Letter of the Day | Are Christians conflicted over Israel?
Published:Tuesday | January 2, 2024 | 12:07 AM
THE EDITOR, Madam:
Amid the current Israel-Gaza conflict, many scenes from my early childhood to late teenage years flash across my mind as I remember a small group of Christians in Highgate, St Mary, who I visited mostly in summer holidays, praying “for peace in Jerusalem”.
A pastor and his wife, who had been converted at an earlier stage under ‘Jesus Only’ United Pentecostal teaching, met a group from Kansas in the United States and later shifted much of their focus to teaching about the ‘Restoration of Israel’. Early-morning prayer meetings and Bible study, sometimes midday prayer sessions, and frequently midweek and Sunday services were heavily focused on what was happening in the Middle East, even amid the other traditional Christian themes.
The names of various leaders in Israel, Egypt and other countries in the Middle East were mentioned often in tears-filled intercessions. There was literature focusing on political, religious and social life in Israel. Symbols of Judaism, such as the Star of David and Temple menorah (the seven stick candelabra), were displayed.
Later, I learnt that other local Christians tilted towards embracing Jewish symbolism as a central part of their worship – from wearing the tallit (prayer shawls) to blowing the shofar, or even to observing Jewish feast days. This deep interest in things Jewish is anchored in the origins of Judeo-Christian worship and a reading of the Bible which places “the nation of Israel at the centre of God’s plan for the human race”.
For many, social and political developments in the Middle East, and Israel in particular, are like the hands on a clock pointing to an apocalyptic approach to expected global events. As one former co-worker said nearly 20 years ago, “Israel is God’s time clock.”
In this context, whatever concerns some may have about the current conflict in Gaza and Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of civilians, including women and children, these are set aside in deference to the view that ‘Israel are God’s chosen people’. It matters not what the United Nations or any other global group wishes to say, they are guided by the biblical directive, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; they shall prosper that love thee.” The October 7, 2023 incursion by Hamas that has fuelled the present fighting reinforces the perspective that Israel’s response, in its entirety, is justified.
Not many local Christians seem to know or care that ‘modern Israel’ is a secular state with liberal policies on abortion and gay relationships – lifestyles that are antithetical to their current beliefs. For them, they will always be on the side of Israel because God is on Israel’s side. Christians who voice concerns or criticisms of Israel’s policies are either dismissed as being ignorant about ‘the times’ or being seduced by Western liberal secular humanism.
What, then, of the song lyrics, “Jesus loves the little children; all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in his sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world?”
COLIN STEER