Although our daily life goes on with our various routines, there are some places in the globe where life is simply a continuous outbreak of the brutal.
One might think of the war theaters of Iraq and Afghanistan as examples. But picture yourself as a Palestinian Christian living in Israel. Sometimes fellow Arabs and neighboring Muslims don't trust you because you are Christian. At other times the Israelites don't trust you because you are Arab. Meanwhile, the universal Church rarely recognizes your existence. How are you to live?
Israel as a nation is a mess. Within its own borders it practices a ruthless and relentless apartheid alongside an utter disregard of world values. Through its intelligence agencies it continually inserts itself in the business of other nations. It plays a huge role in brokering arms deals throughout the Middle East and was pivotal in our invasion of Iraq. It has an overwhelmingly militaristic influence on our foreign policy, and has crafted a diabolical alliance with right-wing Christianity to culturally influence our political structure and undermine any notion of compassion toward the other. In other words, Israel and America are hand in glove.
This Friday and Saturday (Feb. 19-20) Sabeel, an organization founded by Palestinian Christian theologian Naim Ateek, will host a major conference, "What Does Justice Require of Us?" at St. Mark's Cathedral (for more information on Sabeel, go to www.fosna.org). The conference will focus on relationships between the United States, Israel and Palestine. It will include workshops on theology alongside the thorny political issues of water rights, civil rights, the role of the media, and the increased militarism of the entire region.
Ateek is a liberation theologian whose passionate desire is to see both Jews and Palestinians sharing the land in peace. Although the conference will have various points of view, the primary goal is building a network of courageous and compassionate friends who are no longer afraid of being smeared with the propaganda of being anti-Semitic whenever one voices a plea for justice. For Christians this conference could function as a significant gathering to find our voice, rooted in Hebraic scriptures and the faith of Jesus, so that we can combat the heresy of Christian Zionism.
For far too long we have allowed the end-times fearmongers to distort Christian hope, and to pervert Christian congregations. And for far too long we Christians have been complicit in damaging the reputation of the God who hears the cry of the poor and liberates the oppressed. Although Biblical Israel is the spiritual mother of the Christian Church, the contemporary political nation of Israel is not identical with the movement of God in history. As a faithful child of our beloved mother, it is time for the kids to intervene in order to help her see her destructive behavior. That will require courage, and as Annie Dillard once said, "you can't test courage cautiously."