Last Christmas we were celebrating the Advent of our Christ in the context of over two months of the Madness in Gaza.
I had been squatting in that mind-bending reality and struggling, flailing around in some muckish swamp. I did not have words to express how I was feeling. I simply could not understand why I felt the way I did. It was a mystery to me.
I recognized some weeks later that it was a grieving, a weird occurrence in my life for such an event. Apparently, what was happening was deeply personal.
Over the subsequent weeks I tried my best to figure out why this was affecting me in this way.
I had a history in the Church from when I was a child. I took my faith to be an integral part of my life. I am 67 years old now, and have spent the major part of my life studying and learning the Bible. That study was initially rooted in a fundamentalistic Baptist environment, and that limited the scope of my thinking.
I managed to escape that sphere and forayed into a broader, deeper consideration of my Christianity.
Since then, I have come to the position that Jesus, the Christ of G-d, the promised Messiah of the Jews, is the very root and center of everything I believe relating to my faith and practice.
The upshot of that is that anything in the Bible, both from the Hebrew First Testament and the Christian Second Testament, must align favorably with the person, the teachings, the attitude, and the behavior of Jesus; such that anything there that does not fit well with that approach I regard to be questionable and must be treated as subservient, subject to some other explanation.
Apart from this conclusion as to why I was experiencing this so deeply, I also came to the position that God had laid this burden on me. I had no other explanation or understanding, for it has been an aspect of my life every day since October 7, 2023, and that not of my choosing.
I had to be honest with myself. I consider integrity to be a signal aspect of my life, such that when I am not in alignment with my Self and who I am as a human and as a follower of Jesus, then I am adrift, and in violation of my humanity, one rooted in the image and likeness of the Creator G-d.
..
Aside from the unbelievable tragedy of the brutality of the modern nation/state, 'Israel–so–called', my amazement lies in the widespread refusal of the Church to call-out 'israel' for its in-humanity. Further to that, not only has the church refused to take that stand, It actually supports and encourages what is happening. And this paradox, in my mind a Hell–inspired manifestation of a learned propagandistic ideology, is staggering. I simply cannot reconcile or understand it. And it gnaws at the bones of my being.
For a community called-out by G-d and formed in the history of the Israel into which the Church is grafted (Romans 11:17), a second manifestation of the desire of G-d for a people to faithfully represent and exemplify the character of G-d to the nations at large, we, the Church, have failed and are failing as miserably as Israel has done. And I am at a complete loss.
I am faced with the virtually incomprehensible fact that I live and move and have being within a community that, for the major part, remains silent, and therefore is complicit in the wickedness that is happening.It should be obvious from what I have already said about what I believe that this particular Happening stands-out from the other atrocities occurring in our world today, some of which are just as horrifying. As I said, Israel and the Church of Jesus Messiah are integral to any Christian understanding of who this Creator G-d is. So that to respond in anything other than total and direct opposition to the travesty that is occurring, and to state that publicly from the pulpit is, in my mind, untenable, and blasphemy.
That the rest of the World looks on in revulsion at the obvious intent of Israel-so-called to entirely eradicate the indigenous population of Palestine, appropriating Its land and resources for itself in a Colonialist fashion, ethnically cleansing and genocidally purging all human life, including infants, implicates Christianity as a consequence and further, disastrously, the Christ of Christ-ianity, my Lord and my G-d.
I too am implicated.
This breaks me.
The ignorance of the indoctrinated Church in the West as to the marked difference between a Jew and a Zionist is tragically obvious.
There have been and are preachings and teachings from church pulpits enlisting the congregants to support 'israel' as a default response. This is amazing, but follows naturally from the 100+ years of the theology that derives from Darby-inspired End Times philosophy, the Scofield Study Bible, the Left Behind phenomenon, Dispensationalism, and such, an infection we are yet to doctor and recover from. But, as Jesus said, unless we recognize our sickness, he cannot heal us.
It goes without saying that my position has put me in a tentative, and sometimes conflicting, understanding with not only Church community, but other relations as well. And perhaps that is why it has taken me so long to say what I am now saying. It is costly, but I have come to the position that as long as I sidestep my integrity in pursuit of community, I am mis-aligned and denying the Spirit of the Christ who lives in me.
I hate conflict, and I do not intend to cause offence. But this needs to be said, not only as a response to the Church's response to Israel-so-called, but for the sake of who I am in Christ.
A central part of my understanding of who Jesus is lies in his mandate in the Sermon on the Mount, found in Matthew 5-7. There Jesus gave several illustrations to depict his core teaching of love for our neighbor.
He eventually came to the surprising, radical statement that love in its purest form is exemplified in love for one's enemy.
It is significant to note that when Jesus spoke these words he was addressing the Jews of his day, of whom he was one, who were then under occupation by the brutal Roman empire. The upshot of that was that Jesus expected his followers to love the people who were oppressing them, and further to show that love by their behavior.
That philosophy blatantly stands out in the current situation.
Further, consider that a major aspect of Jesus submitting himself to the violence of Humanity is to overthrow that violence for the sake of his humanity and the Humanity that he created as the Expression of G-d in human form, the very Word of G-d (John 1:1).
We murdered him for that.
I have finally come to the position that silence is no longer an option, and I repent for my reticence.
I pray that we, the Church, awake from our slumbering and blindness.
There is more in me that could be said, but I rest.
peace to you
