Category: Faith

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Weep No More

“And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?”  But   I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside.” 

Revelation 5:2-4 (New International Version) 

I read some information this morning that I found quite discouraging. In a recent Substack post titled “The Moral Danger of Yes-Buttery.” author Rod Dreher (“The Benedict Option, “Live Not by Lies”) cited a survey that asked respondents whether they believed the October 7th Hamas terrorist attack against Israel was justified. While I took some comfort in seeing that a significant majority (91%) of respondents in my age group (65 and older) believed the attack was not justified. But as I scrolled through the data it became very unsettling. By the time I got to millennials and those aged 18-24 the numbers had shifted dramatically. Forty-eight percent of millennials and fifty-one percent those aged 18-24 believed the Hamas attack was justified. That’s a stunning turnaround! 

In believing that the attack was justified, respondents were, in essence, saying that decapitating babies, ripping unborn children from their mothers’ wombs, burning innocent men women to death in their homes, raping and dragging women through the streets, and other ghastly acts of terror were justified. While they may try to cloak their antisemitic bigotry in the “Palestinian Cause,” the truth of the matter is, I believe, far more revealing. If one peeks behind the cloak it screams at you. “The Jews had it coming to them. They deserved this.”  

It’s bad enough to see things like this happening in America today. It’s frightening to consider what America might very well be like in the future if these terrible trends continue. The people of Germany, the most literate people on the planet, marched down that totalitarian path in the 1930’s? Could that be the destiny of America?  Could some future America version of Stalin, who starved millions of Ukranian Kulaks to death in the Communist march to Utopia, arise here in America? 

The answer to that question sends shivers down my spine. Yes, it can happen here. In fact, I see the country I love moving rapidly down that path. 

Can this deadly march be stopped? Can we even slow its progress? 

Can our political leaders save us? As one surveys our political landscape the futility of political solutions to our problems is obvious. A Republican majority in our House of Representatives has tremendous difficulty electing a Speaker of the House, much less being capable of drafting and passing good sense legislation. We have a President of our Republic living on the cusp of senility. And, we have corruption running wild in our halls of political power. You have George Santos on one side of the aisle and Robert Menendez on the other. That overpowering stench of corruption is even polluting far too many state and local governments. And it’s been that way for some time. In 1979, Bob Dylan made this astute observation – “You got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules.” 

No, a thousand times no. Our political leaders aren’t going to save us. 

Most of America’s churches and schools aren’t faring much better. As Bob Dylan also observed, we’ve got “adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools.” 

Maybe technology will save us.  Israel’s leaders believed their technology would keep them safe from Hamas and the result of that misguided confidence is now evident. Israel really believed they had Hamas hemmed in with a newly constructed twenty-foot-high wall complete with sophisticated technology designed to spot any intruders. The technology was so sophisticated it could send the alarm if an intruder were to be spotted.   

Yet, with all the sophisticated technology arrayed against them, the terrorists simply flew over that wall in paragliders on Israel’s Sabbath day. 

Seeing this all play out makes me want to cry in despair. Sophisticated technology is all too often powerless to prevent terror. Crime is rampant. Political corruption is omnipresent. Jews around the world are hated. It all seems so hopeless. 

I introduced this essay with a part of a passage from the fifth chapter of the book of Revelation. I read the passage this morning when I read Rod Dreher’s essay. As I began to read the passage, I felt the same sense of despair that prompted the following question raised in the heavenly vision: “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scrolls?” When the multitudes in the vision see that “no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it,” they weep in despair.  

But there is more to that passage. The answer to the question comes swiftly. One of the elders in heaven declares, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.” 

That is also the answer for our time. “Do not weep.” One day, hopefully in my lifetime, Jesus, the Lamb of God himself, will break the seals and open the scrolls. He has the answers. He is the answer! I don’t need to bathe myself in constant tears. Knowing that, I see that the task before me is to watch and pray “Maranatha, even so, come Lord Jesus.” 

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The Neighborhood Bully

“Well, the chances are against it, and the odds are slim
That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him
‘Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac
He’s the neighborhood bully.” 

Ever since the Sabbath terror attack on October 7th, I’ve had some friends ask why there is so much hate directed at Israel and the Jewish people. While I think it would be fair to say I don’t fully understand why, I also know there are some things that can help explain that hate. I’m going to do my best to outline a few things I believe might shed some light on the issue. 

Last night I read an essay penned by a man named Jacob Siegel about Bob Dylan’s 1983 song “Neighborhood Bully.” I think Siegel’s a pretty good writer, but like a lot of good writers he occasionally makes mistakes. In his 2020 essay titled “Bob Dylan’s “Neighborhood Bully” gets memory holed” he made at least two, possibly more. His first mistake was in claiming that YouTube won’t allow people to hear that song. The claim is simply not true as you can plainly see by clicking on the following link – Bob Dylan – Neighborhood Bully (Official Audio) His second mistake was in assuming that Bob Dylan somehow claimed that the song wasn’t about Israel. Trust me. The song is about Israel. It’s not about Ireland or Afghanistan, nor is it about Afghanistan or Tora Bora. I suppose it might be within the realm of possibility that Dylan claimed that the song wasn’t written as a political statement. That might be within the realm of possibility, but that doesn’t change the fact that the song is about Israel. It’s that simple. 

The truth of what’s going on in the Middle East is, and has been, tragic. There really is a “license to kill him (Israel) given to every maniac.” 

But why? Dylan framed the same question this way – “What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers? Does he pollute the moon and stars?” No! In fact, the Jewish people, who comprise two tenths of one percent of the world’s population have won two hundred twelve (twenty two percent) of the nine hundred and fifty-four Nobel prizes awarded since 1901. Jews have won the Nobel prize in chemistry, economics, peace, physics, physiology/medicine, and literature. Among the honorees you’ll find names like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Milton Friedman, Joseph Stiglitz, Elie Wiesel, Henry Kissinger, Boris Pasternak, and Saul Bellow. . Bob Dylan, the author of “Neighborhood Bully,” also has Jewish roots. In 2016 he won the Nobel Prize in literature.  

Far from polluting the moon and stars, the world’s Jews have contributed more than their fair share to the human family since the dawn of human history.

These facts once again beg the question. Why? 

I believe we need to dig down to the roots of the crisis to find the answers to that question and that’s what I intend to do. Those of you reading this essay may disagree with my point of view. I understand, but all I can do is offer my perspective and that point of view is Christian. 

The Bible describes the roots of humanity’s fall from grace in the Old Testament book of Genesis. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, with the earth we now inhabit being His focal point. In a final flourish of creativity, God created Adam, the first man, from the dust of the earth. Next, God planted a garden in Eden, with “all kinds of trees growing from the ground. It was beautiful, with a “tree of life” and another “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” in the middle of the garden. Next, Eve, the “mother of all humanity,” was created from Adam’s rib. There, they were to live together in peace and harmony, dressing, tilling, and keeping the good earth that God had created for them. There was only one prohibition. They were instructed they could not eat from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” They were further told that if they did eat from that tree they would “surely die.”  

Tragically, it was all too good to be true. First Eve, tempted by the serpent, ate the forbidden fruit and gave some to Adam. With that one act of disobedience sin and death were introduced into the world. In the very next chapter, we read about history’s first murder. Cain killed his brother Abel and when God confronted him with the evil deed, he copped an arrogant plea. “I don’t know where he is. Am I my brother’s keeper.” Two chapters later (chapter 6), a corrupt world is revealed. Further, the world was now filled with violence. Interestingly, the Hebrew word for violence used in the passage (Genesis 6:11) is “hamas.” A harbinger of things to come, perhaps? 

The sequence of events followed at a brisk pace for the next few chapters. There was Noah’s flood, the formation of various people groups like the Egyptians, the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Philistines, the Canaanites, etc. 

This is where the narrative introduces us to a man who was critical to those times and is also critical to the Middle East narrative of today. His name was Abram. He lived about 2,000 years before the birth of Jesus and he lived in Ur, which was part of the ancient Chaldean kingdom.  The Chaldeans were an advanced civilization. They were highly educated. Some scholars have termed them the “librarians of the ancient world.” Religiously, they were, like most ancient cultures, polytheistic. 

We are given our first glimpse of Abram in the twelfth chapter of Genesis with these words: 

“The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. 

“I will make you into a great nation,
    and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
    and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
    and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
    will be blessed through you.” 

Genesis 12:1-3 (New International Version) 

It’s astounding. We are presented with a story of a man who actually heard the voice of God. He was instructed to leave his home, “his people, and his father’s household.” How many of us would be willing to leave a life of wealth and privilege and chart a course into the wilderness? Very few, I think. But Abram did go. He was looking for a “city whose builder and make was God.” (Hebrews 11:10)   

Abram was 75 years old when his incredible pilgrimage of faith began. It continued for many years, with many challenges. When he’s about 86 years old he begins to have doubts about the promise. His wife, Sarai, is barren, and he has no heir. God reassures him. “Your own flesh and blood will be your heir,” (Genesis 15:4) then takes him outside and tells him to count the stars in the sky, once again reassuring him that “So shall your offspring be,” 

When Sarai still fails to bear Abram a son, she concocts a scheme to have her Egyptian slave, Hagar, bear that child. For her. The scheme succeeds and Hagar bears a son and Abram, who is now 86 years old, names him Ishmael. But he is not to be the heir.  

By the time Abrham is a hundred years old, God’s promised heir, Isaac, is born. He is to be the heir, but not until Abrham is tested one more time. The test ends with God declaring, “I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore, and through you all nations on earth will be blessed.” (Genesis 22:17-18).  

Ishmael, who was born years before Isaac, has also been given a promise by God – “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.” (Genesis 15:10). Along with the promise comes prophetic insight about Ishmael and his descendants – “He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.” (Genesis 15:12) 

Abraham’s family name moved on through history from that point, from Isaac to Jacob, who after an encounter with God in the wilderness, is given a new name – Israel.  

That’s how it all began. Israel, the nation that is today constantly under threat of annihilation. It is the name of the nation born out of a promised covenant between God and Abraham.  

As author Thomas Cahill put it several years ago in his masterwork “The Gifts of the Jews”: 

“The Jews started it all-and by ‘it’ I mean so many of the things we care about, the underlying values that make all of us, Jew and Gentile, believer and atheist, tick. Without the Jews, we would see the world through different eyes, hear with different ears, even feel with different feelings … we would think with a different mind, interpret all our experience differently, draw different conclusions from the things that befall us. And we would set a different course for our lives.” 

I, for one, am glad Abraham heard the voice of God when he left the Chaldean kingdom. That pilgrimage not only marked the starting point for monotheism and Judaism in the world, but also paved the way for Jesus to come and bring the possibility of redemption and forgiveness to a fallen world. For that I owe Abrham and the Jewish people a great debt of gratitude and love. The man who saved me an eternity of separation from God was/is Jewish. He wasn’t Irish, Polish, Russian, French, British, American, or Palestinian. He was/is Jewish. That man is Jesus. Thanks to his sacrifice I have been grafted into Israel and the family of God (see Romans 9 through 11). Further, there is a day coming when the crucified and risen Jesus will return to the Mount of Olives. When that day comes, He will settle all international disputes and He will separate the “sheep from the goats.” 

This is where we come to the crux of the issue. You would think that the world would be longing for such a day, but that’s not the case. Four thousand years ago Abram left a pagan culture. Our modern world is every bit as pagan as the world Abraham left. In fact, some scholars now consider the world to be neo-pagan. Belief in God is fast becoming the world’s minority report. There was a time, for example, when America was, at least in principle, a “Christian” nation. There have been warnings about what might happen to America if she were to abandon those principles. French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville wrote a two-volume study of what he observed when he visited nineteenth century America. The following words, from his classic work “Democracy in America” should serve as a warning to us today: 

“I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers—and it was not there. . . . . in her fertile fields and boundless forests—and it was not there. . . . .in her rich mines and her vast world commerce—and it was not there. . . . in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution—and it was not there.  Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.  America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.” 

“That’s America,” you say, “But America isn’t the world.” If you believe that I need to burst your bubble. As America goes, so goes the world. We gave the world blue jeans and the rest of the world wanted blue jeans. We gave them rock and roll and the world followed suit. America is now neo-pagan and the world is following suit. 

And, worst of all, while America is becoming increasingly violent, the rest of the world is following suit. For example, the United Nations’ 2019 “Global study on homicide” revealed that there were 464,000 murders committed in the world during the 2017 calendar year. The statistics varied by region, but however one divides it all up, the fact remains – the world is a violent place and it’s been that way for thousands of years. The words of Genesis 6:11, written about 2,500 years ago, speak to that tragic point. 

The root of the problem is even deeper. Alexsander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian dissident, once said that the day would come when the people of Russia would ask how something like the terror of Lenin and Stalin could have happened. His answer was short and to the point. “Men have forgotten God,” The existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre also drove home the same point in his “Being and Nothingness:” 

“Dostoevsky once wrote: “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn.” 

While violence is, and has been, humanity’s order of the day, the Jewish people and the nation of Israel are like no other target of hate who have walked upon the hearth. From Haman’s hate of Mordecai, the Jew, in the Old Testament book of Esther to the Jewish diaspora of 70 A.D., from massacres of Jews in fifteenth century Spain to the pogroms of seventeenth century Russia, from Kristallnacht of twentieth century Germany to twenty-first century Gaza, the story is tragically consistent. Jews are the most hated people on the planet. And it’s even more tragic when we realize that the hatred of the Jewish people is being harbored by some of the most literate people on the planet. In his autobiographic masterpiece “All Rivers Run to the Sea.” made the following observation when the Nazis invaded Sighet, the small Romanian village he lived in:  

“No one in Sighet suspected that our fate was already sealed. In Berlin we had been condemned, but we didn’t know it> We didn’t know that a man named Adolph Eichmann was already in Budapest weaving his black web, at the head of an elite, efficient detachment of thirty-five SS men, planning the operation that would crown his career.”   

The Jews of Sighet couldn’t see it coming. They had reasoned that the German people couldn’t do things so monstrous. After all, they were literate. “They were the people who had given the world the great works of poetry of Goethe and the plays of Schiller.” 

And so it is even today. Gaza is white hot with hate and rage. The battle cry has gone forth. “Kill the Jews.” Sadly, many so called enlightened people are joining those ranks of hate. In a recent essay, for example, author Jonah Goldberg made the following observation: 

“For instance, there’s a self-described “tranarchist” named Jemma Decristo who purports to teach at UC-Davis who thinks it would be just dandy to have a domestic campaign of violent terror against “Zionist journalists” here in America. “They have houses [with] addresses, kids in school. They can fear their bosses but they should fear us more.” 

I look at this world and I see the hatred directed at the Jewish people and the nation of Israel and I finding myself concluding that the only solution to this intractable problem is the return of Jesus to this world. We Christians call that hope/event the Parousia. It’s the day when Jesus will come to set everything right. It’s the day when all the hate and rage will finally end. It’s the day that I believe will dawn one day. It’s the day I find myself praying for. While I can’t make that day dawn, I can watch, pray, and hope that it comes in my lifetime. 

I hope and pray that you do too. 

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Remember the Sabbath

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that “everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.”

  • Milton Mayer – They Thought They Were Free

Like almost everyone else in America, I’ve been watching the news from Israel for a few days and to say that I’m saddened would be an understatement. To say I’m shocked, however, would be a gross overstatement. 

I’m not shocked. I know people on both sides of this intractable issue. My first exposure to the Palestinian side came years ago. I was in the Air Force at the time and had come home to Boston on military leave and learned that my sister had gotten married to a Palestinian man named Said Zawawi.  I called her and invited myself over to her house for dinner so that I could meet him. I met Said the next night. He was handsome, with dark brown penetrating eyes, and curly black hair, punctuated by flecks of silver and gray. He was muscularly built. I found out  a little about him at the dinner table. He worked as a teller in a local bank and that he still had family living in Palestine. To me, he  appeared to be quite charming and I left for home a bit later feeling good about my sister’s fortunes. A second visit seemed to confirm those thoughts. The third visit, which came a day before my leave was up, changed my thinking. I got to my sister’s place a few minutes before the NBC Nightly News and Said suggested we watch to see what was “going on in the world.” Everything seemed alright until the reporting about an Arab blockade of the  Suez coming on the heels of a recent speech from Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser that made Egypt’s geopolitical intentions quite clear – “We intend to open a general assault against Israel. This will be total war. Our basic aim will be to destroy Israel.” 

Israel’s U.N. representative, Abba Eben, responded with a plea on Israel’s behalf about the threats and the subsequent Egyptian blockade of the Suez Canal. Said sat, rigid, while the report continued. Things changed dramatically when the broadcast team offered what they termed insight into the situation. Said stood up and started cursing at the television about what he felt was reporting that was too pro Israel. His rage built to the point that he went and got a hammer and started smashing at the screen, screaming “Filthy Jews must die” as he did. It didn’t take long for the screen to break into pieces and fall on the floor. The only response I could offer was to excuse myself as politely as I could and leave. My sister called me the next day and tried to explain why Said had done what he did. “His father was killed by an Israeli soldier.” She didn’t offer anything else by way of explanation. She ended the conversation by revealing something I had already learned from the incident. “He hates all Jews!

My second experience with the Palestinian people came years later when I was a service engineer at FedEx’s Eastern Region in New Jersey. The district engineering manager, who was a Turkish citizen, called me to his office and asked me if I would consider mentoring a young Palestinian engineer who hadn’t been with  FedEx very long. “I think it would be a good fit, Phil. You’re a devout Christian with an advanced degree in theology and he’s a devout Muslim. I know you’re both competent engineers and I think your respective religious views might be an interesting combination.” I agreed.

Our first few days together were pretty uneventful. We had adjacent offices and I’d occasionally drop by to see if there was anything he needed from me.  On one of those casual visits I noticed a poster he had put on the wall of his office, proclaiming the “100 names of Allah.” When he saw me looking at it he smiled and asked, “What do you think, Bucko?” (he was already being quite casual in his conversations with me)? He asked. I offered a two word response – “Quite impressive.” His smile broadened. “Do you Christians have names like that for God?”

“We do, but there aren’t a hundred. In the Old Testament He’s called “the Lord our Healer, the Lord our Provider, the most high God, the Lord our Banner, and so forth. In the Christian New Testament he’s referred to as “Our Father.” 

He seemed pleased with my responses.

A week or so after that we were sitting in on a conference call outlining to pluses and minuses of the previous day’s operations. Everything seemed to be going quite well until someone mentioned a serious service failure that had occurred. The call coordinator looked stunned and blurted out, “Oh, mother of God, how did that happen?” Walid straightened up in his chair and asked in loud terms, “Who is this mother of God, Barb?’ Her response was immediate. “You know, Walid. It’s Mary. You know who Mary is, don’t you?” Walid’s answer was, in my mind, pitch perfect. “I see, you mean Jesus’s mom.” Barb now seemed befuddled and decided to call on me for help. “Phil, please correct Walid on this. You’re our resident theologian” I gathered my thoughts and responded. “Walid’s right, Barb. He and I might disagree on many points of theology, but he’s right on this one. I think Mary was a wonderful woman, but she was not the mother of God. She was, as Walid said, Jesus’s mom.”

The fallout from the encounter, from Walid’s perspective, almost immediate. Our daily encounters became increasingly pleasant and productive. We were making the district we served a model of professionalism and service. I decided that my best course of action was to not inject the tensions between Israel and Palestine into our conversations. I believed it these conversations were to ever take place, he would have to be the one to initiate the conversation(s). 

That time eventually came.

We were sitting in a coffee shop near Newark Airport after a long night at the Hub. We spent about ten minutes analyzing the operation we had seen, laughing as we did. “Oh, Bucko,” he said. “It was a real mess. It’s gonna take forever to fix things here.” I agreed with him and I was going to respond, but he cut me short.  “Bucko, I’ve got to know something. What do you think it’s gonna’ take to fix things in Palestine?” I responded with all the earnestness and brotherly love I could muster. “Walid, there’s got to be a way for Jews and Muslims to live together in peace. There’s plenty of room in that land for both Jews and Muslims.”  He sat stone faced as he answered. “Never, never. We must drive the Jews to the sea and kill them all.” My mind flashed back to my encounter years earlier with my sister’s Palestinian husband.” I tried to plead with Walid, “There’s got to be a way for Jews and Muslims to learn to live together. “Never, never,” he intoned. He was adamant and I finally saw that there was no possibility the conflict would ever end.

It’s now Saturday. I’ve been giving thought to events this past week in Israel. It’s really difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that there will never be a peaceful resolution to the conflict in the Middle East. “Why not?” I wonder. There have been wars. Nations have fought against other nations, but many times they’ve found ways to end the fighting and reconcile in some fashion or other. Think of America and Japan or America and Germany. Less than a hundred years ago we were enemies at war. Today those guns have gone silent and we’re now allies. If the people of Germany, Japan, and the United States can reconcile, why can’t Jews and Muslims? I keep searching for answers, but the heavens seem like brass.

I’ll take that as a sign that it’s time to turn my focus to things outside my living room window, things closer to home.

It’s quiet here in Kansas City’s Pendleton Heights neighborhood. I’ve just finished putting food out for our outdoor cats, Charro, Mambo, Chocolate, and Blackie. As I sit here typing I occasionally gaze at the Vietnamese Buddhist temple across the street.  I’m really glad to have them as neighbors. While our respective faiths are different, we share the wonderful bonds of peace and good will.  It’s life in a neighborhood as it should be.

It’s been over sixty years since I served a one year tour of duty in Vietnam. I arrived in Saigon early in the conflict. By the time I left, in 1966, Vietnam had become a cauldron of violence, accompanied by the bureaucratic slogans that all too often described the mayhem – “search and destroy,” “rural pacification,” “body count,” “rolling thunder.” It went on till 1975, when Saigon fell to the communists of North Vietnam. 

Today I have some of the painful memories of that conflict- a black granite wall with the names of 58,318 Americans who died in what became a geopolitical tragedy of epic proportions or the searing pain I felt in my gut when I saw the news reports of victorious North Vietnamese tanks rumbling down Saigon’s wide boulevards.

Those painful memories linger, but there are also signs of hope. Vietnam is at peace. The Vietnamese economy is growing and, according to the World Bank, “is one of the most dynamic emerging countries in the East Asia region.” As I gaze out my window here in Pendleton Heights I can also take great comfort in knowing that I have wonderful Vietnamese Buddhist neighbors. 

These  are a few of the signs that demonstrate that conflict, war, and hate don’t have to be the perpetual foundation of relationships between nations and people.

It’s Saturday, the Sabbath in Israel. Here in America Sunday is, traditionally, a day of rest. It’s a tradition that’s rooted firmly in the history of the people of Israel. About 3,500 years ago, Moses ascended Mount Sinai and  received the Ten Commandments from God. The fourth of those commandments reads “Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy.” (Exodus 20:8-11). There was a time in America when we took the need for a sabbath day of rest more seriously than we do now. Early in our national experience “Christian” America changed that day of rest from Saturday to Sunday. There were prohibitions on what we couldn’t do on the sabbath day. “Blue laws” were instituted in many municipalities, prohibitions on the sale of alcohol were common, for example. I grew up in Massachusetts, where even operating an over the highway freight  truck was prohibited on Sundays from sunrise to sunset . Much has changed since my formative years. Today, booze is sold seven days a week, freight rumbles along Massachusetts highways, and the wheels of commerce hum constantly.   

Things in Israel, the home of the Ten Commandments, things are a bit different.  Saturday is the Sabbath day of rest in Israel rather than our traditional Sabbath Sunday. When it comes to labor, the people of Israel, particularly religiously observant Jews, take the commandment quite seriously. Take, for example, the Shabbat elevators. “What’s a Shabbat elevator?” you might be asking. In keeping with the fourth commandment, Shabbat elevators in Israel make stops on every floor of a building. If one happens to be on the seventh floor and wants to go to the hotel lobby, for example, he or she must wait until that elevator has stopped at every floor on the way up to the seventh floor, then stops at every floor on the way back down to the lobby, irrespective of whether or not there is anyone waiting on the floors on the way up or down. 

The American mindset probably sees it all as counter productive. To the Jewish people there is far more at stake. The Sabbath command is over three thousand years old.  The original reminder was to set aside a day to rest and consider, prayerfully, the God who loved and provided for this tiny nation. Given the importance of that rest and quiet contemplation, something like a Shabbat elevator is a very minor inconvenience.

Shabbat has been observed in Israel for over 3,000 years. There have been a few times when observing Shabbat proved costly for Israel. On October 6, 1973, Egyptian and Syrian military forces attacked Israel along the Golan Heights and Gaza. The date chosen was strategic. The Egyptians and Syrians knew that the beginning of Yom Kippur, Israel’s “Day of Atonement,” coincided with Israel’s Shabbat in October of 1973. They had calculated that Israel would be unprepared for such an attack and they were right. Israel was caught flat footed and it cost them dearly. The war lasted for about three weeks and in that time close to 3,000 Israeli soldiers had died. It was a very painful victory.

In the years since that deadly Yom Kippur there have been Palestinian uprisings, or intifadas. In 2007, Hamas, a terrorist organization dedicated to the eradication of Israel and the Jewish people from the face of the earth.  The following citation from Hamas’ 1988 charter will give you a very clear picture of Palestinian intentions:

“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” 

I can assure you that the Palestinians mean business. As I wrote earlier, in my assignment as a service engineer at FedEx’s eastern region I was responsible for training a young Palestinian engineer. We spent many days working together and, in that time, I came to admire his work ethic. We even came to the place where we could express our respective faiths. Those interactions were almost always cordial. They changed when the subject of Israel came up. I once expressed my hope for a two-state solution to the conflict and he rejected that idea categorically. “We must drive the Jews to the sea and kill them all!” No matter how I tried I could not persuade him to rethink his position. He once asked me whose side I would be on when that day of reckoning came. My heart was heavy when I responded to him – “I love you like a brother, but if that choice were forced upon me, I would have to take the sword up against you.”

It’s been years since those interactions. I am absolutely certain that neither his feelings nor mine have changed.  I find it all  profoundly discouraging, but it is what it is. There is no two state solution; there is no path to peace that I can see. In order for peace and brotherhood to prevail the two parties must come together and find avenues of compromise that they find agreeable. The Jews are willing. The Palestinians are not. It’s as simple as that.

Events of the past week in Israel make the futility of a peaceful solution to the problems between Israel and the Palestinans crystal clear. Last Saturday, on a Sabbath, Palestinian terrorists from Gaza swooped in from land, sea, and air and slaughtered innocent men, women, children, and even infants without mercy. There’s no need for me to recount the details for you. You already know them. The barbarians have stormed the gates.  

Israel is now at war and for us watching events unfold it’s also a time of choosing. For me that means choosing Israel! I choose Israel because I know the truth. I know the history, the good and the bad of it. I know when Hamas’s apologists in the media or academia are lying to me. And, I know because I’ve been in Israel four or five times. I’ve mingled with the Jewish people on the Golan Heights. Along with fellow pilgrims and our Israeli guide I’ve cleaned up trash left by tourists in the area around the Church of the Multiplication. I’ve walked around the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem. I’ve shed tears at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial. I’ve sat quietly in one of the traditional sites of the Garden tomb, contemplating what that very first Easter morning must have felt like. I’ve prayed at the Wailing Wall with Jewish men. I’ve been to the Temple Mount and I’ve been inside Antonia Fortress, where a worried Pontius Pilate interrogated Jesus about whether or not he was threat to his rule. He needn’t have worried. Jesus explained that His kingdom “was not of this world.” I’ve been to Masada, the site where all Jewish military officers used to take their commissioning oath, proclaiming “Never again,” which is another way of saying that the Jewish people will never again be passive in the face of evil men bent on their annihilation.

I’ll make this as clear as I possibly can. The Jewish people belong in Israel. It is their homeland, a treasure.  The depth of love for that homeland was expressed beautifully long go in the 137th Psalm, which some scholars attribute to King David and others attribute to the prophet Jeremiah:

“If I forget you, Jerusalem

May my right hand forget its skill.

May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth

If I do not remember you,

If I don’t consider Jerusalem

My highest joy!”

I’ve seen Israel and I’ve seen the thousands of years of Jewish presence in the precious land. It’s palpable. As Charles Krauthammer once observed:

“Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the corner candy store.”

I know the Jewish people. The same love they have for their homeland is the same love they want to express for their neighbors, including the Palestinians. They want to live in peace and harmony.

Today I see the tragedy on the ground in Israel. It’s bad enough, but when I see the vitriol being unleashed against the Jewish people in cities all around the world, I feel broken hearted. How can it be that America’s great educational institutions like Harvard University have become hotbeds of support for the indiscriminate murder of innocent Jews? How can it be that thousands gather in New York City waving banners proudly supporting terror and mass murder? How can it be that Australians now gather in the streets shouting, “Gas the Jews”?

I can’t fathom it, but it is happening. Some are trying to convince us there is a context to all of this. There is absolutely none! As Anglican priest/journalist Giles Fraser said a few days ago. “And for today at least, I have no time for those who want to see “both sides” of the situation. This was a massacre, hideously reminiscent of the Shoah. They beheaded children. I do not want to hear those whose first sentence expresses condolences, and whose second sentence begins with a “But”

Men and women of goodwill, especially Christians, must not allow this to happen. We must reject those who would inflict unending pain on the Jewish people. We must speak up and act as their firm supporters. To do otherwise would be tantamount to a surrender to evil and terror.

We must heed the words of of warning Milton Mayer penned following interviews with good German citizens who had failed to act in response to Adolph Hitler’s madness in the 1930’s:

“Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice—’Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.” 

The warning extends to us today. We must resist the beginnings;  We must consider the ends. And, we must act before it becomes too late

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The Third Compromise

“Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the Lord says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me.”
Exodus 8:1 (New International Version)

A few weeks ago, I went over to Haag Pharmacy to pick up a prescription for my wife. As I walked toward the entrance, I found myself caught up in the sights and sounds of children playing and laughing in the adjacent playground of Emporia Christian School. If I could have, I’d have lingered a while longer. It just felt so good, for an all too fleeting moment, to be transported away from the insanity of modern life.

When I got inside the pharmacy, I was re-transported back into the realities of adult life in America. That’s the world where about 40 million of us are taking prescribed anti-depressants and psychotropics. It’s a world dominated by Zoloft, Paxil, Prozac, Xanax, Ativan, Ritalin, or some newly concocted chill pill. There are millions more of us taking Demerol, Oxycodone, and Percocet for our pain. Too often, the reward for using these painkillers is addiction. I’ve heard that using them for only five days can turrn a corporate executive, an undertaker, a truck driver, or a college professor into a mumbing, toothless junkie. And, wonder of wonders, it’s all approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Now, mind you, I don’t fault  Amber and her crew. They’ve absolutely delightful people. They’re not the ones responsible for society’s ills. They’re only doing what the doctor ordered and the doctor is only trying to fix problems that he or she didn’t create.  But, I digress. I need to move on.

I was greeted by a smiling face as soon as I got to the counter. “How are you, Phil? It’s good to see you.  How can I help you?” “I’m good. I’m here for Nancy’s regulars,” I responded.

With my mind still trying to wrap itself around the joy those kids were experiencing in the playground next door, I paid for the prescriptions and made a bit of small talk before I left. “The kids next door are absolutely wonderful. They’re infectious, don’t you think?” The clerk smiled and nodded in agreement. I closed the conversation on a somber note. “The sad thing is, some of these happy kids are going to grow up and become United States Senators some day. I can’t figure it out. How does something like that happen? How does it all go off the rails?” Continue reading “The Third Compromise”