Gaza

 This post is purely the opinion of your Old Religious Guy and does not necessarily reflect the policies of the ELCA or the author’s congregation.

I haven’t written much about Gaza because I haven’t really known what to write. The October 7^th attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists was a barbaric atrocity. Answering this act of unspeakably depraved violence has put Israel and the rest of the world into one of the most challenging moral dilemmas: What sin is worse? Do you allow evil doers to go unpunished? If so, you only encourage more acts of evil. Do you risk punishing the innocent when you attack the guilty? If so, you commit an act of injustice, and risk creating a new generation of terrorists by pouring gasoline on the flames of hatred and distrust.

What does the Bible say? “If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” (Exodus 21: 23-25) This was not just a word about justice, but an exhortation against taking excessive revenge. Life for a life is understandable. But so far, the Israeli Defense Force has taken over fifty Palestinian lives for each Israeli life lost on that terrible day. Many of these lives have been non-combatant women and children. We can only look upon the devastation in Gaza—the deaths, the pulverized infrastructure, the wrecked hospitals and schools, the mass displacement, the disease, the lack of sanitation and medical aid, and now the very real risk of mass starvation for two million human beings—and shake our uncomprehending heads in horror.

What has this conflict to do with the United States, and why does the US government support Israel’s unrelenting punishment of the people of Gaza? It is clearly understandable that President Biden, after the monstrous brutality of the October 7^th attack, wished to come to the aid of America’s friend. Friends support each other in times of trouble; nevertheless, friends should also hold each other to account for their own good. Do friends allow friends to drop bombs on children? Do friends provide the weapons which will kill the innocent? Do friends hide their eyes from children dying of malnutrition?

As a Christian clergyman I want to draw attention to a religious aspect of this conflict. There is a serious issue here for many American Christians, and it is an issue of heresy. Many American non-denominational Evangelicals have embraced what has come to be called Christian Zionism. Allow me to say at the outset that I would never deny the historically persecuted and marginalized Jewish people the right to their own homeland or the right to live in peace. Nevertheless, there is a belief which has gained traction in America over the last fifty years which yokes the creation of the State of Israel with supposed prophecies of the End Times and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. This belief has created a pro-Israel fanaticism among some Evangelicals.

Without getting too deep into the theological weeds, Christian Zionism has its origins in a discredited 19^th century doctrine called Dispensationalism. A British clergyman named John Nelson Darby, apparently distressed by the cognitive dissonance of miracle stories in the Bible, decided that God must have delt with humanity in different ways over different periods of history. He called these periods “dispensations.” Darby’s later adherents have become obsessed with the “Final Dispensation” and have made a cottage industry out of predicting Christ’s Second Coming and the cataclysmic end of the world—an event they’ve linked to the reemergence of Israel as a nation. Should Jewish Israelis retake East Jerusalem and replace the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount with a Jewish temple, this will be a hoped-for sign of the End Times approaching—or so Dispensationalists believe.

The Christian Zionist/Dispensationalists’ doctrine flies in the face of the Gospel (see Mark 13:32 for example). It is an eschatology cobbled together from disparate fragments of scripture. As Biblical scholarship it is laughable. As a doctrine of pastoral care and compassion it is worse than useless. As a political position it violates the separation of Church and State and encourages America’s blessing on whatever oppression the Israeli government wishes to inflict on her Palestinian neighbors.

The Roman Catholic Church does not preach Dispensationalism. This means that one out of every two Christians on the face of the earth does not hold this doctrine. The eastern Orthodox Christians do not preach Dispensationalism either, raising the percentage of non-dispensationalist Christians to at least 75% worldwide. When we consider Anglicans and Lutherans and almost all mainline Protestant denominations also reject Darby’s doctrine, we find the percentage of those who preach and teach Dispensationalism and its pro-Israel corollary is very small indeed. And yet, American Evangelicals have fallen in love with this doctrine. They also love Donald Trump.

It is my opinion that Trump, whose Sabbath observances seem to be limited to the golf course, still craves the adulation of this vocal and politically active religious minority and is perfectly willing to pander to them. The result? US foreign policy has become the prison wife of Benjamin Netanyahu. Any criticism of the Israeli government is instantly interpreted as antisemitism. The destruction of Gaza, the displacement of two million human beings, the deaths of fifty-nine thousand people, and the lack of food, drinking water, medicine, and other necessities is the end product of our government’s support of this fervent heresy.

American Christians need to be educated on solid Biblical interpretation. It is only logical to believe the myriad authors of the Christian Bible wrote to their own communities in their own time, just as all other writers do. We can only conclude that much of their original intent and meaning has been lost to antiquity. It is, however, absurd to take Hebrew scriptures referencing events in the seventh or sixth centuries BC, mash them up with extremely cryptic Greek scriptures from the end of the first century of the common era, and pretend there is some prophetic connection to modern day events. Such interpretation is disrespectful to the scriptures themselves.

Let us remember as American Christians that there are still some forty-five thousand Palestinian Christians living in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. They are Coptic, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, and other denominations all living with the daily reality of Israeli occupation. Our duty as Christians is to love our neighbors regardless of their faith or nationality, and to seek justice and dignity for all people. Let us continue to pray for peace and do what we can to combat and correct the heretical beliefs which are making the US complicit in the misery of so many.