Israel and the State of Israel

Psalm 147 closes:

God has not dealt thus with any other nation;
      they do not know his ordinances.
      Praise the LORD!

Folks sometimes ask if the claims and promises in the Old Testament apply to the State of Israel today.

My answer, for what it's worth - an emphatic, Nope!

God got out of the land business a long time ago. Like any land-endeavor, like any empire, great or small, the land business is costly in terms of lives and livestock, environment and national character.

For God, to create a nation, it was a bloody business from the get-go, and the bloodletting continued to the last fallen stone of Jerusalem.

From that point on, things went in two different directions: there were Jews who believed that Israel was now an idea, a culture, a faith and no longer a land with the Temple as the central feature and its daily sacrifices now at an end. Such is not foreign to the Old Testament prophets who foresaw a day when there would be no more boundaries, but that all the world would join together in God's peaceable kingdom. That God's love would transcend race and boundaries, and even the Temple and its sacrifices.

There were others who yet believed that God would restore Israel to its former glory, symbolized in the reign of King David. It is not by accident that the disciples ask the Risen Jesus if now is the time when God will restore the kingdom, to which Jesus says No and then redirects their thoughts to the world. God is no longer in the land business.

Because of the power of the idea of being Jewish, the Gentile world frequently turned hostile, and it mostly grew worse as Christianity became Gentilized and then grew increasingly hungry for total domination of the mind and heart of Europe and the Middle East (read Crusades), brooking no competition. As long as the Synagogue remained, Jews were a thorn in the flesh for the church; at best, to be tolerated; at worst, to be converted under threat of death or simply annihilated in pogroms (read James Carroll's excellent but brutally sad work, The Sword of Constantine).

No wonder there arose a longing for a place of safety, a land of their own - hence, the birth of Zionism, itself a long-debated idea among Jews.

Zionism, along with the guilt (deserved) of the Allies after WW2, prompted the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, at the cost of many lives and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians; like the land-business of old, it remains a bloody business today.

Within Zionism, the more conservative elements lay claim to the Biblical promises - that Israel as a state is forever. Others, simply lay claim to the human and polical right to be safe, and that I affirm and understand.

Unfortunately, America's failure to genuinely safeguard Israel's security has prompted Israel to become a military power in the Middle East, with the likely possession of nuclear arms. Sadly, the State of Israel has served our purposes - to keep the Middle East destabilized, with Israel as an client state able to threaten its neighbors even as Uncle Sam provides plenty of military aid and satellite photos.

To suggest that Israel's settlement policies, it's brutal treatment of Palestinians and its slow but inexorable elimination of Christian Arabs is somehow related to God's promises in the Bible, is, in my judgment, and that of many others, to be totally in error.

Okay, so where are we?

Israel is a state, a nation, just like Jordan and Iran and Poland and Canada and Peru. That's it; that's all. That get's one a seat in the United Nations as well as the right to exist in peace.

As for God, God is no longer in the land business. Now it's the world that God loves, and all the peoples therein.

Now, for God, it's all the world, or, might I say, the world or nothing.

So, for me at least, and for many Christians and Jews, there is no religious significance to the State of Israel, no more than there is for Chili or Morocco. 

Personally, I regret the formation of the State of Israel.

But history cannot be undone. It is my hope and prayer that America will craft a new policy guaranteeing Israel's security, providing for a real two-state solution and putting a leash on the more radical and aggressive elements within Israeli society - i.e. the Orthodox, many of whom are inclined to believe in a radical Zionism longing for the reestablishment of the Temple with its sacrifices and the coming of the Messiah who alone will bring peace - until such time, struggle and war will be the way it is.

Sadly, this violent vision has been embraced by fundamentalist Christians in America who love their guns and muscles and believe that war in the Middle East is a part of God's plan, and when the final war breaks out (see the Left Behind Series), then God will begin to act. So, let's go to war, as some have said, like John Hagee.

The violent visions of war, the rapture, etc., are profoundly distorted images of what the Bible actually says. But there have always been those whose love of war has become strangely intermingled with their love for God!

It is our task to disentangle these elements - to promote the love of God, and to bring to an end our warring inclinations.

Hope these thoughts help clarify some serious questions about the State of Israel and how we read the Bible.