MysteriousFaith

The Challenge Israel Represents to Contemporary Christianity

What is this challenge? Simply put, the rationale behind Israel’s current political machinations in dealing with the Palestinians is strikingly similar to the Old Testament mandate for the establishment of an Israeli nation-state. While theologians engage in a very dry debate over cultural hermeneutics in relation to understanding the Old Testament’s treatment of acts of Canaanite genocide at the hands of Israelites, an increasingly similar situation is unfolding right underneath our noses in modern-day Israel.

The Challenge Israel Represents to Contemporary Christianity

In moments of honesty, most Christians will confess our shared desire to have something more tangible, more concrete, more specific upon which to hang the hope that unites us - our shared belief in a Creator, His son Jesus Christ, and the life here-after. In these moments of honesty, most of us will also admit that a very real part of our unhealthy infatuation with prophecy revolves around our hope of being justified in this life. The fulfillment of what many Christians hold to as essential truths within their respective prophetic systems - ideas of questionable reality such as the Rapture and the Tribulation - offers perhaps more than anything else the chance to be proven right on this side of eternity, before they have to face the singularity, severity and ultimately unknowable step of death - something they still have a very real degree of question and concern about.

For people such as this, prophecy then takes on an entirely different, expanded reality - the potential to be justified, to have our faith rationalized before we must actually live with the consequences of our faith in the finality of death. How ironic that a set of teachings we know as Revelation, originally presented to calm the fears of persecuted Christians in the first century, have become teachings designed to calm the fears of empowered Christians who fear their faith may not in fact be justified, or who seek an escape from the responsibility of being the salt in this world.

Standing outside the life of faith and attempting to question what things will challenge the continuity and continuation of spirituality, it is possible to see several potential problems. The challenge of pluralism - something coming generations will struggle with in ways much, much more severe than any in the past have due to the shrinking world we are all inhabiting, the question of salvation occurring outside of “the Church”, the effect rational, scientific thinking has on the key components of faith, the dubious history of organized religion; all of these strike ominous notes as to the potential for faith to have the same shape and form it currently holds. I would contend that one of the most significant challenges to contemporary Christianity is the unavoidable questions upcoming generations will face regarding their unquestioning support of the Israeli state. This support will unfold into challenges related to unfulfilled eschatology and fundamental interpretation techniques (hermeneutics) of Holy Scripture.

As Noam Chomsky argues in his book Middle East Illusions, the current Israeli/Palestinian conflict is more than likely going to end in one of two scenarios: an over-reaching that creates a disaster for the Palestinians, or Israel initiating an overly-heavy handed military response of such gravity that it pulls the balance of the world into taking sides in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in a march towards a global conflict. Little reason exists today to not believe that the current conflict will not at some point dramatically and badly escalate, leaving behind it the pregnant realization that, as Christians, we can and should have done more to facilitate meaningful and genuine political dialogue between both sides.

For many evangelical Christians, Israel plays a central role in their end-time prophetic scenario (what is also known as eschatology). Israel, according to people like Hal Lindsay, Tim LaHaye, John Hagee and many, many others, will be reconstituted as a nation as part of the fulfillment of the Old Testament covenant between God and His chosen people and there-by as a part of the fulfillment of prophecy. Once re-established, the nation-state of Israel becomes the battle ground of spiritual forces - between the Anti-Christ and the forces of Christ Himself. Among other supposed “facts”, this clash requires that Moses and Elijah come back to the earth, testify for a period of time, and consume people who oppose them with fire called down from heaven. The LaHaye-Jenkins Left Behind pabulum is the most recent commentary on this systemized eschatology.

While people such as myself may roll our eyes at these beliefs, we must remind ourselves of the call to be very, very careful in choosing what as Christians we choose to debate over. One popular radio host says that we can “vigorously debate but must not divide over” such matters. There is much wisdom in this statement; however, when dealing with fundamentalists - the very choice of the word meaning they pull more beliefs under the umbrella of what other Christians define as extemporaneous - it is increasingly difficult to determine what is an essential and what is an acceptable point of difference. I believe it is necessary to take the LaHaye-brand of eschatology very seriously because it is leading to one of the biggest contemporary crises within the Christian faith itself.

What is this challenge? Simply put, the rationale behind Israel’s current political machinations in dealing with the Palestinians is strikingly similar to the Old Testament mandate for the establishment of an Israeli nation-state. While theologians engage in a very dry debate over cultural hermeneutics in relation to understanding the Old Testament’s treatment of acts of Canaanite genocide at the hands of Israelites, an increasingly similar situation is unfolding right underneath our noses in modern-day Israel, with God’s modern-day chosen people, and with those who have the audacity to propose that they (the Palestinians) have as much of a right to be in their home land as do the Israelites.

This realization will not come before the situation in Israel reaches a boiling point. It will come afterwards - in fact, it will probably come years, if not decades, after the act of over-reaching is started, but until the smoke has cleared and enough time has elapsed to allow people to have a meaningful perspective on the acts of history. When this moment occurs, I believe the average person will realize that Israel acted in a way that was overly protective and overly aggressive in defending itself from a very unreal threat posed by the Palestinians. Depending on the level of severity with which Israel responds, many people will then take the next logical step in their thinking - that these acts, while certainly justified under the normal jingoism of nationalism (which makes all that “protects” me justifiable, right and patriotic) were simply immoral and wrong.

It will be in this moment that Christianity will have yet another challenge posed to it. Contemporary evangelical Christianity’s fixation with prophecy is strikingly unhealthy. It is indicative of a deeper spiritual malaise and a very real spiritual narcissism that is eating the heart out of meaningful American faith. With the advent of each new crisis in the Middle East, a new generation of evangelical authors spews out a book of utter nonsense that crowds the shelves of the local Christian bookstore and occupies the minds of too many Christian believers who ought to know better. The first round of crisis in the Middle East decades ago generated the now defunct The Late Great Planet Earth, and the more recent crises have created books whose titles I do not wish to present in the interests of furthering their book sales. What is alarming to me (and I should confess I myself was guilty for a part of my early Christian life of succumbing to these same affections), is how readily these men are proven entirely wrong as history advances, leaving behind their prognostications and interpretations. Jeremiah tells us that we are to test whether the words of a prophet are from God or not depending on if they come true. Were we to apply some portion of this spiritual test to these men, they would be run out of town rightfully; but their continued presence, impact and role of primacy in contemporary fundamentalism suggests again that a fixation exists with the act of placing ones hope in prophecy, not the reasonableness, spiritual inspiration or truth of the act of prophecy.

This blind trust in prophecy will lead American Christians astray even further as the situation in Israel unfolds. No doubt the unfolding of events in Israel will engender a level of fervent support for Israel from American evangelicals. Regardless of what Israel does, it somehow plays in these peoples’ minds as part of the fulfillment of Scripture. They will feel no need to stand in the gap and debate or stand up for matters of Christian morality (is how the Palestinians are being treated moral or not?), instead choosing to believe that the inspired acts of history are in the hands of God. He is wrapping up history and as such, He is not to be questioned if what is happening seems immoral.

But if these events end without the fulfillment of prophecy, American Christians will be stuck in a quandary entirely of their own making. They will have had their prophetic systems struck down, utterly unfilled. They will also have had to realize that their inaction in the face of immorality was socially unconscionable and simply put wrong. It is in this moment that a spear of doubt will be thrown at the life of faith itself: if contemporary Christianity was wrong to stand by as Israel over-reached, why was it right for Israel to act in a similar fashion during their march into Canaan? If it was an immoral act now, it was an immoral act then. Or does God change what is morally allowable based on His desires? To do so brings down all arguments of in-born, natural moral law as means of divine revelation. If what is “right” today can become “wrong” tomorrow, how are we to have that imprint of our Creator in our conscience?

When the past acts of a historical Israelite expansion into Canaan are contrasted with the modern acts of Israeli nationalism, a fundamental divide will occur within Christian faith. It will be a divide just like the divide over modernity and antiquity, of rationalism and faith. This time the stakes will be different, but their challenge to the life of faith will be no less severe.

I propose that while we can, American Christians who view dimply the unquestioning support for the Bantustan policies in Israel stand up and challenge our brothers and sisters in Christ to reconcile the cross-cultural, trans-historical truths of human morality that is essential to the teachings of Christianity with the blind support for Israel. People, not nations, have a right to self-determination, liberty and freedom. To set one group of people up over another is an act of intemperance, one that will ultimately resonate through history as a moment in time when people of faith did not stand up against the misdeeds of organized religion. We need not look too far into our shared past to see other times when such moments of inaction and cowardice have left people forever scarred and disillusioned as to the purpose of spirituality. If not to speak for those who have no voice, then for what purpose do spiritual truths exist?

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• July 24, 2004

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