Transcription
Is it possible to be a Christian without supporting the state of Israel? Is it possible to support the Jewish people without supporting the government of Israel? What does blessing Israel even mean within a biblical context?
I want to start out by acknowledging that this is going to be a difficult conversation for many Christians to engage in because I'm sure a lot of you believe just as I did once that the Bible requires you to offer your unconditional and enthusiastic support not only of the Jewish people but also of the present- day nation state of Israel and not only that nation state but also the current government of it and not only that government but every single man and woman within that government and every single decision that they make, regardless of how contrary to God's word those decisions may be, regardless of how wicked or self-serving or secular they may be, regardless of the cost in terms of human life and suffering and the spilling of innocent blood because if you don't offer that kind of enthusiastic unconditional support, God is going to curse you or something unclear. So, I can appreciate that this makes the whole thing a fairly touchy subject, right?
But I am witnessing a period of revival and renewal within the Christian church that I've not seen in my lifetime. And I believe that as a part of that process of revival and renewal, we are called as Christians to face hard truths about the variety of ways in which we have gone astray. And I believe a big part of that includes our relationship to and how we think about Israel. So what I'm going to try to do with this video is from a biblical perspective try to address and provide perspective on the Christian church and how we relate to Israel and what Israel even is from a biblical perspective. And spoiler alert, it has absolutely nothing to do with the government of the nation state of Israel.
I'll also provide reasons based in scripture why I believe that Christians have been misled for decades into complicity and participation in a series of pointless, brutal, tragic, catastrophic wars for the sake of Israel. I don't want to shame anyone, but if you are a Christian, if you believe in Christ and the greatest commandments, I do want to convict your heart in the same way that my heart has been convicted in regards to the loss of innocent life in Gaza.
And look, before you click away, I understand that this is a touchy subject. I understand that everyone has strong opinions about it. And I understand that it's very difficult to get accurate information about the actual casualty number. This is the nature of the fog of war and there's a lot of propaganda on both sides of this. But when you're talking about the death and injury and starvation of tens and hundreds of thousands of children, how precise do you need to be before the moral imperative to stand up and demand that something change kicks in? Wherever that threshold is from a Christian perspective, I believe we passed it a long time ago.
For whatever it's worth to you, I personally have come to the conclusion based on my own research of independent sources, so not the Gaza Health Ministry that over 40,000 non-combatant Palestinians have been killed. So primarily women and children and also that there are over 640,000 Palestinians that are currently facing catastrophic starvation conditions to include over 130,000 children and that there is currently no plan in place to relieve any of that suffering. I'm not asking for you to take my word on this. I have provided links in the description for the sources that I find reputable. I encourage you to go and check them out with a critical eye. But just be aware that moving forward in this discussion, this is my baseline understanding of the situation. This is why I'm approaching it in the way that I am. This is why I feel there is a great need and urgency for the church and especially American Christians because it's our tax dollars that are being used for this to happen and our bombs that are being dropped on these children to stand up and put a stop to this.
Now, based on my experience, this is the exact moment in the conversation where I will start to lose common ground with most Christians that I try to talk to and they will start to disengage. I would encourage you before you click away, please just give me a few more minutes of your time and hear me out. For the rest of the video, I'm going to go through some of the more common counterarguments to the things that I just said, the stuff that is probably going through your head right now. I'm going to address those things. Okay? If you feel that what's going on in Gaza is somehow either justified or exaggerated or not your responsibility, I want to address those things if you'll give me the opportunity.
So, let's start with what is easily the most common counterargument that I hear from Christians, that the Bible commands us to bless Israel. For those of you that have maybe heard this before but are not familiar with the specific scripture that is being referenced here, it is Genesis 12:1-3, which is the core and foundational component of the Old Testament Abrahamic covenant between Yahweh and the children of Israel. The word Israel itself means those who struggle or those who wrestle with God. And this is a name that was given to Jacob after he wrestled with an angel, which I always read as kind of a a metaphorical story about the children of Israel and their continual struggle with understanding and obeying and following God. So, it's a legacy and a lineage that follows the descendants of Jacob. And they are given special position and blessing among men. Yahweh promises them a specific land which at the time was known as Canaan, and that they will establish a great nation. And in particular, whoever blesses the lineage of Abraham will be blessed, and whoever curses them will be cursed. So when you hear it said that the present day land of Israel was promised to the Jewish people 3,000 years ago, this is what is being referenced.
So basically, this argument is an appeal to this covenant, this very specific verse. Because Abraham was blessed by God and was given special position and was awarded this land, we as present- day Christians are required to adhere to this covenant and bless Israel lest we be cursed. And unfortunately for many Christians that translates to writing a blank check to the government of Israel and just letting them do whatever they want and not offering any conditions or restrictions on that support. There are so many problems with this line of thinking that we have to just write Israel a blank check and so many other scriptures that you have to just ignore completely to make this rationale work. It's honestly kind of hard to know where to begin.
First of all, the concept of Israel in a biblical sense is not specific to the lineage of Abraham anymore. There are many scriptures in the New Testament that explicitly say that this old Abrahamic covenant was rendered obsolete and was expanded to include all people who walk in Christ, Jew and Gentile alike. When Christ died on the cross, his blood sacrifice grafted the rest of humanity, Jew and Gentile alike, into this blessing of Abraham. We are all Israel. If you walk with God, if you follow Christ, then you are Israel. The whole Christian church is Israel in the sense that we now are the ones that struggle with God.
Romans 9:6-8: "But it is not that the word of God has taken no effect. For they are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children, because they are the seed of Abraham. But in Isaac your seed shall be called, that is those who are the children of the flesh." In other words, the literal bloodline of Abraham, these are not the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as the seed.
Galatians 3:7-9: "Therefore, know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham and specifically faith in Christ. And the scripture for seeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, 'In you all the nations shall be blessed.' So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham."
Galatians 3:28-29: "There is neither Jew nor Gentile. There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise."
Hebrews 8:6-8: "But now he has obtained a more excellent ministry in as much as he is also a mediator of a better covenant which was established on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second."
All this to say, the old covenant was according to the Bible insufficient. And now with the new covenant in Christ, anyone who follows him is saved and is Israel. You are Israel. And this also means that a lot of people living in the current nation state of Israel, if they are not Christian, are not Israel. Again, to quote Romans 9:6, for they are not all Israel who are of Israel.
But maybe you're not convinced by all this. Maybe you believe that even in spite of all these verses that say to the contrary, the old Abrahamic accord is still in effect and the Jews that are living in Israel are given special status among all men. It's not the case. But just for the sake of argument, let's say that's hypothetically true. Is it possible for the children of Israel to go astray and disobey God and lose the blessings of Abraham? Obviously, the answer is yes, because there are dozens and dozens and dozens of examples of exactly that happening in the Old Testament. The golden calf in Exodus 32, the rebellion of Kora in Numbers 16, the repeated cycles of sin and pagan god worship in Judges, the disobedience and adultery and idolatry of King Saul and King David and King Solomon. Like even if you ignore all of the minor stuff and you're only focusing on the major acts of disobedience where the Israelites throw off the commandments and start sacrificing children to Bal or Moolok. There's more than 30 examples of this. And you know what the worst job in the whole Old Testament was? It was being one of the prophets of Israel like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel. Cuz like 98% of their job was just following up around the Israelites and being like, "Hey, hey, can you stop sinning and sacrificing children for like 15 minutes? We're going to get exiled into the desert for another 40 years if you don't stop." Israel's history in the Old Testament is overwhelmingly a cycle of disobedience, punishment, mercy, redemption, repeat. And as the prophets would tell you, blessing someone as we are apparently commanded to bless Israel does not mean just writing them a blank check and letting them do whatever they want. Sometimes the kindest, most loving thing that you can do for somebody is to let them know when they have gone astray, when they are not following the righteous path.
Let's think of this from another angle. Is it possible to support a country without supporting the government of that country? As an American, I love my country. I love the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I love the freedoms and opportunities that I am afforded here like nowhere else in the world. But does that love for my country and that support of my country mean that I endorse unquestioningly everything that the US federal government does? Not for me. It doesn't. And why is that? Well, because the government is full of wicked, corrupt, degenerate people who are wanting to do all kinds of wicked, corrupt, degenerate things with the country. And the only thing that's stopping them are the good men and women of this country that stand up to them every now and again and say, "No, absolutely you're not going to do that. Are you crazy?" I maintain that the best way to support a country is to keep its government in check. And this is true for the US government and the Israeli government and any government. I happen to believe that there are some very, very wicked, ungodly men in positions of power in the Israeli government. And just like the prophets of the Old Testament, it is our responsibility as Christians, as members of the church to hold those men to account and to let them know when they have gone astray.
To wrap up this point, even if the blessings of Abraham had not been extended to all believers in Christ, which they have, the commandment to bless Israel does not mean that we are permitted to turn a blind eye to wicked behavior, and especially not the suffering and killing and starvation of children.
Anyway, moving on. Argument number two, whatever Israel does is justified because it fulfills endtime prophecies. This argument from eschatology has a number of different variations, but the basic idea is that Israel as a nation state is going to play a very important role in the end of days and the return of Christ and the subsequent apocalypse. There's way too many scriptures to read through all of them. I will put them up on the screen so that you can look them up yourself if you want to read them. But in a nutshell, in the end of days, there will be famine and plague and war and rumors of wars and nation turning against nation. Christ referred to this as the birthing pains of the end of days. And at some point during all of this ongoing conflict, all of the nations of the world will turn against Israel and go to war with Israel. And Israel will be victorious in such a way that it will be undeniable to anyone who sees it that they are blessed by God.
So basically the thinking of this argument is that within the context of this greater unfolding apocalyptic drama, the deaths of a few tens of thousands of children just really isn't that important or at the very least not worth trying to prevent. And I've even heard it said by some Christians who take this logic to its extreme conclusion that because the killing of children in Gaza is causing the nations of the world to turn against Israel that it's actually a good thing because it serves to fulfill this prophecy. I think that for a lot of Christians, this way of thinking of the world is comforting because it allows them to disengage ethically and morally from the suffering that their tax dollars are contributing to.
Obviously, I fundamentally disagree with this way of thinking. Um, I feel like shrugging off the death and suffering and starvation of children as just inevitable collateral damage is a decidedly un-Christian way to orient oneself in the world. But beyond that, consider if you respond to the injury and suffering and starvation of children with indifference or justification, is that likely to turn people towards God or away from God? One of our primary responsibilities as Christians is to turn other people towards God that they might be saved. And one of the main ways that we do that is through our testimony, through how we engage with the world. That if people see the love and compassion of God shining through us, that they'll be drawn to it and that they'll turn to God and be saved.
2 Corinthians 5: "Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ as though God were pleading through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf be reconciled to God."
1 Peter 2:12: "Have your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works which they observe glorify God in the day of visitation."
People around the world are paying very close attention to what's happening in Gaza right now. And they're also paying very close attention to the deafening silence and rationalization and excuse-making of the Christian church. And this Christian legacy of indifference to the loss of innocent life in the Middle East is something that I have personally witnessed for my entire life at this point in Afghanistan and Iraq and Lebanon and Yemen.
This idea that it's not worth trying to prevent the loss of innocent life because we're in the end times and Jesus is coming back soon anyway. I I've all I've heard that for decades too now. My dad, bless his heart, raised me on a steady diet of uh doomsday prepping and anxiety about the end of days. And he had so many predictions about the end of the world that just didn't really ever come to anything. One of my favorites was that Obama was the antichrist. And uh and I mean fair enough based on the sheer number of people that he drone-stried into oblivion. You know, I'm inclined to agree, but still never quite came to anything. There's this tendency of Christians to ignore suffering in the present because they're so focused on the afterlife or trying to anticipate and predict the apocalypse. How many non-believers might have been saved, might have turned towards God had the church done a better job of speaking out against and condemning these pointless, endless wars that we've been engaged with for my entire lifetime. This silence and indifference or even in the case of some, this enthusiastic participation in the spilling of innocent blood, this is anti-testimony. It turns people away from God and I believe that we will need to account for this collectively at some point and we need to do better.
So these two arguments that I've already covered, the argument in favor of blessing Israel unconditionally and the argument in favor of indifference because of the end times, they're more common, but also they were more complicated in terms of addressing them from a scriptural perspective. Certainly more time consuming if nothing else. The remaining two arguments, I think, are much easier to dismantle with scripture, so I'm not going to spend as much time on them.
But what about October 7th? Hamas killed innocent Israelis, too, right? So, the killing of Palestinian children is justified somehow. First of all, ignoring completely the principle of proportionality. Like, there were only 1,200 Israelis that were killed. And by the most conservative estimates, we're in the 20 to 40,000 Palestinian range. That's not even that's not even in the same ballpark. Also, there's hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that are currently starving to death. Ignoring all of that, what does the Bible say about how we should treat our enemies?
Romans 12:14-21: "Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to God's wrath. For it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, and I will repay,' says the Lord. Therefore, if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink. For in doing so, you will heap coals of fire on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." This is just one of many scriptures that I can point to. Maybe I for the Old Testament, but not so much in the New Testament, not with the New Covenant in Christ.
Argument number four, Hamas is using those children as human shields. So this argument is essentially that if a terrorist runs into a building that has a bunch of children in it, Israel is completely justified in bombing that building and killing all the children inside of it. Uh and that it would be the responsibility of the terrorists that went in there. So again, see above argument about not repaying evil with evil. Uh but honestly, I don't even need scripture for this argument.
How many of you remember the Uvalde school shooting here in Texas? A gunman was allowed to run rampant in a school for an hour and 15 minutes and killed 19 children and two teachers. It was the worst school shooting in Texas history. And one of the biggest criticisms that the local law enforcement faced was over the amount of time that they spent just milling around outside instead of taking action. What if, hypothetically speaking, they had decided to take more decisive action and just bombed the whole school? Just blew the whole thing up. That would be crazy, right? Like imagine if that's just how we handled hostage situations in the US. Like anytime that there was a a bank robbery that had gone wrong and they took hostages, we just blew up the bank. Or if a a serial killer ran into the maternity ward of a hospital, we just blew up the hospital. Can you imagine? It would be mayhem. Nobody would consider that acceptable. It wouldn't be self-defense by any definition of the term. It would be an act of aggression and completely unjustified. And yet this is what Israel has done. 70% of all buildings in Gaza have been either severely damaged or completely destroyed. And that includes 90% of all residential buildings. This according to the Hebrew University GISC. So the whole self-defense human shield argument just doesn't hold any weight for me.
Imagine if that was your kid inside of a building with a bad guy. Would you want them to at least try to get those kids out? Would you want them to at least try to avoid collateral damage? And again, I'll point to one of the sources that I have in my description. According to a leaked Israeli intelligence database, 83% of all people killed in Gaza were considered non-combatants.
So, as I start to wrap up from here, first off, if you've made it this far, I'd like to say thank you. Uh especially if you're a Christian. I imagine that this conversation was pretty difficult at times. So where do we go from here? I think an important first step is to start to have these kinds of open and honest conversations within your local community with other Christians that you know and are comfortable with. We need to somehow disrupt this orthodoxy, this extremely narrow interpretation of scripture that tells us we have to write Israel blank checks. And I think that it's going to have to start from the ground up. I don't think that the church leadership are likely to break ranks until the flock begins to move first. If you're not sure how to start this conversation with somebody, maybe just send them this video. I have a whole list of people that I plan on sending this video to so that I can hopefully broach this conversation in a way that feels maybe a little bit less confrontational.
Beyond that, I don't know that I have a good prescription for ending the endless bloodshed and violence in the Middle East that Israel always seems to find itself in the middle of, but I'm reasonably certain that unconditional support of Israel is a big part of the problem. I think that they would be much less belligerent in terms of bombing civilians or other US allies like Qatar if our support was more conditional. In the same way that the blessings of Yahweh in the Old Testament were conditional, I think so too should our blessings be. Those bombs that are dropping on kids in Gaza were built here in America and their military is funded by our tax dollars, which means we have a lot of control over the situation that we have yet to realize. And it's time to start flexing that muscle. It's going to start with you and who you talk to in your church and who you vote for in the midterms.
Anyway, folks, I appreciate you sticking around to the end and for your patience. I'm sure that I didn't get everything right. If there's anything that you feel like I've gotten egregiously wrong, please let me know in the comments. I'm open to having misinterpreted something, but more than anything, please try to keep it respectful. Thanks again for sticking around to the end. I'll see y'all next time.