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The Meaning of Holiness, Part 1

I can’t remember the last time I attended a church service or heard a Sunday message that dealt with the subject of holiness.

I have heard many messages warning Christians to stay away from sin. In these sermons, holiness is typically explained in terms of “being separate,” which usually translates into avoiding the dangers of The Big Three – sex, alcohol and money (more specifically, the sin of not giving 10% of my money to the local church).

I will summarize this popular understanding of holiness by quoting an old (inappropriate?) saying, “I don’t drink and I don’t chew, and I don’t go with girls who do.”

But such an approach to holiness grabs the wrong end of the stick, and a very flimsy stick at that.  It’s like grabbing a lizard by the tip of its tail and saying, “I’ve got it!” as you watch the greater part of the lizard scurry away to hide.

So, I thought I would write a series of 3 posts explaining (what I understand to be) the Biblical concept of holiness.  There are 3 aspects to holiness in the Bible.  Each post will deal with 1 of these 3 inter-related elements, explaining how they build on each other.

To begin with, holiness is not about us.  Holiness is about God, who God is and what God does.

The Bible insists that God is utterly unique.  There are no other gods around for comparison.  No one can suggest, for instance, that Yahweh is an especially tall god, as far as gods go.  Because there are no other gods.  How tall would a tall god be in comparison to an especially short god?  Such talk is nonsense, for there is only One God, and He is what He is.  That’s it.

The prophet Isaiah asked rhetorically, “To whom will you compare God?” (40:18). The answer is:  to nothing and to no one.  Yahweh is it.

God is the sole, absolute standard for Himself.  God defines Himself as He is. (Yes, I know. I am committing the modern faux pas of using masculine pronouns for God.  But that is how both the Old Testament and Jesus refer to our Father in heaven.)

God exists in a category of One.

Whatever we might compare God to is, by definition, not-God. We are left to fumble with the inadequacies of language, for no description of God will ever prove sufficient. We are limited to using analogies, metaphors and similes for our descriptions (e.g. “God is like such-and-such”, “God’s eyes see us”, etc.), and even these efforts only work, in a limited sense, because human beings are created as God’s image. (Now we are dealing with the theological pros and cons of the “analogy of being,” the analogia entis, which we may explore some other time.)

Some theologians have referred to God’s essential uniqueness as His “Wholly Otherness.”  Since Yahweh is the only divine Person inhabiting the category of “God,” Yahweh is Wholly Other.

THIS is where a proper understanding of God’s holiness must begin.  God is holy as the One who is Wholly Other.

Let me explain by way of borrowing the plot-line from Edwin Abbott’s famous story, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions.  Imagine living in a two-dimensional world.  That is, your universe has length and width, but no depth, no height.

Your world is like a flat piece of paper.  All of its inhabitants are also two-dimensional.  So, you walk to work each day as a stick-figure.  As you pass by, you wave to your neighbors, Mr. & Mrs. Circle, as well as the Straight-Line family and Madame Triangle.

One day, you all hear a friendly disembodied voice calling, “Hello!  How are you all?”

But none of you can see anything.  Where is that voice coming from?

“Hello,” it calls out again.  “My name is Mr. Ball!”

“Mr. Ball?,” you all wonder.  “We have never heard of such a thing. What in the world is a ball?”

The voice answers, “Well, a  ball is also a sphere.”

“What’s a sphere?” asks Madame Triangle.  “Is it like a circle?”

“Well, yes and no, but not really,” replies Mr. Ball.  “Why don’t I come visit you in Flatland and show you who I am,” he suggests.

Mr. Ball then proceeds to enter into Flatland.  But still no one sees a sphere.

At first, everyone notices a small dot that appears out of nowhere.  Then the dot morphs into a tiny circle.  The circle expands, becoming larger and larger.  Then it abruptly stops growing and reverses itself, becoming smaller and smaller. Finally, the circle becomes a dot again, and then vanishes all together.

“There you go,” cries Mr. Ball.  “I showed myself to you!  You have just seen me.  Now do you understand what a sphere is?”

Obviously, the answer is No.  Two dimensional creatures may perceive something of the three-dimensional creature’s “personal revelation” – in this case, an ever expanding and shrinking circle – but fully grasping or comprehending Mr. Ball’s self-disclosure is impossible for folks living in Flatland.  The difference between a two-dimensional and a three-dimensional existence are too great.

Mr. Ball is wholly other than Mr. & Mrs. Circle.

So ends my feeble attempt at describing the essential nature of divine holiness.  And when we combine God’s Wholly Otherness together with the alienation created by human sinfulness, we are left with a yawning chasm separating humanity from God that Sǿren Kierkegaard calls “the infinite qualitative difference.”

An infinite qualitative difference looms large between sinful human beings and our Wholly Other God.

Recall Moses’ experience at Mt. Sinai (Exodus 19).  Yahweh is calling Israel into a deeper, more intimate relationship with Himself by way of a new relationship described in the Sinai Covenant (see verses 5-6).  It is a time of celebration as Yahweh “comes down” to reveal Himself more fully, more intimately and personally to the entire nation.

God is not angry with Israel.  He is not arriving to judge or to condemn a wayward people.  Not at all. Yahweh is giving Himself over to His chosen people, so that they may all enjoy deeper covenant fellowship together.  This is the beautiful “marriage ceremony,” if you will, between God and his chosen people!

Yet, as Yahweh appears atop Mt. Sinai,

“…there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled…Mt. Sinai was covered with smoke, because Yahweh descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, the whole mountain trembled violently, and the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder” (verses 16-19).

Yet, God is still not angry.  He is just showing up for the party.

Our heavenly Father is the Holy One, the One and Only God who was and is and is to come, Whose perfect ways are entirely beyond our fallible, frail, fallen human (in)ability to (mis)understand.

What can we do but fall down or tremble in awe and wonder to adore Him in His Holiness?

What else but to join in with the heavenly, six-winged seraphs who cry out,

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Isaiah 6:3)

The US Supplies an Air Force for ISIS and AL Qaeda

Last night president Trump bombed Syria without any congressional debate or approval.  Though you would not know it by watching our mainstream media, this is actually a big problem.  Here’s why.

First, the US Constitution prohibits the president from taking such unilateral military action.

Second, there is still no evidence that a gas attack took place in Ghouta, much less that Assad would have been involved.

If you did not know this, please listen to this analysis from Max Blumenthal (an independent, investigative journalism who focuses on the Middle East) who carefully unpacks the many falsehoods underlying the mainstream reporting on this matter.

Also, listen to James Jatras, a former U.S. Foreign Service Officer with the US Department of State, make similar observations explaining how the US has effectively become the Air Force for Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Third, the AUMF (Authorization for the Use of Military Force), passed after the 9/11 attacks and now being used to justify whatever aggressive military action the US wants to take around the world, has become a blank check for perpetual war.

This cannot be allowed to stand.  Bombing Syria has nothing to do with “keeping America safe from terrorism.” If anything, it continues to have the opposite effect.

Fourth, we need to ask why the president ordered this attack one day before a team of independent investigators, who were already on the ground in the area, were scheduled to begin their study of the alleged gas attack?

Why couldn’t the president at least have waited a few days?  Is he hiding something?

Is this another “way the dog moment” where a president uses military action to distract from his domestic problems? (I am no fan of Rachel Maddow, but here she is asking very pertinent questions.)

Check out this frightening study that correlates Trump’s Twitter activity with the airing of the Fox program, “Fox & Friends” (also here, here and here on the Trump/Fox feedback loop).

Is it only accidental that Fox & Friends suggested that Trump should bomb Syria in order to distract from the release of James Comey’s new anti-Trump book?

Fifth, this attack on Syria is one more example of American hypocrisy.  Let’s not forget that we happily support, finance and arm oppressive dictators around the world when it suits our purposes.  Think of el-Sisi in Egypt, Santos in Columbia or Hernández in Honduras. (In all three cases, the US encouraged, supported and financed the military coups that put

Supporters of ousted Honduras’ President Manuel Zelaya protest outside the entrance to the international airport in Tegucigalpa, Sunday, July 5, 2009. After the Organization of American States, OAS, suspended Saturday night Honduras’ participation in the organization because of last week coup, (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

these men in power).

We also happily tolerate and encourage chemical attacks – when they truly do happen! – as long as they are carried out by our allies.  Don’t forget that the US supplied Saddam Hussein with the chemical weapons he used mercilessly against Iranian forces during the Iraq-Iran war (1980-1988).

In all those years, the US never stopped the flow of nerve agents we supplied to the Iraqi army.

Furthermore, the US does not bomb countries for “humanitarian” purposes but for geo-political reasons.  American neoconservative leaders began looking for ways to overthrow Assad’s government in Syria long before the last Iraq war (see here, here, here and here).  Why?  Neoconservatives are closely allied to the Likud party in Israel, the party of president Benjamin Netanyahu.  In effect, the US is acting as a proxy for the Israeli government in Syria.

So, the US has just bombed Syria for the very same reasons that it says and does nothing about Israel’s crimes against humanity now being committed against the people of Gaza.

Finally, people who say that they follow Jesus Christ are called to be advocates for peace and diplomacy.  Disciples don’t adopt this position because we think America is a Christian nation (it’s not), or because God is guiding US foreign policy (no one but God can know this), or because Trump is God’s chosen leader (if he is, then he was sent to punish America in the way that Assyria and Babylon were sent to punish ancient Israel).

Disciples of Jesus will always insist on honesty and fair play.  But these qualites are entirely absent from the American conversation on Syria right now, as the interviews (see above) with Blumenthal and Jatras reveal.

For now, America continues its clumsy tumble towards the junk heap of has-been empires.  The most pressing question now is how much damage, death, confusion and chaos will our struggle to maintain our historic, global dominance cause for the rest of the world?

The American church, especially its so-called “evangelicals” (that is, disciples who surrender themselves to be dominated by the Good News of Jesus’ life, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension), people who truly want to be like Jesus – which has always been the center of real Christianity – must ask themselves,

Why have we become cheerleaders for a modern-day Caligula; a licentious ego-maniac drunk with power; a man without conscience, entranced by the shiny baubles of war?

When the author of the New Testament book of Revelation described the whore of fall of Babylon and her fall – which was also Rome, which was also every subsequent world empire, including the United States of America – he warned those claiming to be Christian,

“Come out of her, my people, so that you do not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes.” (Revelation 18:4-5)

When will American evangelicalism stop its complicity in US war crimes?

When will it rip off the blinders of patriotic nationalism and see this world through the eyes of Jesus Christ?

A line is being drawn between the true church and the false, between the wheat and the tares, between the church militant and the church acquiescent, between disciples with their eyes firmly fixed on Jesus (Hebrews 12:2) and those blinded by the “worries and deceits of this world” (Mark 4:18-19) whose cheer-leading for wickedness reveals that they have abandoned their seat at the Messiah’s banquet table (Luke 14:15-24).

Stop the US March to War with Russia

As I posted yesterday, we are entering perilous times in the Middle East, and most of the American people are completely unaware of the false information being fed to them.  The similarities to the government lies about WMDs that “justified” the Second Iraq War are too close to ignore.

Take a moment to watch this analysis by Peter Ford, a former U.K. ambassador to Syria, as he explains why he does not believe that the so-called chemical attack in Ghouta ever occurred.  It is entitled:

Former UK Ambassador to Syria: Syrian Chemical Weapons Attack Was STAGED By Islamic Jihadi Propagandists, It Is Likely No One Died

Remember the run up to the last Iraq War?  Do not forget that our government lies to us all the time. Lying is one of the things all governments do in this world.

Of course, Mr. Ford may be wrong.  BUT AT THE VERY LEAST, President Trump has no business ordering a retaliatory strike against Assad before an independent investigation has been conducted!

Please, call your Congressional representatives (at 202-225-3121) urging them to sign the bipartisan Lofgren-Amash letter, reminding the president that, according to the War Powers Act, he must receive congressional approval before launching a strike against Syria.

Also tell them to insist on an independent investigation into the claims of a gas attack.  It still is not too late.

Here are a few additional headlines from today:

ASSAD ADVISER: SYRIA AND ALLIES PREPARING FOR POSSIBLE WAR (Jerusalem Post)

Trump says Syria attack “could be very soon or not so soon at all” (Reuters)

Jerusalem Responds to Russia: Iranian Aggression Is Destabilizing Syria – Not Israel (Haaretz)

Israel on High Alert, Prepares for Possible Iranian Retaliation After Strike on Syrian Air Force Base (Haaretz)

Top Israeli Defense Officials Push for Offensive Approach in Syria Against Iran (Haaretz)

Trump is Threatening Another War, which is Only One of Many Reasons No Christian Should Be Supporting Him

Once again, our president is threatening to bomb another country.  This time it’s Syria.  In the not-too-distant past it’s been North Korea, Iran and Russia.  The New York Times reports (4/11/18) that President Trump now promises to launch a military strike against Syria and has threatened Russia not to intervene.

It’s one thing to be a bully in private life.  (The numerous allegations of Trump’s sexual assault against women and his criminal business dealings have been amply documented for many years. [Read David Kay Johnson’s books, The Making of Donald Trump and It’s Even Worse Than You Think]).

It is another matter altogether to be a public, presidential bully who imagines the nation’s military, armaments and treasury to be his own personal play things.

We do not need a blustering businessman in the White House – can we finally bury this foolishness once and for all about the importance of electing business people into government?!  We need a diplomat, an intelligent, well-educated person who understands the issues, or at least a leader who believes in the priority of diplomacy and detests war.

Tragically, Donald Trump is not that person.  He is an extraordinarily undiplomatic war-monger.

I believe that every American who professes to follow the resurrected Jesus should take advantage of the democratic mechanisms at our disposal (at least, for the moment) and voice our opposition to our government’s love of war-making.

Here are several things we can do:

  1. Call your Congressional representatives (at 202-225-3121) and ask them to sign the bipartisan Lofgren-Amash letter, reminding the president that, according to the War Powers Act, he must receive congressional approval before authorizing a strike against Syria. No US president has the authority to use military force unilaterally.
  2. While you have them on the phone, tell your elected representatives that you vehemently oppose any further military action in Syria. In fact, urge them to tell the president to implement his earlier plan for withdrawing all US forces from Syria.  As both Trump and Putin acknowledged last year, there is no military solution to this conflict.  Only a cease-fire and diplomacy will help the Syrian people.
  3. Tell your representatives to insist on an independent investigation into the apparent gas attack in Syrian eastern Ghouta. Tell them that our U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley (another neoconservative always in favor of another war), must stop her pro-war saber
    U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley vetos an Egyptian-drafted resolution regarding recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem, during the United Nations Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East, including Palestine, at U.N. Headquarters in New York City, New York, U.S., December 18, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid – RC19707F9890

    rattling and cooperate with the UN Security Council’s desire to investigate these charges.

  4. Educate yourself, sharpen your critical thinking skills and hone your skepticism. For instance:
  • Did you know that there is no solid, empirical evidence that Syrian president Assad or his troops had anything to do with the supposed “gas attack” in eastern Ghouta? Do not swallow the wall-to-wall reporting fed to us from the corporate media saying otherwise.  For instance, here is an excerpt from a lengthy report from an independent journalist who visited the scene of this “attack”:

“I was told by people I spoke with, in Erbin (a city in eastern Ghouta), that the terrorist factions had carried out the attacks on civilians in that district in order to blame it on the Syrian government, army and Russia.

“While there is no way to fully verify these on the ground reports, it must raise the question – why do western media repeat the narrative fed to them by western backed & financed groups like the White Helmets who are proven to be closely affiliated to extremist groups including Al Qaeda…?”

  • Israel has been lobbying the United States to go to war against Iran for many years. Israel has exploited the current situation in order unilaterally to attack Iranian forces in Syria.  (By the way, Iranian troops are in Syria by invitation.  Ours are not.)
  • Iran is now threatening a counter strike against Israel.  The only reason Israel has not continued its attacks is because of Vladimir Putin’s intervention, insisting on de-escalation.  Yes, Russian is acting as the peace-maker in this situation.
  • John Bolton, Trumps’ new National Security Adviser, is a psychopathic war-monger and a rapid pro-Zionist who has been doing Israel’s bidding for years, insisting on war with Iran.  In fact, Bolton has “promised” that he will effect regime change in Iran before the end of this year!
  • Russia has promised to “return fire” if American attacks Assad’s forces.
  • With Syria, the United States, Russian, Israel and Iran (let’s not forget Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, if things fall apart) all fired up, feeling aggressive, threatened and defensive, we have a frightening stew of international ingredients for a major war.

It is long past time for American evangelicals to stand for peace not war.  Please, make the call today.

Make your arguments.  Demand an accounting.

Let them know that you will not vote for a senator or representative who supports anymore needless destruction in our fragile world.

Israeli Sniper Films Target Practice on Young Palestinian

The short video speaks for itself.

Military training typically indoctrinates soldiers into dehumanizing the “enemy.”  Yet, even if that could be justified (which a Christian conscience forbids), what is happening now in Gaza is not a military conflict.

The target is an unarmed young man posing no threat whatsoever to the soldiers.  He carries no weapon, not even a raised fist.  This is not a battle; it is an execution.

The victim’s only crime was being Palestinian.  For that infraction, he had been tried, convicted and sentenced long ago.

His only provocation was objecting to an insufferable occupation that has denied him of every human right.  Yet, his presence at the Gazan protests demonstrates that he had not surrendered himself to Israel’s dehumanizing demands.

So Israel terminated  him for insubordination.  Holding one’s head up is an act of terrorism in Israel, if you are a Palestinian.

Israel’s Zionist policies had worked at dehumanizing this young man all of his life.  He was defined as Israel’s enemy the day he was born, not by his parents, mind you, but by Israel itself.

The sniper’s outburst of joy and laughter demonstrates who has truly been dehumanized by a lifetime of Zionist indoctrination.

What further proof is necessary to show that the American, evangelical love affair with modern Israel is a twisted relationship that must end?  If pious Bible-believers do not see this execution and recoil with shame, then how hard have out hearts become?

Persistently saying, No, to the Holy Spirit leads us into an ever-darker place where conscience eventually dies, “as if it were seared with a hot iron” (1 Timothy 4:2).

A Review of Scot McKnight’s Kingdom Conspiracy

I recently read Scot McKnight’s very fine book, Kingdom Conspiracy: Returning to the Radical Mission of the Local Church (Brazos, 2014), in which he discusses the New Testament’s presentation of the kingdom of God and its relevance for the church today.  In doing this, McKnight provides an especially important description of the missionary dimension of God’s kingdom.

McKnight argues, correctly in my view, that “kingdom work” (as many are prone to say nowadays) is always centered within the Christian church.  Then, from within the body of Christ, kingdom ministry radiates outward into the surrounding society and the rest of the world (see especially chapter 7, “Kingdom Mission is Church Mission”).

But, he warns, if Christian social activism is not an extension of the local church’s gospel teaching, fellowship, ministry and shared experience, then it is not kingdom work.  It may be laudable social and political work, but it has nothing to do with the kingdom of God.  “This means all true kingdom mission is church mission” (96).

McKnight’s church-centered understanding of God’s kingdom is pivotal to his argument.  On this point, Prof. McKnight and I are in agreement.

But McKnight’s laser-like focus on the local church also accounts for the book’s central mistake.  For he defines the kingdom and the church as synonymous with each other.  The kingdom of God IS the church, and the church IS the kingdom of God. (Beginning with chapter 5, “Kingdom is People” and passim).

This is where Prof. McKnight and I must part company.

Anyone who has read my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st-Century America, will observe the similarity between McKnight’s emphasis on the missional dimension of God’s kingdom and my own.  But my readers will also recall my insistence that the church is best understood as the citizenry of God’s kingdom, not the kingdom itself.

 

It is unfortunate that Prof. McKnight’s concern for tightening the connection between church and kingdom leads him to such an extreme. I say “unfortunate” because I don’t believe that he is any more comfortable with his identification of church with kingdom than I am.

There are numerous places throughout Kingdom Conspiracy where McKnight slips alternative definitions into the mix without acknowledging that he has just changed the terms of his discussion.  In other words, he masks the limitations of his explicit definition of kingdom by implicitly expanding that definition when his argument demands it.

For example, he sometimes notes that a kingdom “implies a king, a rule, a people, a land, and a law” (76, 159, 205).  So, the kingdom is not synonymous with people alone, after all.  It is more complex.

He also teasingly refers to “the important overlap of kingdom and church” (95), without noting that an overlap is not the same as an identity.  We are left with a suggestion that God’s kingdom overlaps with something more than people.

At one point, he resorts to the very language that he had previously criticized and rejected, referring to “the kingdom as the realm of redemption” (114).  Elsewhere he repeats that the word kingdom asserts “God’s dynamic rule” (126), the more widely held view that I endorse.

McKnight also notes that God’s kingdom brings redemption, and this redemption is “cosmic” in scope (151-52, 156, 159); that is, it includes a great deal in addition to human beings.  The kingdom of God also involves Christ’s subjugation of “principalities and powers” as well as the imminent redemption of all creation.

Finally, Prof. McKnight frequently lapses into my preferred terminology:  Christians are described as the citizens of God’s kingdom (75, 76, 99, 111, 155, 157, 164, 207).  Which, in my view, is the proper way to explain the New Testament’s perspective on God’s kingdom rule and its relationship to the people of God.

Think for a moment of what it means to live in the United States.  We the people are not synonymous with all that is America.  We are citizens of this country, but the people and the nation are not identical or coextensive.  America is as much (if not more) an idea; an idea about liberty with a specific history; a projection of power and influence as much as it is a particular population.

McKnight is forced into using this rhetorical sleight of hand because his preferred definition, identifying the kingdom exclusively with the church, simply does not comport with the full spectrum of Biblical evidence.

Am I quibbling over a minor issue?  I don’t think so.

Both Prof. McKnight and I would agree that it is important to understand the answers to Biblical questions accurately.  Thus, it is also important to understand that God’s kingdom rule is not confined only to the church.

God’s reign is working its way throughout all of history, although we may not always be able to explain exactly where and how that is happening. God’s ways are rarely self-evident.  Although church work certainly lies at the heart of kingdom work, for redeeming sinful folks like us is at the heart of Jesus’ mission, God’s kingdom is much bigger than any of us.

God rules victoriously and will one day be glorified, not only by the church, but by angels, demons, principalities, powers, and all things above the earth and below.  These spiritual powers now tremble at the knowledge of their ultimate defeat.

The kingdom of God is our heavenly Father’s redemptive reign, His saving sovereignty, now being established over all creation.  Believers are privileged to become citizens of that victorious kingdom, but our citizenship is evidence and a partial product (central and vital, but not the whole) of Christ’s reign.

I suspect that the heavenly host of innumerable cherubim and seraphim, the legions of fallen angels, as well as the new heavens and the new earth, including the redeemed supernovae, unseen galaxies, black holes and dark matter will one day loudly object to the ecclesiastical hubris which suggests that God’s kingdom involves only the church.

Gaza Is the Latest Evidence of Christian Zionism’s Inhumanity #christianzionism

The killing of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza continues unabated.

As of today, the death toll has risen to 31, including at least 1 journalist wearing a vest emblazoned with the word “PRESS.”  6 journalists in all have been shot. The numbers of people wounded by live ammunition is now in the thousands.

Children are counted among the dead.

Reporting on the journalist’s death, today’s AP says:

 “Witnesses said Murtaja was over 100 meters (yards) from the border, wearing a flak jacket marked “press” and holding his camera when he was shot in an exposed area just below the armpit.

 “The Israeli military has said it fired only at ‘instigators’ involved in attacks on soldiers and was investigating Murtaja’s death amid a very hectic environment.”

A reporter armed only with a video camera “instigating attacks” on soldiers safely sequestered behind barriers and a fence 100 yards away?

The journalist Glenn Greenwald puts it best (watch the interview here):

“I think it’s just time to acknowledge and accept the reality of what Israel is…And even people who once believed that [Israel was a democracy] are now starting to come and see that Israel is an apartheid, rogue, terrorist state.”

Israel long ago slipped down the rabbit hole with Alice and the Mad Hatter.  Now Israel wants the rest of the watching world to follow suit.  Eat Israel’s magic mushroom, listen only to the official press releases and repeat Israeli propaganda.

All Palestinians are, by definition, terrorists.  As Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said:

“There are no innocent people in the Gaza strip.”

“From the standpoint of the Israeli soldiers, they did what had to be done. I think that all of our troops deserve a commendation…”

American politicians and the mainstream media all remain silent, or nonchalantly mimic Israeli press releases.  Bernie Sanders is still the only member of Congress to speak out and condemn the mass slaughter now occurring (here, here and elsewhere).

US news outlets are obsessed with Stormy Daniels but have nothing to say about Gaza.

Our government has expelled 60+ Russian diplomats, on the flimsiest of evidence, but refuses to criticize Israel’s crimes against humanity in Gaza.

And where is the Christian church in this mix?  Where is the so-called pro-life movement?  Where is the voice of Christian conscience?

The church is nowhere to be found.  We have eaten too many of Israel’s magic mushrooms.

Evangelicalism remains silent, too busy groveling at the feet of its Republican idols to look up and notice the criminality of America’s tacit complicity in Israel’s crimes.

But the most powerful force behind this evangelical silence is not politics, not even politics veiled beneath religious conviction.  No.  The grotesque force holding its hand over the mouth of most evangelicals is the depraved theology of Christian Zionism.

A theology of Israeli privilege that overshadows and negates all competing ethical concerns.  A theology that baptizes genocide as the approved work of God.  A theology – that is really an IDEOLOGY – as effectively racist towards Palestinians as the political Zionism animating the monstrously perverse Middle Eastern beast once known as Israel.

American evangelicalism will one day be held to account.

Just as the largest part of the American church will be held to account for approving slavery, the slaughter of Native Americans, Jim Crow and its indifference to the poor, so too will our Eternal Judge ask us all, “Why did you not lament, and work to change, the fate of your Palestinian brothers and sisters?”

I encourage everyone to call one of Bernie Sanders’ office numbers.  Thank him for protesting the killings in Gaza.  Ask him to remain vigilant, not to give up, to enlist others to his cause, and to continue to speak up for Palestinian lives.

Keeping Christianity Difficult with Sǿren Kierkegaard

I plan on periodically sharing excerpts from the writings of Sǿren Kierkegaard, one of my favorite Christian authors.  Whether or not you agree with him, he is always worth reading (very slowly) and pondering (usually, for a long time).

Here is our Kierkegaard reading for today:

“Hardship is the road [for the Christian life].  Far be from us this hypocritical talk that life is so varied that some are walking along the same road without hardships, others in hardships…Doubt about the task [of discipleship] always has its stronghold in the idea that there could be other roads…but since hardship is the road, the hardship cannot be removed without removing the road, and there cannot be other roads, but only wrong roads.”

In other words, living for Jesus by definition brings difficulty and suffering.  If following Jesus has never made my life more complicated, more difficult, then I am probably not really following Jesus.  I am simply taking a walk.

The Danish Christian thinker, Sǿren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), has been an important spiritual friend of mine for many years.  His writings have provided me with comfort, encouragement, challenge and insight, always mixed with spiritual and intellectual stimulation.

I have even written a book – Encountering Jesus, Encountering Scripture – explaining how Kierkegaard’s “way of knowing” through personal experience is, in fact, the New Testament’s own account of acquiring faith through spiritual experience.

Engaging Kierkegaard has helped me to persevere in following my Lord. Though, as the famous Dane repeatedly confessed, I continue in the process of following Jesus, dependent entirely on his grace.  I still have a long way to go in being conformed to the image of our Savior.

Kierkegaard often went so far as to say that he was in the process of becoming a Christian.  He had not yet arrived.  And, no. He did NOT say this because he believed in earning his way into God’s kingdom by relying on works righteousness.

Kierkegaard talked this way because 19th century Denmark was a nation in the throes of “Christendom.”  That is, the vast majority of its citizens attended the Lutheran state church, and almost everyone considered themselves to be Christian simply because they were Danish.  Denmark was, after all, a “Christian nation.”

Sound familiar?

Following his conversion out of Christendom and into genuine repentance and trust in Jesus Christ, Kierkegaard became a resident missionary to his own people.  He well understood that the Jesus we encounter in the New Testament is highly offensive to anyone who takes him seriously.  After all, Jesus makes the most outrageous demands of his followers.

When the gospel of Jesus Christ is explained truthfully, it is highly offensive and inconvenient.  Jesus repells as well he as attracts.  He offers the average listener many more reasons to say, No, than to say, Yes.

So, as a missionary to Christian Denmark, Kierkegaard became convinced that he must make Christianity difficult.  For only by hearing the highly offensive challenge embedded in the Lordship of Jesus Christ does anyone hear the truth of the gospel.

Making Christianity “difficult,” then, was simply a matter of talking about Jesus faithfully. Something that was in short supply in 19th century Denmark, especially among pastors and theologians working for the state church.

But, if we stop to think about it, Kierkegaard’s Denmark was not all that different from America today.

Even though the United States has never embraced an established, state church, far too many Americans are blinded by a similar idolatry – belief in a Christian nation where patriotism eclipses allegiance to the resurrected Jesus.

Yes. Our country desperately needs to hear a much more difficult brand of Christianity.

American Empire Never Quits

Corporate efforts at killing Brazilian democracy, backed by the U.S. government and American oil companies, continues unabated.

For now, let’s skip over the first U.S. backed military coup in 1964 and jump into the present-day.

Rousseff

More recently, the corporate-controlled right wing senate illegally impeached President Dilma Rousseff without any evidence of wrong-doing.  Her defenders have called it a “political coup,” fueled by a pact between the government, military leaders and the oil companies.  She was not as friendly to big business as the conservatives in  her government would have liked.  And, of course, they are all very chummy with the U.S.

Temer

The current president, Michel Temer who was a leader in the group that ousted Rousseff, is now the most unpopular leader in Brazilian history, crippled by his own well-publicized corruption scandals.

Enter Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (known simply as Lula among the people), a former president seeking another term in that office now that his protege, Rousseff, has been ousted.  He is extraordinarily popular, and seemed to be headed towards an easy upset at the polls.

Lula

But corporate powers have intervened yet again. Lula has just been “convicted” on corruption charges and sentenced to prison, despite the fact that no one has ever been able to offer any evidence of his guilt. (Read this amazing story at The Intercept).

The Supreme Court that just convicted Lula has more suspicious financial connections to the corporate oligarchs that funded Rousseff’s impeachment than you can shake a stick at.

If you don’t believe that the U.S. government and the American oil industry is not helping to finance all of this turmoil, well then, I have some swamp land I’d like to sell to you in Florida.

  • Update:  check out this informative analysis by Mark Weisbrot, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research,  from Democracy Now.

Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? Dead or in Prison.

Thomas Friedman, among others, once suggested that the long-awaited solution to Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian people could be found in a Gandhi-esque mass movement of Palestinian non-violent resistance.

In a 2002 New York Times editorial entitled “Waiting for Gandhi on the West Bank,” penned during the First Intifada, Friedman opined:

“…the Palestinians have long had a tactical alternative to suicide: non-violent resistance à la Gandhi. A non-violent Palestinian movement appealing to the conscience of the Israeli silent majority would have delivered a Palestinian state 30 years ago”

In July 2010, the New York Times editorialist Nicholas Kristof offered similar advice:

“…imagine if Palestinians stopped the rock-throwing and put female pacifists in the lead.  What if 1,000 women sat down peacefully on a road to block access to an illegal Jewish settlement built on Palestinian farmland? What if the women allowed themselves to be tear-gassed, beaten and arrested without a single rock being thrown? Those images would be on televisions around the world – particularly if hundreds more women marched in to replace those hauled away.”

I can’t help but notice how easy it is for Kristof to volunteer someone else’s grandmother – in the case of Palestine, thousands of mothers and grandmothers – for a good gassing, beating, arrest and sentencing to a brutal, Israeli military prison.

I find it especially curious that, since both Friedman and Kristof clearly imply that the Palestinians deserve a peaceable resolution to The Occupation, neither of them has the guts to criticize (much less condemn) Israel’s draconian policies towards Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

A Palestinian stands on his property overlooking the Israeli settlement Har Homa, West Bank, February 18, 2011. U.S. President Barack Obama called Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas…in an attempt to prevent the upcoming vote on an United Nations resolution condemning Israeli settlements. UPI/Debbie Hill

Kristof even acknowledges, whether accidentally or not, that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.  Yet, he does not propose the obvious solution of dismantling these illegal settlements which steal Palestinian resources on a daily basis.

Mr. Kristof thinks it better to imagine thousands of pacifist, Palestinian grandmothers battered by tear-gas canisters and hauled off to a military prison.  My apologies, I cannot help but wonder if Mr. Kristof’s Freudian slip is showing?  Was he secretly grinning when he wrote that sentence?

Furthermore, both writers seem to agree that continued rock-throwing – yes, that most horrid of all destructive terrorist tactics, rock-throwing…by women and children, no less! – poses an insuperable obstacle to Israel’s acceptance of Palestinian demands for peace in their own territory.

Imagine what peace might be had in the Promised Land already if only those Palestinian protesters had shown the bravery needed to surrender their rocks!  One can only wonder.

However, if the current blood-letting in Gaza teaches us anything, it is that the majority of Israeli citizens today have no conscience.  At least, not when it concerns the Palestinians.  There is no moral “silent majority” waiting to “deliver a Palestinian state” if only rabid Palestinian miscreants would get their non-violent house in order.

As the journalist Gideon Levy writes in today’s edition of Haaretz (4/5/18):

“In Gaza, Israeli army snipers shot unarmed demonstrators as if they were on a shooting range, to a chorus of rejoicing by the media and the masses…This is what the nation wants and this is what it will get. Even if soldiers kill hundreds of demonstrators in Gaza, Israel will not bat an eyelid. The reason: evil and hatred of Arabs. Gaza is never perceived as it really is, a place inhabited by people, an enormous and terrible prison, a huge site of human experimentation. Most Israelis, who — just like their prime minister — have never spoken to a single Gazan, only know that the Gaza Strip is a nest of terrorists. That’s why it’s OK to shoot them. Shocking? Yes, but true.”

Will the likes of Friedman and Kristof now recant?

Will they and their pro-Zionist brethren finally admit that, as long as Israel retains the unquestioning support of the world’s only super-power, no Palestinian strategy for gaining their human rights, liberty and civic freedoms will every prove effective? No sort of resistance will ever be tolerated?

Will they recognize that political Zionism finally has drowned the last vestiges of Israeli conscience and humanitarian spirit in the brackish waters of Jewish nationalism, synonymous with systematic, unapologetic racism?

The entire world is now witnessing what happens when massive, non-violent protests confront the military force of an ethnocracy, rooted in a commitment to purity-of-blood, defending its founding ideology of racial privilege.

Historical discussions on the effectiveness of non-violent movements, of course, usually focus on Gandhi’s confrontation of British rule in India. Gandhi has become the icon of pacifistic civil disobedience, especially as he led the people’s Salt March in 1930.

Cynics, however, have typically responded to pro-Gandhi idealists by pointing out the humanitarian bent of the British Empire (grossly exaggerated, by the way).  They then pose an alternative scenario:

What if Gandhi and his followers had confronted Nazi Germany rather than Great Britain?  How effective would Gandhi’s mass-pacifism have been once the Indian people were staring down the barrels of German machine guns enforcing Nazi racial doctrine?

Well, the world no longer needs to wonder about history’s answer to that cynical, hypothetical question.  The answer is no longer hypothetical.  The answer is real and obvious for all to see in the blood-stained no-man’s land surrounding a place called Gaza.

Israeli soldiers are shooting down innocent, unarmed, non-violent – oh yes, I forgot, a very, very few do threaten Israeli peace of mind with their occasional stone-throwing – men and women for no other reason than that they are Palestinians marching for their freedom.

Have you yet seen the video footage of the elderly Palestinian grandmother who decides to enact Kristof’s dream scenario?

Holding a Palestinian flag in her wrinkled hand, she ambles slowly toward the separation fence.  Israeli soldiers, undoubtedly terrorized by this slow-motion charge of an elderly woman, seemingly intent on climbing over the 10-foot fence and beating them to death with her small flag stick, shot her dead while she was still dozens of yards away.

Her knees buckle as a crowd of young people run to help her (watch the first 17 seconds). She falls to the ground and disappears, flag and all, into the green grass.

I wonder what Mr. Kristof has to say now?

Under Israel’s vigilant gaze, every Palestinian commits an unforgivable sin when she will not lay down and play dead.  If you don’t play dead, an Israeli soldier will make you dead.

Palestinians with enough hubris to stand up and insist that they, too, are human beings will quickly be cut down to size.  Including the old women.

The world is now witnessing a demonstration of how those who have been abused assimilate themselves to their abuser.  The victims of the Holocaust have perfected their own brand of genocide rooted in their own doctrine of racial superiority.