can begin to really make the gospel heard. Individual action must, of course, continue but why don’t we just start making the effort to understand what it is that our Lord is asking us to do together?
Live to serve : Serve to live
Middle East Politik
Faced with entrenched politics, religions, tribalism and other agendas in the melting pot of the Middle East, it is all to easy, too internally satisfying, to take advantage of our own outsiderness to this painful sore, to make judgements that are based on a lack of feeling.
Such privilege should be the reserve of two groups: (a) those who have previously truly felt, who have already suffered the feelings that go with embracing others who are suffering, but who must now rise above the feelings to make hard judgements ({e.g. field medics - who to save first?; businessmen: who to work with?; political statesmen [note, not politicians, see next bracket]- what is best in the long run?; etc)); (b) those in positions of power, who have decisions, judgements forced upon them by their office, without either the time or space provided by that office to feel, to truly feel and care with a whole heart (which would be to become a political statesmen / women…) (but this is their excuse - no one else’s).
We should not readily underestimate too readily the input that all such people have made into the Middle East over the years - in other words, many , of many ilks, have contributed to its formation / fermentation. Of course, there are lessons for us all to learn, but a great deal of our learning (as ‘outsiders’), I suspect, is meant to be much more about perceiving the inner voice of the Holy Spirit asking us to have authentic compassion and humility, rather than arriving at dogmatic positions which we then use to thrust others up against philosophical walls, in order to demand of them: “How on earth do you justify believing that?”
Until we, at least, overcome our capacity to be shocked and pseudo-scandalised by the beliefs, viewpoints, worldviews of others (expressed through a debating forum!) how can we imagine our hearts have grown enough to understand a living, breathing, ancient, modern Paradox and Politik such as the Middle East sufficiently to be able to cast anyone / side firmly in the role of “d’evil” (the Evil One)?
It seems to me that we have little possibility of being able to judge rightly about such a painful, confused reality, when we can hardly bare to examine the issue from the side of “our enemy” (so quickly, the person on the other side of the debate!)
How the Middle East exposes our partisanship!!
If you find it easier to see the failures and excesses of Israel, then I wonder have you felt what it is like to be a Jew, in the Land today, with its unique mixture of history, religion and politics, the only functioning multi-ethnic democracy, surrounded by entities determined to destroy you, with the haunting Holocaust just behind you? Have you really stopped to think about why Jews might behave the way they do? Can you have any compassion for them?
If you find it easier to side with the Zionist ideals, I ask you: have you felt what it is like to live within the Palestinian cultural milieu, with all of its dead-ends and religious indoctrination about the death of Israel? To live in a culture with a worldview that promotes little or no hope other than the destruction of the regional power that overlooks you - which is all the while the main economy which impacts upon your life?
I can hardly begin to adequately imagine either. Brother Andrew, of Open Hands, has been visiting terrorists, with his own uniquely missional agenda, for the past fifteen or twenty years, I believe and written about it in a book entitled Light Force, which sheds unusual light on a Christian response to the M/E.
It’s too easy to come down on one side or the other, to stop listening to the other arguments (other than to fashion a repost), to avoid altogether the call to side against injustice (with actions, not words).
But why shouldn’t Christians find themselves on both sides of the debate and on both sides of the fight against injustice - isn’t it time we got over the idea that there is one right way and that we need to discover and then dominate the problem with that solution?
Why not let your brother grieve with the Palestinians; why not let your sister side with the Israelis? Without perceiving that as a moral failure on their part? Perhaps they see what you don’t. And then, precisely because you are Christian, sit down together and grieve for one another’s pain, for the pain each other is sharing in. Then… then, our perceptions of injustice just might be worth listening to.
Personally, I confess to feeling the pain of the Israeli’s most deeply. Probably because I have personal contact with an Israeli Jewess, who makes a lot of sense with her views - I share her pain - and because, for reasons to deep to analyse, I share a strong sense of the horror of the Holocaust. And, yes, personally, I am (too?) easily scandalised by some of the sources of that pain, such as the recent media manipulation scandals within Lebanon. But that’s why I’m not an authority on the Middle East. Not even am impartial observer. Certainly, not an actor on the stage - but then, actors will tell you that every audiences is a participator in a show, because they shape the the performance by how they share in its emotion…
Danutz simplicity is right about one aspect of this whole mess: pain can only be dealt with by embrace. The M/E problem won’t ever be solved by eschewing it, blaming it upon others or demonising “the other side” - whichever of them it is! The Israeli’s need embrace, the Jewish people do, the Palestinians do. Brother Andrews tells us even the terrorist do.
It’s worth noting, to counterbalance the conspiracy theories, that the M/E is a pretty small patch of earth, with ancient cultures and entrenched positions, yes, but ultimately it should be “manageable”… maybe… if we are prepared to share in God’s pain-filled embrace of it.
shalom! john - eternalpurpose.org.uk
wow
I have been reading those comments here somewhat amazed, but since I don’t know most of you and your cultural backgrounds I cannot speculate as to why some of you hold to the ideas you are holding to. There are two things striking in what you guys are saying or implying:
1. Israel and the United States are always the bad guys - these implications are outrageous. I am anything but a Zionist or a dispensationalist, but the fact that political and safety ramifications are not being recognized is not just surprising…it’s shocking. Here there is (however small or large) a number of people that are bent on killing us; they are not interested in the Emergent Conversation, dialogue, or a cohort meeting over a Starbucks coffee. I cannot find any real solutions being offered on how to deal with those who want to kill us at any cost, including their own lives.
2. Offering esoteric solutions. As much as I understand that many of the Middle East problems are there as a result of Zionism and faulty eschatology, those are not solutions, and I do not see any solutions being offered. Yes pain can only be dealt with by embrace - what does that mean? how do you embrace someone who wants to wipe you off the face of the earth and is not interested in or satisfied with anything less than that? Identifying the root problems in this conflict is not the equivalent of offering solutions. Yes, Zionism, American involvement, Israeli abuse, etc, are all problems - but so is Isranian and Syrian involvement, Chinese weapons being sold to Palestinian terrorists and to the Hezbollah, and $10,000 per family payment for suicide bomber missions.
I have met a Palestinian brother in Christ at our yearly conference here in June, and I spoke with him about this conflict, and it was a tear jerking experience; the innocent are suffering on both sides of this ridiculous conflict, with the children and women suffering the most. We all recognize this…and the question remains: HOW DO WE FIX IT? I can say with certainty that it will not be by blaming it all on Israel or the United States.
Peter, this seems to tie well into our discussion on the discernment of false prophets since Islam was founded by a post AD 70 prophet.
bad guys
Virgil, discussions involving politics do tend to polarise us - shows how little unity there is in how we read the bible. I am actually surprised at the moderate positions that have so far been expressed here. What is it in particular that convinces you that the U.S. is here being demonised?
As far as Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria are concerned, any history book or a bit of careful net searching will give you a timeline that pretty much speaks for itself. The roles of Britain, the U.N., the Israeli Zionists, the Egyptians etc. all are pretty uncontested as history.
Perhaps it’s just a bit of paranoia on your part? Try telling a Zionist that he has no right to the land occupied by Israel and you may find out that terrorism is a two edged sword (ever heard of the Lavon Affair?). There are no heroes, the conflict has brought out the worst in all the players.
Agreed, by digging into the past we may get no nearer to solutions and on the other hand we may just be able to convince one side or the other or both to back off as they are asking for something that the world can prove that they do not have a right to.
At the very least we can attempt to clear some of the common misconceptions about what is going on and why. That in turn may help us to come to some conclusion as to what the Lord is asking us to do in this situation.
Live to serve : Serve to live
Who are the bad guys?
Sam, on the issue of the historical developments in the Middle East, the Islamic states have been at war with the West long before Zionism was on anyone’s mind. My great-grandfathers have fought the Ottomans and stories of their (Ottoman) cruelties survive to this day - nothing but greed and power motivated attacks on Europe from the East and Eastern Europe has always been the buffer and always paid the price for the rest of the continent, be it the Ottomans or the Soviets.
And again, I am not defending Zionism here and if it was up to me the U.S. would not provide Israel with 40% of their GDP in hard cash…however, the reality is that Israel, just like Eastern Europe has become the front in this sensless war and they often find themselves alone in it, with the rest of the world bent on supporting terrorists rather than the victims. And again still, I understand that Arabs have equal claims to the land as well, but the reality remains that Israel is there, they are not leaving; so we find ourselves in the middle of a paradoxical conflict without any resolution on the horizon: a small state, with an internationally-recognized right to exist is being surrounded and attacked from all sides by enemies that are not interested in debate and dialogue, rather are interested in wiping all Jews off the planet. All we have to do is read the comments made by Hezbollah bosses, and Syrian and Iranian politicians.
The hypocritical media is also not helping in this conflict with biased coverage and staged events being presented as hard news; in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict the media basically ignored all the Israeli civilian victims and the fact that all the rockets launched by the Hezbollah were against civilian targets.
Truly, the only expedient solution to this senseless war is for Israel to cease to exist.
poor little rich Israel
Virgil, The odd thing is that you see Israel as the underdog while many would feel that it is the other way around. If the U.S. did stop supplying the cash, arms and intelligence, then your characterisation may be more appropo.
Still, that really should not be what divides us. Rather what should unite us is to find a solution or at least to discover how to maintain a peaceful status quo where neither side is able to get at the other.
War is by its nature cruel. If we just look at the wars fought within Christendom over the last 2,000 years we may be forced to admit that the Ottomans could not hold a candle to our inventiveness where perpetrating cruelty is concerned.
Certainly, the M/E takes centre stage now but it is wrong to think of it as a microcosm of the ‘clash of civilizations’ that really is threatening to take place on a global scale.
I really have difficulty identifying ‘the good guys’ here, all the players are willing to do whatever it takes to win and that is a very dangerous situation. The countries in question are small and so their fear is that much more magnified.
Still, I believe that with involvement and sacrifice from us, we will be able perhaps to ameliorate some of the suffering or if not that then at least the world will know that Christianity does not mean hegemony but that there are true followers of Jesus here who are willing to stand for peace, justice and truth even if it means paying a high personal price to do so.
Live to serve : Serve to live