As someone whose ancestors immigrated to the United States from Lebanon, the faces of children suffering in the war in Israel remind me of my own children.
The limp body of a 5-year-old girl being carried through the rubble, and the bare, bloody shoulders of a 13-year-old boy lying on a hospital stretcher next to his dad are the haunting images of children who have the same eyes, skin and hair my children have. In their families, I see my own.
Conflicts half a world away become much more tangible to us when we recognize our neighbors in ourselves, or ourselves in our neighbors. And while we often talk about connecting with others in our common wonders or wounds, the unspeakable atrocities Hamas committed against our Israeli neighbors and the retributive violence from Israel’s retaliation that will descend upon our innocent Palestinian neighbors suggest that perhaps this is a time that necessitates recognizing something else we have in common with each of them — our common celebration of violent retribution.
‘We’re in a religious war’
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“We’re in a religious war here. I am with Israel,” Sen. Lindsey Graham declared. “Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place.”
The sentiment of leveling Gaza is one I’ve seen over and over on social media. One person went so far as to suggest Israel turn Gaza into a sandbox.
When asked how the current conflict between Israel and Hamas is reflective of the past 5,000 years of history in Jerusalem, Hussein Rashid said on MSNBC: “Trying to frame this as a religious conflict keeps us from moving beyond what is at stake right now, which is that there is a campaign of people killing people. And it’s under the veneer of religion, and for some people this is a very important religious issue. But what do you do with Palestinian Christians, with Palestinian atheists, with secular Jews who are not necessarily in this from a religious perspective?”
He continued, “There has to be a solution to peace. That solution to peace has to come by not overdetermining the role of religion, while taking the role of religion seriously.”
Mark Wingfield recognized this clashing of priorities in a recent piece for BNG, noting that “one of the prime motivators for the current war” may be “religious fervor (colliding) with political ambition.”
The role of religion
Founded as a paramilitary wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas historically has been both a political and a religious organization. These two priorities are reflected in their charter, which defines their goals as destroying the Jewish state and expanding an Islamic state throughout all Palestine.
“The land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf (holy possession) consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgment Day. No one can renounce it or any part, or abandon it or any part of it,” Article 11 of their charter states.
Linking Palestine’s rich Islamic past to prophecies of the Judgment Day found in Islamic sacred writings makes it virtually impossible for many followers of Islam to compromise with their Jewish neighbors.
Israel shares a similar combination of religious and political motivations. Ryan Burge explains: “Judaism is both an ethnic identity and a religious tradition. People who are ethnically Jewish trace their ancestry back to the Israelites from the First Testament. … Then there is Judaism as a religion. These are people who attend religious gatherings at synagogue. … Secular Judaism is understood to be a group of people who can trace their ethnicity back to Jews from the Bible, but they do not practice the religion of Judaism in any meaningful way.”
Thus, while many Jewish people may simply care about politics, others treasure the rich heritage of holy sites and promises of apocalyptic restoration centered in Jerusalem from Judaism’s sacred writings.
Islamic communities and Jewish communities both share a political and religious history in the same land with an apocalyptic vision for a future total reign over the other.
The role of civil religion
When religion and politics converge in a society, an unspoken civil religion begins to develop that includes a nation’s sacred texts, holidays, narratives about their past and visions for their future.
In the United States, civil religion appears in the form of people believing the U.S. Constitution was inspired by God, others claiming adultery and homosexuality should be illegal, justice being defined as retributive to the point of promoting mass incarceration, people fighting imaginary wars on Christmas, others defending monuments as sacred, and many other examples.
When allowed to fester in a cesspool of supremacy, this can lead to an apocalyptic desperation that fuels insurrection attempts and a clashing of religions that vie for influence over the community’s ethos.
The only questions that remain in that world are: Which political-religious identity will come out on top, and how will they treat those below?
John MacArthur blaming Israel and The Gospel Coalition’s call for purging
A number of influential conservative evangelical leaders in the United States have responded to the attacks from Hamas by blaming or inciting violence on the religions they deem to be below them.
“They’ve chosen to be in the position they’re in by rejecting the Messiah.”
“The other day, Ben Shapiro said that Hamas is about to know what the wrath of God feels like,” John MacArthur said. “The reality is that Israel is experiencing what the wrath of God feels like. … They’ve chosen to be in the position they’re in by rejecting the Messiah.”
The Gospel Coalition published an article by Peter Leithart that focused on Israel’s battle against the Amalekites in Exodus 17. “‘Yahweh has sworn; Yahweh will have war against Amalek from generation to generation,” Leithart notes. Then he says, “He vows to fight until the memory of Amalek is blotted out from under heaven.”
Peter Leithart
“There were a lot of vicious peoples in the ancient world. Assyrians were notoriously cruel, and the Canaanites deserved to come under Yahweh’s ban,” Leithart argues.
Leithart then claims when Israel destroyed “men, women, children, and animals,” it was different because they were doing it “on Yahweh’s orders,” while the Amalekites “specifically (targeted) women and children and the weak.”
Leithart prays for Jesus to reign “with a rod of iron” and smash “nations like pottery.” He says: “It’s a good time to dust off those imprecatory psalms and ask Jesus to pursue justice until every Amalekite, of whatever nationality, is purged from under heaven.”
The conquest narratives
Because conservative evangelicals have explicitly made the connection between today’s war in Israel and the conquest narratives of the Hebrew Bible, it’s important to be honest about what Israel did according to the conquest narratives and then examine how conservative evangelicals interpret those passages.
“It’s beyond horrific. But it’s also what Hamas is guilty of doing today.”
According to Joshua, the Israelites demolished Jericho, Ai and five southern cities along with everyone in them, with women and children listed among the victims. Then they began killing everyone in the northern cities along with the Anakites of the hill country. It’s bad enough simply imagining a generic killing of women and children. But consider the brutal nature of these killings. They literally stabbed them to death. Imagine your 5-year-old son being stabbed, falling to the ground and choking up blood while he hears his mom running for his baby brother only to hear them get stabbed too. It’s beyond horrific. But it’s also what Hamas is guilty of doing today.
Notice also the dehumanization of those who survive the slaughter. According to Deuteronomy 20:14, the Israelites were allowed to take the women, children, livestock and everything else from the distant cities “as plunder for yourselves” to be used. According to Deuteronomy 21:11, the Israelites were allowed to take sexually attractive women captives as their wives as long as they followed a process. And according to Numbers 31:18–54, they were to save the virgins for themselves as part of the booty amongst the animals. It is notable that in a patriarchal society, the ones who are taken alive or kept for booty just happen to be the sexually attractive women and the virgins.
Defending Scripture as inerrant authority
Because conservative evangelicals are committed to inerrancy, they have to find some way of handling these texts without losing their humanity.
In The Historical Writings: Introducing Israel’s Historical Literature, Mark Leuchter and David Lamb mention six possible interpretations:
- The fictional argument — these conquests never really happened.
- The whirlwind argument — like Job, we shouldn’t question God.
- The context argument — the Israelites’ genocide was favorable to their neighbors’ genocide.
- The hyperbole argument — they didn’t actually kill everyone but were exaggerating.
- The punishment argument — the Canaanites deserved to be stabbed to death due to their violence.
- The remnant argument — a few Canaanites were saved because they showed hospitality to Israel as Israel was killing their family and friends.
In The God I Don’t Understand: Reflections on Tough Questions of the Faith, Christopher Wright admits none of these typical ways of dealing with the conquest removes “the emotional and moral pain and revulsion,” yet he still wants to maintain that “God knew what he was doing” both in the conquest and in the writing of the Bible.
Wright says the Canaanites were the enemies of Yahweh, rather than simply of Israel. He attempts to show how the concept of herem, where people could be devoted to destruction for the gods, was something everyone did back then. But the most convincing point in all of Wright’s writing is that he’s unconvinced of virtually anything he proposes, as evidenced in his repeated apologies and admitting he’s not satisfied with what he’s saying.
In their book Did God Really Command Genocide? Coming to Terms with the Justice of God, Paul Copan and Matt Flannigan treat the conquest in a more apologetic posture, focusing on its rationality. They claim it is incoherent to criticize the command to kill innocent babies because God could have a greater purpose in mind. They also assert it is rational to believe it’s normally wrong to “bludgeon babies,” while also giving an occasional exception for a compelling reason.
Ironically, when they try intellectually to defend the Numbers 31 passage of killing all the women but keeping the virgins for yourselves, they say the women had to die because they were seducing the men. But why spare the virgins then? The way this book reduced the bleeding, dying bodies of Canaanite babies, girls and boys, virgins, women and even men for that matter to mere issues of rationality and coherence is very difficult for anyone in touch with their humanity to stomach.
“They point out that at least the rape didn’t happen during battle, or wasn’t glorified in art, or didn’t reduce the rape victims to prostitution.”
In Bloody, Brutal, Barbaric? Wrestling with Troubling War Texts, William Webb and Gordon Oeste do a better job of naming the brutality of the conquest, while giving a range of options to consider from traditional to anti-traditional perspectives and trying to find a middle ground. However, while they admit Numbers 31 is speaking of war rape, they claim they’ve discovered “some surprisingly positive developments around war rape.” They point out that at least the rape didn’t happen during battle, or wasn’t glorified in art, or didn’t reduce the rape victims to prostitution.
It’s ironic that while we’re discussing the idea of women and babies being slaughtered and virgins being plundered, the main scholars who are typically referenced in these discussions are all white men who interpret reality through a metaphysic of hierarchy.
Guilt or innocence and collective punishment
Those who position themselves at the top of the hierarchy determine whether those below are guilty and what sort of punishment they deserve.
Isaac Herzog, president of Israel, said in a recent press conference, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.” He continued: “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’état.”
To Israel, there are no innocent Palestinians.
When former Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told Al Jazeera the Palestinians won’t be bombed if Hamas surrenders, Marc Lamont Hill responded: “You’re saying until Hamas acts differently, the 2 million people in Gaza are going to be treated this way. And once Hamas acts differently, these 2 million people in Gaza will be treated better. That is exactly what collective punishment is. You’re holding them accountable for the actions of others. That is the definition, the textbook definition of collective punishment. Now you may accept that that’s what you want to do. But this is absolutely a contravention of international law.”
“The conservative evangelical gospel is so unjust that it would be a violation of international law.”
How is this any different than conservative evangelical theology? Conservatives believe there are no innocent humans, that everyone is guilty and worthy of a violent retribution infinitely more painful than anything Hamas or Israel could muster. Conservatives believe all humans are guilty due to how Adam acted in the Garden of Eden, and that humans can be saved from violent retribution only if a second Adam acts differently.
The conservative evangelical gospel is so unjust that it would be a violation of international law.
The thrill of orthodoxy vs. the well-being of my neighbors
In his book The Thrill of Orthodoxy, Trevin Wax argues that denying eternal conscious torment lowers the stakes of salvation and thus diminishes the thrill.
But who finds the current scenario in Palestine thrilling? And what thrill could there possibly be in a theology that results in the violent eternal torture of your neighbor?
The reality is that conservative evangelicals spend every Sunday celebrating justice as infinitely violent retribution against human bodies, either against Jesus’ body or against those who won’t submit to their theology. When conservatives watch the violence on the news, their minds go back to the conquest narratives in the Bible. And when they interpret those narratives, they either celebrate them or find themselves pathetically trying to come up with “some surprisingly positive developments around war rape.”
What on earth are we doing? It’s time to stop fooling around with conservative evangelical theology. If that calls into question the authority of the Bible, then so be it. Maybe we’re not spiritually mature enough to consider the Bible as an authority, given how we’re handling it.
What does love want you to do?
Whatever violence conservative evangelicals recognize in Hamas or in Israel, it’s infinitely more present in their own theology. Perhaps by coming together in recognition of our common thirst for violence, we can begin to perceive how we’re all wounding each other. And rather than finding theologies of violent retribution to be thrilling, maybe we’ll discover a deeper healing care that values our neighbor’s well-being.
Valarie Kaur
At some point, we have to respond to human violence and suffering, not by justifying the violent commands in an inerrant sacred text, but by coming to terms with our common thirst for violent retribution until we’re willing to grieve our common wounds and repent of what we’ve been complicit in promoting.
The activist and faith leader Valarie Kaur puts it this way:
Our most powerful response to the horror in Israel and Palestine is to refuse to surrender our humanity. You will be told by some, ‘The deaths of Israeli children are unfortunate but inevitable, because Israel’s occupation of Palestine is brutal and wrong.’ You will be told by others, ‘The deaths of Palestinian children are unfortunate but inevitable because it is the only way to keep Israel safe from terror, and Hamas brought this on its own people.’ You will hear, ‘Our aggression is the only response to their aggression, our fear more justified than their fear, our grief more devastating than theirs ever will be.’
But oh, my love, the hierarchy of pain is the old way. The moment we allow our hearts to go numb to the deaths of any children is the moment we shut down our humanity. I don’t know the solution to the conflict in Israel and Palestine. I don’t know whether this will end. But I do know the starting point for any solution — to grieve “their” children as our children. It is the only way to break the cycle, to ask, “What does love want you to do?”
Rick Pidcock
Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He recently completed a Master of Arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.
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Here are some ways to listen to Palestinian Christians | Analysis by Rick Pidcock
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