“23 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the
weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you
ought to have done, without neglecting the others.”
Matt. 23:23
What is the
most divisive topic in the whole Bible? Justification by faith? Some might say
this, considering it was central to the Reformation, at least from the
perspective of some Protestants. Sexuality? Other might say this because the
Bible challenges many of the sexual idols of the age. Baptism? The early
Baptists were willing to die for their view of believer’s baptism. There are
many different options people could put forward. But many would put forward the
topic of eschatology.
And they would have a good argument. A really good argument!
Some people
take their eschatology really personally. But this is important to note many,
many, many people would put eschatology in the harder to understand bracket and
would say we should hold many aspects of it with an open hand. The
Premillennialist believes Jesus returns to establish the kingdom and the
millennial reign. The Amillennialist believes that we are in the millennium,
now reigning with Christ. The postmillennialist believes that the Millennium
could begin any day now and that the church will rise in triumph and Christ
will come back to vindicate our work. The preterist believes most things have
been fulfilled. But the Dispensationalist, and a growing number of people
influenced by Dispensational claims but who are not Dispensational, says at one
time that they hold end times with an open hand, but also in the next moment
many of them turn around and say that Israel is justified in doing what it
needs to do to conquer the land because of their end times view.
As I saw
someone say just recently,
“A
Christian will be influenced by their views on end times or eschatology, and
this will impact how they interpret war involving Israel. Some will see it as a
divine necessity, others as a another pointless political conflict, and still
others that what is required is a true peace maker to fix the situation. Someone’s
theological ideas and framework will influence whether they should support Israel
automatically and see it as the default position, or whether we should be more cautious
or even very critical.”[1]
So, in effect
this hits right to the core of this issue. A massive problem in the church
today is that a large swath of Christians, most of them dispensationalist, but some
of them not, have taken the most disputable topic in the Bible, eschatology or
end times prophecy, and have taken a niche interpretation of this difficult
topic and lifted it up as justification for what Israel is doing in the present. They have claimed a strong position on the most flimsy possible ground.
Now, it must
be said that not every Christian who says, “I stand with Israel”, thinks about
it in an end times framework. For some it is simply that Israel is a democracy
and the Arab world is not, so they default to this. For still others it is
simply a binary choice between Islam and Israel, and they will choose Israel every day of the week in that situation and be shocked that others do not see
it this simply. But for a large swath of Christians, they have taken passages
in the Bible about the return of Israel to the land and sided with a niche interpretation
of these passages, and then turn around and use this to justify everything
Israel does as simple “self-defence in the quest to get back the land God says
is theirs.” They are placing a tertiary concept in an almost primary position
when they do this, because they are letting this work out in our world in a way
that actually impacts the lives of many people.
But think of
the foolishness of this stance. Jesus spoke to just this kind of misaligned
application of the word of God in Matthew 23. There he said, “23 Woe to you,
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and
have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and
faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others”
(Matt. 23:23). Almost every Christian admits that eschatology is a difficult topic
to handle. For every interpretation of a passage that says Israel will return
to the land and the temple will be destroyed again, there are many more Christians who say this was fulfilled in the era of
Ezra and Nehemiah, and AD 70, and that is the end of the subject. So, even if you read the
Bible differently on these subjects you have to admit that it is a highly
debateable topic.
But what is
not debateable is what the Bible says about law, justice, and war. For
instance, the Bible is very clear about not violating borders. We see for example
in Proverbs that Solomon said, “28 Do not move the ancient landmark that your
fathers have set” (Prov. 22:28). When Israel was about to go into the land
they were commanded not to take even a foot land of the Edomites, “5 Do not
contend with them, for I will not give you any of their land, no, not so much
as for the sole of the foot to tread on, because I have given Mount Seir to
Esau as a possession” (Deut. 3:5). Nor were they do this to anyone else,
either. This principle came from the law of God, “14 You shall not move your
neighbor's landmark, which the men of old have set, in the inheritance that you
will hold in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess” (Deut.
19:14).
However, the
entire history of the modern nation of Israel has been one long consistent process in violating the
original borders of the mandate. There are secular arguments that can be made
for the founding of Israel as it was done, and also against. But the religious
arguments are all based in very niche interpretations of end times prophecy.
However, the principle of justice that you should not violate your neighbour’s
borders is a clear principle in the Bible, and a weightier matter of the law
than eschatology.
The same is
true with not killing children. This was actually a command in Old Testament
for just war. Mose wrote, “14 but the women and the little ones, the livestock,
and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as plunder for
yourselves. And you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your
God has given you” (Deut. 20:14). Just war against foreign nations, outside of
the limited city states in Canaan, included not killing women and children, or non-combatants.
The nations that Israel dealt with under the exception in the conquest no
longer exist, hence the exception no longer exists and this command, therefore,
stands.
Many people
arc up here and note that Israel’s enemies use kids as human shields. But those
who use 2000-pound bombs on civilian centres are mocking you when they say they
are seeking to minimize casualties.
This argument
could be carried over to many other aspects of what Israel is doing. Many of
the people supporting Israel in its actions today were condemning Russia in
Ukraine yesterday. But when it comes to Israel, they change their standard of
what is allowed and what is righteous and say that Israel is God’s people, this
conquest is fulfilling biblical prophecy, therefore it is excusable. They
change their weighting of the higher principles of the law because of a niche
view of eschatology. Which is to read the Bible backwards.
If this is
not an example of what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 23, then I do not
know what is.
This is not a
defense of Iran. Both Iran and Israel have a long history of making threats
against each other. This article is simple an attempt to help people realize
that you should not change your weighting of the principles of justice and law,
and oppression, because of your personal beliefs about the most difficult
topic, in many people’s opinions, in the Bible. Eschatology is a fascinating
subject, and one well worth studying. If for nothing more than allowing yourself
to be humbled by how much God’s plan is out of our league, and how much we need
to be humble with his word.
But when you
are justifying real world wrongs because of your eschatology you are judging
with weighted scales, and we know what the Bible says about that, “A false
balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight” (Prov.
11:1). Weighting the argument unjustly, because of pet theories about how the
end times will role out causes great harm, and it is not correctly dividing the
word of truth. Some of the people who are making decisions in the US and
British governments in support of Israel’s ongoing conquest of a segment of the
Middle East make their decisions in light of this end time reading. This is
incredibly dangerous. Government officials are supposed to be exercising just applications
of law, not applying speculative end times theories. Christians are supposed to
challenge government leaders on principles of law and justice, not speculative end
times theories.
There is a
principle in biblical interpretation that the clear should interpret the less
clear. Those who support Israel’s actions based on eschatology do the exact
opposite. They interpret the clear through the most unclear thing possible.
This creates many pitfalls and dangers.
The simple
solution is to weight justice and law above end times theories. You will find
when you remove the end times framework the dispensationalists have spread from
the 19th century, and which many other Christians have imbibed, the
issue begins to look very different, very, very different.
List of
References
[1] I
saw someone say this publicly, but I have changed the wording and not named who
they are because it is not charitable or necessary. This comment is fairly
representative of how people who are Christian Zionists think, hence consider
it more of a type than simply one person’s comment.
No comments:
Post a Comment