An E-mail with a Friend

Sorry no post earlier today--August in campus ministry is like retail in December, being a CPA during tax season, or being a lemonade-stand operator in 98-degree heat. I'll most likely be a little more hit-or-miss during this stretch.

Below is an e-mail exchange I had with a really sharp student about the Israel-Lebanon crisis. More half-baked thoughts for you to chew on. Enjoy!

Hey Alex,

I've been waiting for some sort of post about the Christian response to the Israel/Lebanon crisis. I did read the blog about the media's portrayal of the situation, but I was wondering if you had any other thoughts about the situation.

I've been trying to process the whole situation and just have some questions. Do
you think that as Christians are we obligated to support Israel, no
matter what? As I was getting ready for work this morning the Today
show was doing a story on how b/c of the Middle East crisis many
Christians think Jesus's return is really close. I actually had to
leave before the piece actually came on but I read one article a couple
of weeks ago about some evangelical ministers attempting to fulfill
prophecy to bring about the second-coming.
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/insight/07/2endtimes.html. Personally, I think that is a little ridiculous. You may not want to dive into this political stuff on your blog, but I'd love to hear your thoughts about it if you get the
chance.

Biser


Biser,

Thanks so much for being a thoughtful reader and responder to world issues. I wish I could say that I knew a lot about the issues going on in the Middle East, but it's so complicated and I've been so occupied with other things, I have to say I haven't done much good research into all that's going on in the past couple weeks. That said, of course I have some opinions!

1. It's always been a mess in the Middle East, and Israel has nearly always been in the middle of it. In other words, how can anyone assign particular significance to this event when it's been happening for approximately 4,000 years, or since Joshua led the people across the Jericho at flood stage in Joshua chapter 3.

2. Ergo, people trying to predict the end of the world based on these events: idiots. I wish there was a better word for them, but really there's not.

There's a school of theology that deeply informed much Baptist thinking for much of the past couple hundred years or so that really unraveled the past forty years or so called 'dispensationalism.' Dallas Theological Seminary was the hotbed of it, and Baptists all over the place bought into it. Basically what they attempted to do was break up God's working in Scripture/throughout time into various dispensations in order to explain hard things--like 'the dispensation of multiple wives' for example. Depending on who you talked to, there were anywhere from like four to fourteen dispensations, everyone coming up with their own 'markers' of when one dispensation ended and the other one began. In this line of thinking, Israel continued to hold the central place as God's people.

Dispensationalism was a great idea, except one thing: it's no where in the Bible. But this theology has been so deeply imbedded in our national conscience and sub-conscience, even now when even most Baptists think it's mostly crap, that we (wrongly) continue to put Israel in this place of centrality that it no longer has. Of course the Lord loves Israel, and perhaps there is a special work to be done with and in the Jewish people before it's all said and done, but to continue to 'cue' off Israel as the focal point for God's work and particularly the second coming is silly.

3. So this outdated theological support is why many Christians still today believe we need to stay behind Israel no matter what they do. Of course, one look at the Bible reveals this clearly to be foolish. God dealt with Israel harshly often by the discipline of having them carried off into captivity several times throughout their history precisely because they had strayed from him. I believe that as Christians we are called to love justice and mercy and to speak out against oppression and injustice wherever it rears its' head. I do not know enough in this case to say whether that is Israel's case or not, but I do know that as people of the Spirit we are called to live by the Spirit in discerning what is good and right and true. And that includes how we think about global affairs, and that includes how we think about Israel.

Just some half-baked thoughts, I hope they are helpful. Thanks for your e-mail!

Alex