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August 25, 2007
Perplexing Positions
It has been two weeks now that we have returned from our Middle East excursion and though my body has long since adjusted, my mind is still recovering from the jet lag of multiple middle-eastern perspectives. Although I visited Israel thirteen years ago, and experienced an amazing renewal of faith, I was excited to go this time in pursuit of the question of how my faith ought to be understood in light of the current political situation. There was a cacophony of competing voices calling me to support “God’s chosen people,” while loving the Palestinian people and to recognize the injustices that have been perpetrated against them. So rather than try to tie my thoughts together neatly to give the impression that I have anything close to a compelling or coherent view, I will express them as they are now situated in my brain, huddled in disjointed clusters waiting for a compassionate cord of continuity.
The Christian community I was raised in helped encourage within me the subtle feeling that if I were Jewish I would somehow be closer to God. The simplistic viewpoint was that the Jews were God’s favorite people and so if we were going to love God we had better support the Jews. Unfortunately in high school my analysis of the complex political ramifications of this support did not factor in to any significant degree. My understanding of the appropriateness of this support is now informed both by my belief in Jesus’ desire to extend his favor to all of humanity as well as a distinction between the Jewish people of the Hebrew scriptures and the current nation state of Israel. .Many people in the evangelical Christian world see the formation of the state of Israel in 1948 if not as a fulfillment of prophecy then certainly as a divine miracle. After visiting the city of Hebron and seeing refugees of this war some of whom still have the keys to their homes tied around their necks, I suspect that the formation of the state of Israel came with a cost that I am not convinced was sovereignly ordained. I suppose if I still took the book of Joshua as my paradigm I might think that God was just clearing out the land to make way for his favorites, if Jesus’ life is now the model, however, I am inclined to think that military conquest is not the way the kingdom of God is to be expanded. Of course I am not suggesting that the Jewish people did not deserve to come back and live in the land of their forefathers. Perhaps though there could have been a less militaristic colonizing way for the Jews to establish residency alongside their Arab brothers (as had been happening in that land to some degree in the years previous to 1948). To preface this next point let me just say that I have no idea how to relate to this almost primal attachment to land that I witnessed in the middle east. Maybe it is the fact that the history recorded in my country spans only a few hundred years and not a few thousand. I used to wonder why the Palestinians did not just immigrate to one of the many surrounding Arab states. After talking with a few people involved in the efforts towards peace, it seems as though the Palestinians would not be welcome immigrants to any of their neighbors, but are in fact being used by the Arab world as a pawn in confronting the Western world. So, if the Palestinians cannot easily immigrate elsewhere (of course it is a whole other issue as to whether they should even feel the need to) it is understandable- though doubtlessly inexcusable- that they would use violence against the Israeli state that is the most visible power broker of their constricted lives. I also, however, am sympathetic with the conservative Israeli stance that refuses to negotiate with groups that proclaim that Israel should be pushed into the sea. In response to suicide bombers and the first intifada of 1987, the Israel government has almost completed a million dollar wall surrounding the Jerusalem area. From my limited poll of taxi drivers in Jerusalem it has mixed reviews. Some said that the only thing to say is that there has not been one suicide bombing since the wall started construction around Jerusalem, others said that this separation is only going to escalate tensions that will eventually culminate in something more extreme than a suicide bombing. My all too non-conclusive closing thoughts, are first, that the violence on either side is a result of violence previously perpetrated, second that the actual oppressed and oppressors are removed from the political powers that represent them, and finally that Christians ought to be a neutral force embodying the kind of peace that only comes as the result of personal sacrifice and a perfect love that casts out all fear.
Posted by Jamaica at 10:42 AM
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