Israel, and how sensationalistic beliefs and excitement about the end times can hurt our Christian witness
Israel has been in the news a lot lately, and it’s been some big news.
First, there’s been rumors of war flying concerning Israel and its newest archnemesis, Iran. This itself is nothing new, but now there’s actually been an exchange of attacks in Syria. On top of that, just yesterday the United States celebrated the opening of its embassy in Jerusalem, which most Jews and Christians regard as Israel’s proper capital. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the country, Palestinians conducted protests, often violent, and about 62 were gunned down (most of them members of the terrorist group Hamas, according to Hamas itself) by Israeli soldiers as they tried to storm the border and threw explosives and incendiaries across into Israeli territory.
With any other nation, it would be obvious that Christians should react with sadness. It’s a tragedy when two nations go to war, and it’s a tragedy when people are killed in violence. But when it comes to Israel, it seems to be different for some Christians. Some Christians seem excited by all this. A perfect example is this picture that a friend posted on Facebook of a post from someone I’ve never met:
What could possibly inspire someone to call the possibility of major war “exciting”? The answer is a particular belief about the end times called “dispensationalism.” What is that? The idea, in brief, is that there are two “dispensations” of God’s grace: one to the nation of Israel, when he chose them as his own people and gave them physical territory to be their own; and one to the church worldwide, which includes both Jews and Gentiles everywhere, and for whom the Promised Land is the eternal kingdom of God.
This is not a view all or even most Christians hold, and in fact very few if any people held it prior to the 18th-19th century. But it has made its way into the popular culture and into the political sphere as well. Most people have believed that the church has replaced Israel as God’s chosen people, and the promised kingdom of God has replaced the physical land of Israel as the “promised land.” But according to the dispensational view, the church has not replaced Israel. The Jews are still God’s chosen people, and the land of Israel still rightfully belongs to the Jews.
You might see where this leads to a distorted viewpoint: If the Jews are the rightful possessors of the land of Israel, then it becomes very easy to justify anything they do. Anything they do to retain control of that land could be said to be good and a part of God’s plan. And you see this mindset in many people, particularly some conservative evangelicals, who seem to think Israel can do no wrong.
But there’s an even bigger reason behind it: Since so many of the apocalyptic prophecies in the Bible make allusions to battles in and around the land of Israel, the fact that Israel exists again is very exciting indeed. Since dispensationalists believe that Israel still plays a major role in God’s plan, they tend to interpret any prophecy concerning the land of Israel literally, even where most people have interpreted them figuratively (e.g. most of Revelation) or as having already been fulfilled (e.g. most of Jesus’ end-times discourse in Matthew 24/Mark 13/Luke 21) with the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Dispensationalists tend to interpret most prophecies concerning Israel as future and literal. So the fact that Israel exists again means we’re in an epic and exciting time in history, because now it means that the apocalyptic prophecies of Scripture can finally be fulfilled.
Perhaps now it makes more sense why this Christian on Facebook was so excited about Israel going to war with Iran. Any prospect for a cataclysmic battle involving Israel is a prospect for the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, possibly leading up to the “great tribulation” (Matthew 24:21) and the return of Christ. We should look forward to Christ’s return, right? Of course, but whether dispensationalism is true or not, this kind of mindset — the kind that desires war and tribulation in order to usher in the second coming — couldn’t be farther from the mindset of Christ.
While we’re over here in America watching this stuff unfold on the Internet and TV, and while we enjoy TV shows and movies about the end of the world, fear and warfare are horrific realities in the Middle East. Do I need to remind my fellow Christians that war kills people? War breaks apart families and causes inconsolable grief. It’s not a movie. It’s not a chance to say, “Look, it’s in the Bible; I told you so!” The people over there — including millions of brothers and sisters in Christ — don’t feel like they’re in an action movie. They are suffering, and every country involved in the warfare over there is contributing to that suffering. Am I saying there’s never a good reason for a country to go to war or defend itself? No. But such suffering can only be worthy of a response of grief from Christians who truly love their neighbor. It’s not “exciting.”
And while we’re over here in America being excited about how Israel is our friend and ally, proud that America is the closest ally of the nation chosen as God’s people 3,500 years ago, in reality the situation is much more complicated. People had to suffer to get to that point. People were forced out of their homes and mistreated. Israel is not an innocent lamb in all this, even though many evangelicals treat it as one. If we really want to be voices of truth in this world, we need to call out injustice and suffering where we see it, and we need to be honest about who the perpetrator is. If Israel does something evil, we need to call it out, just as we need to call it out if Palestine or Iran does something evil. It’s not about political ideologies; it’s about justice. It’s about human suffering and our desire to see it end everywhere.
Let me qualify all this by saying that I do “support” Israel. I think the Jews deserve a land of their own after all the garbage they’ve taken from both Europeans and Arabs for the last 1,500 years, culminating in the Holocaust. And Israel is the only stable, democratic state in the Middle East. If you had to move to the Middle East but could choose any country, you’d be a fool not to choose Israel. Many of Israel’s neighbors, including Palestine and Lebanon, are led by groups of terrorists who teach their people to hate Jews from birth. Israel is extremely disproportionately targeted for criticism and condemnation by a bunch of countries that shove their own human rights abuses under the rug. It’s hypocritical for us Westerners to denounce Israel’s actions while being silent about the far worse actions of most of its neighbors. A lot of the blame for the Palestinians’ suffering can be laid squarely at the feet of their own awful, awful leaders, the terrorist group Hamas, which has no idea how to run a country and cares about little more than indoctrinating Palestinian children from birth to hate Jews and encouraging its people to violently protest and try to provoke Israeli soldiers into sparking condemnatory headlines like many of those in the news right now, to gain the sympathy of the international community at the expense of the Palestinian people.
But I don’t think Israel is a special nation that should be viewed differently from any other. When Israel does good, it should be praised, and when it does evil, it should be criticized. When it goes to war, we should be grieved. We should think about our brothers and sisters in places like Palestine and Iran, and how it affects them. We should pray for them, that they’re kept safe from violence and errant bombs and state-sponsored persecution. They mean just as much as our brothers and sisters in Israel.
But, even if Israel does have a special role in biblical prophecy — even if the dispensationalists are right — that does not mean we should react to all this news with excitement. Do we forget that Jesus taught how horrible the last days would be? People will suffer and die, without knowing Christ. People will hate God and curse him. God’s people will suffer, too, maybe most of all. The last days are not really an exciting time. I don’t want to be around for them, and if you listen to Jesus’ teachings, you probably shouldn’t either, nor should you want your friends and family to experience them. If anything, believing that the end is near should give us nothing other than a sense of urgency to share the gospel with everyone we can. But when we express excitement over wars and conflicts, whatever the reason, that severely damages our credibility.
So let’s keep in mind that when we look at the news, we are looking at real people enduring real suffering. We are looking at our brothers and sisters who desperately need and covet our prayers. Our first response when we hear this news should be grief, then prayer. Not excitement, not politicizing, not justifying. It should be grief and prayer, just as it should be over any other war. Even much of the world recognizes that war is evil. How much it hurts our Christian witness if we don’t recognize it too! Let our minds be like that of Christ when it comes to this.
