A Mature Christian Perspective on the War in Israel

Not an Occasion for Hawkishness or Excitement

Hello readers. First I want to say I have not forgotten about you and this blog. I have just been consumed with work which was really busy in September, and another exciting personal project which I will talk about later. I also want to extend a warm welcome to two new subscribers who joined while I was away. I have no interest in metrics, in “going viral” as I feel these worldly goals have been a distraction to too many writers, as they censor their writing to appeal to the widest audience rather than writing from the heart or as the Holy Spirit leads. Nevertheless, it does warm my heart to realize my passion for confronting Christian nationalism is resonating with a few people, and thus to realize that I am not alone.

This past Friday, I finished reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and had intended to share some insights I gleaned from the book relevant to this blog. But I am going to save that for next weekend as my conscience demands that the heartbreaking situation in Israel right now takes priority. First, I think it is important to acknowledge that I am speaking from a place of privilege. I do not personally know anyone living in Israel or Gaza. Thus I realize that everything I say is in a way merely intellectual, theoretical. One thing that is repeatedly emphasized in blogs that I follow whose mission is to deconstruct a faith influenced by white supremacy and colonization, is that while we should all feel safe sharing our views, those of us in positions of privilege must do so mindfully, with a spirit of humility, an awareness that those personally effected by a circumstance may see things very differently. I also want to state unequivocally that what Hamas did on October 7 was sheer evil. There is no excuse, no grievance that justifies committing the atrocities Hamas committed. In a few months, I will be an aunt as my sister is expecting a little girl. She and her husband haven’t even decided on her name yet, but even so, I already love her. So the thought that there are people in this world capable of brutally murdering babies has been especially haunting to me.

But a few years ago (pre-pandemic) I attended a conference hosted by my church, where a Christian counselor spoke about empathy and compassion. One observation she made has stuck with me. She pointed out that even the most hardened criminal, the meanest, most difficult to love person, was once an innocent little baby. So what went wrong? We are all sinners of course, but what kind of hurt, brokenness, leads some down the path to committing evil? I don’t have a simple answer to this question, and neither did she. I am also not implying that Israel should let Hamas be. While I consider myself a pacifist, this situation has shown me there are times when unfortunately, negotiation is no longer possible. Israel has the right to defend itself and a duty to rescue the hostages if possible, and both objectives will require military force. That said, I think it is important that Israelis, and Christians keep three things in mind. First, it is my prayer that the entirety of this war, even when Israel successfully roots out Hamas fighters and destroys their military infrastructure, should be approached with a somber spirit, not a spirit of hawkish celebration. I know from personal experience, this can be difficult. When we had our 9/11, I was in sixth grade, and even though I was not personally effected by this tragedy, I felt the palpable sadness, followed by patriotism and then hawkishness in the air. When Toby Keith’s song Courtesy of the Red White and Blue came out in response to this spirit, I remember feeling a sense of hot vengeance coursing through my veins. If I were a few years older and didn’t have a disqualifying disability, I might have marched myself right to a military recruitment office singing this song, eager to play a role in going after those monsters who shattered our collective sense of safety. When the Navy Seals found and killed Bin Laden my junior year of college, I like many Americans was jubilant. How I would have loved to be in that stadium when the game was interrupted, and upon hearing the news, the whole stadium erupted in chants of USA! USA! But for families who lost loved ones, while Bin Laden’s death may have offered a small sense of closure, it wasn’t cause for jubilation. It didn’t change the fact that their loved ones were still never coming home. And now that I have a more mature understanding of the Christian faith, I am embarrassed by my past hawkishness. The Bible states that all people are created and cherished by God. In the same way that a loving parent grieves for a son or daughter who made terrible choices and must now live with the consequences, God grieves for even the most hardened criminals, and we should too. (The movie for The Shack is a poignant illustration of this.) I acknowledge that the reality of this fallen world is that for everyone’s safety, hardened Hamas fighters need to be eliminated from this world, just as Osama Bin Laden needed to be. But when the war is over, we should not celebrate their deaths by dancing in the streets as if winning the war was the equivalent of our team winning a football game.

On a related note, one editorial I read this week pointed out that even if Israel kills every last Hamas fighter hiding out in Gaza, Hamas will not truly be eradicated until they figure out how to kill the ideology that motivates them. The editorial was short and didn’t get into details on how to do this, but I think this is where the observation of that Christian counselor could be of enormous value. Maybe Israel’s intelligence agencies are doing this already, but if not, when the war is over, they should try and talk to people who knew these Hamas fighters before hatred had hardened their hearts. Could oppression, poverty, a sense of hopelessness, the ignorance that comes from living in a world where you are never exposed to people of other cultures, have nurtured seeds of hate, just as these factors often nurture seeds of hate in the hearts of white supremacists here in America? Over the years, I have heard beautiful stories of camps created where Israeli and Palestinian youth spend time together, or perform in a band together, become lifelong friends, and realize that we are really all the same. We are all sacred, and all long for peace and security. I hope that after the war, even more resources are devoted to this kind of outreach. I am not so naïve as to think it will completely eliminate animosity behind which is thousands of years of complex history, but one of the hallmarks of our faith is to never give up hope, to do what we can to bring a foretaste of God’s kingdom to this world now.

This brings me to my final point, which is strictly for Evangelicals. When Russia invaded Ukraine last year, I was in an apologetics class and was a little disturbed when one of my classmates was almost giddy with anticipation. Due to global inflation, and the fact that Putin had blocked the export of wheat from Ukraine, known as the “bread basket of Europe” and an essential supplier of food for the developing world, the price of bread had skyrocketed globally. “These are exciting times aren’t they?” this person declared, siting Revelation 6:6 which talks about a day when a liter of wheat will cost a full day’s wage, and wondered if we were in the end times. I am no longer in this class—due to my work schedule—but I have read the Left Behind Series, and have no doubt that there are people in my faith tradition, maybe even people in church today, who instead of being heartbroken at the suffering of Israelis and Palestinian civilians, are giddily studying prophecy, wondering if this war in the Holy Land means Christ’s return is imminent. Of course, I am looking forward to Christ’s return, but Jesus clearly teaches that it is not for us to know the hour of his return, and there have always been “wars and rumors of wars.” Sure, Christ could return tomorrow, or he could wait another thousand years. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to study at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, an institution committed to orthodoxy that takes a cautious approach to the interpretation of prophecy. Even so, I will confess it can be difficult to resist the temptation to speculate, even get a little giddy. One day in particular, a couple weeks before the Israel attack, Mom and I were watching the news which featured one story after another after another about an earthquake, record-breaking floods, and multiple raging wildfires, and Mom and I both wondered aloud and simultaneously, “maybe we are living in the end times.” But in all seriousness, especially in light of this war in Israel, I think we would do well to make sure we are behaving as mature Christian adults whenever Christ does return. In other words, if He were to return tomorrow, we should remember that he had no tolerance for hypocrisy. We would not want him to find us claiming we long for his return when our giddy indifference to the suffering of people, and a planet he commissioned us to love and cherish, reveals that our hearts are completely misaligned with his.