Faithfulness?
Submitted by Dirk Gently on January 29 2000 at 02:04:43
In reply to God's faithfulness... Submitted by BellyUp on January 28 2000 at 17:05:31
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Dear Compassion, Please forgive me, but I'm going to pull out all the rhetorical stops on this one... First, let me explain my reaction a little bit. I sing in the choir at church. The gentleman who sings beside me was born in Palestine. He remembers the Israeli soldiers driving his family out of their home at gunpoint in 1948. When I say it was their home, I mean it had been their home for countless centuries, for dozens of generations. Entire villages were razed. Christians and Muslims alike were slaughtered by the hundreds, if not thousands. Churches were bulldozed. And over 50 years later, National Geographic has identified the Palestinians as "the largest group of refugees in the world." Nowadays we would call that ethnic cleansing. God's covenant faithfulness to the physical seed of Abraham includes the latter part of Deuteronomy 28. As long as they look to the covenant given through Moses and reject the new covenant in Christ's blood, they will remain under the old covenant. However, as many of us as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for we are all one in Christ Jesus. And if we are Christ's, then we are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. Remember that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise, which things are symbolic. For these are the two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar-- for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children-- but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all. But as he who was born according to the flesh then persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, even so it is now. Likewise the covenant to Abraham and his seed, was both physical and spiritual seed. Turning to Galatians again, we read that it was to Abraham and his Seed that the promises were made. He does not say, "And to seeds," as of many, but as of one, "And to your Seed," who is Christ. Christ is both physical seed (descended from Abraham through the humanity of Mary) and spiritual seed. And in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything. It is a new creation that matters. The notion that God will break the covenant established on Sinai and confirmed in Moab on Mounts Ebal and Gerizim is less than two hundred years old. I don't know whether the British-Israelite movement came first and influenced the fundamentalists, or if the idea spread from America to England. That's not important. What is of concern to me is the interpretation of Scripture that underlies the position. It's quite true that God made promises to the people of that covenant. It's also true that these were not absolute, but conditional. However, by making the blessings of God's old covenant absolute without including mention of the curses, the end result is that Israel need not fear God, because they are the Chosen People. And that means that they can sin with impunity, and God will always only "bless those who bless them, and curse those who curse them." And therefore, if we as western Christians want to share in the blessing of Israel, we must support the modern secular state as it persecutes our brothers and sisters in Christ, as it denies justice to the oppressed, as it binds up the captives. (No man, I don't think so.) Najwa Kawar Farah has written a book of memoirs called A Continent Called Palestine. Her family had been rooted for centuries in Nazareth, and have been Christians since the time of the apostles. She writes, "I hoped to find some comfort in a prayer meeting, a Christian fellowhsip run by Norwegian missionaries who had been working among the Jews in Rumania... These prayers...were thanking God for fulfilling his promise and ingathering the Jews to their homeland and supporting them... I thought of the streets I had seen, where my friends and relatives had been driven out, and thought of their misery... Was driving the Palestinians from their homeland an act of God? Was it God's will to disinherit them, some in just one night or one hour, turning them into refugees in caves and camps, homeless, lost, condemned and dispossessed? How could Christians believe this? Was this really the will of God? That a whole people should be thrown out, subjected to such suffering? How could Christians believe that God, Creator of heaven and earth...would thus treat the very creation he came to redeem? Throw out a people which he created to bring in others whom he favored above all?" The question is not, "Is Israel perfect?" My reply was prompted by your assertion that Physical Isreal today shows to us [spiritual Isreal] that God is faithful to his people. With faithfulness like that, who needs Judas? While I hesitate to endorse everything Walter Brueggemann has written, I think The Land is an excellent book. It's part of the "Overtures to Biblical Theology" series published by Fortress Press. If the tradition of your church is strongly pro-Israel, this book will present the biblical evidence in a way that will challenge what you have been taught. Dirk |