Written and read by Jerry Robinson
There is one nation on earth that many Christians will not criticize, no matter what it does.
It does not matter how many innocent civilians, including women and children, it slaughters or how many neighborhoods it reduces to dust. Even Christians who are comfortable supporting war usually recognize when it goes too far. But here, that line seems to just disappear. What would be called excessive or unjust if done by any other nation, like China or Iran, becomes “complicated” when the modern state of Israel does it.
Why?
Because millions of Christians have been taught from childhood to treat the modern state of Israel as morally untouchable.
They were taught to see the modern state of Israel through a series of prophecy charts, end-times sermons, and a flat reading of ancient promises torn from their context.
Genesis 12:1-3 gets quoted like a charm: “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse.”
Somewhere along the way, a promise to Abraham was turned into a warning to America, its churches, and its leaders: do not cross the modern state of Israel, or God will cross you.
That fear, it turns out, has had real and lasting consequences.
Then, of course, there is the part many Christians know but rarely face honestly. The Old Testament contains texts where YHWH (God’s name in the Old Testament) commands Israel to seize land by force, lay waste to entire populations, and to spare no one, including children, the elderly, and even animals. People know those passages exist, but they rarely read them and almost never preach them. They don’t know what to do with them.
And those violent texts in the Old Testament sit all too quietly in the background, shaping how Christians imagine the character of God.
So when the modern state of Israel unleashes ruthless homicidal violence against its neighbors, many Christians freeze up because their theology tells them to slow down, be careful, and keep their words measured… even as the bombs keep falling.
Perhaps the only Biblical passages more ignored than YHWH’s commands to slaughter enemies are the passages where Jesus commands to love them.
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44)
“Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (Matthew 26:52)
“My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting” (John 18:36)
Ironically, these passages may be even more controversial to many modern-day Christians than the Old Testament passages commanding hatred and violence.
From my experience, I’ve found that many Christians have never stopped long enough to face the obvious contradiction in their faith tradition.
Many have never seriously asked why the disciples of Jesus are forbidden to kill their enemies while the disciples of YHWH are ordered to slay theirs without mercy.
So they do what religious people have always done when their conscience and inherited theology collide: they protect the system at all costs while fumbling for the mute button on the moral alarm bells going off in their hearts.
That is what we are watching now.
Palestinian civilians are murdered.
Lebanese families are massacred.
Ancient Christian communities across the region are being forever erased under the unbearable weight of a senseless war.
Meanwhile, many Christians, who would be shouting for justice in nearly any other case, are strangely quiet.
Their loyalty to Israel runs deeper than their loyalty to the teachings of Jesus, and many of them do not even realize it.
Those claiming to follow the Prince of Peace should be the first, not the last, to understand that homicidal violence is never sanctified because it comes wrapped in a Bible verse.
It does not become righteous because politicians call it self-defense or claim it is somehow a “just war.”
How different the world would be if Christians simply had the courage to stop treating Israel as a sacred exception to every moral rule.
Indeed, what kind of world would we have if Christians actually had the moral tenacity to remind the leaders and people of the modern state of Israel that they’ve been commanded to love their enemies.
Of course, this would require them to choose the nonviolent path of Jesus over their preferred blood-soaked readings of Scripture.
Until that happens, many Christians will keep doing what they were trained to do: looking at atrocities they would call evil anywhere else and convincing themselves it isn’t, simply because Israel is the one doing it.
