I have been told over and again when I make the comment that the Israeli/Palestinian Madness is rooted in religion that I am wrong.
I was raised in the church, and after 50-some years studying the Scriptures, and understanding the implicit and inherent relationship between the God of the Scriptures, the Israel of the Scriptures, the Christ/Messiah of the Scriptures, and the Christian community, I think my claim holds.
It is a religious war by virtue of the fact that the nation-state that today claims the name 'Israel' stands in blasphemy against the God of the First Testament who created a community of people, Israel, to show to the world what godliness looks like. This is a covenant-God who covenanted with those people, and will not relinquish the covenant regardless of their disobedience and atrocities.
The Jesus who is God, who is the perfect manifestation of God in human flesh, is the Messiah of that Israel, 'the Christ' in Greek, according to the Christian Scriptures. This Christ is the Head of the Church Body. The Church confesses that this Christ is Lord over all. By virtue of that alone Christianity is intricately related to the Jews of the First Testament.
That brief layout of my understanding of scripture identifies, in my view, that what is happening today, perpetrated by the violence of the nation-state that calls itself 'Israel', is intricately and inextricably wrapped-up in the Christian and Jewish scriptures.
I hold to my claim that this is a religious war because on both counts, Jewish and Christian, it incriminates the god we claim, and does violence to the name of God.
Those who look-on rightly implicate the God of the Scriptures in what is happening and has been happening for many years. They want nothing to do with this god. While the whole point of creating and calling a people to manifest God in the Earth was to invite the world at large to come to know the God that is, this Madness in the form of Ethnic Cleaning and Erasure of a people-group, referred to in international law as 'genocide', repels people. Suffice it to say that God is quite bruised by this and is utterly against what has been happening for almost 18 months now.
At last formal count, over 50,000 dead people have been identified, over a third of them being children. This of course does not include the bodies still buried by the destruction that has been wrought; undoubtedly there are many more yet to be discovered. And the effects of this avowed genocide, ratified by the recognised international courts, wil be lived-out in the lives of the survivors, who will bear the soul-scars, especially the children.
My reason for saying this is twofold. One, the nation state 'israel so-called' is not to be confused with the Israel of the First Testament. Zionism and Jewry are not to be confused. Two, the implications for the Church are tremendous, and have left me in prolonged disbelief at the overall silence of the Church in the face of this massacre.
My daily prayer is that this madness would end today.
