By Kevin Barron
Psalm 25:22 has the prayer, “Redeem Israel, O God, out of all his troubles.” This takes me back to Genesis 12:3: “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” These words in Genesis are God’s word to Abraham when he was still Abram. This part of God’s call to Abraham to leave everything behind, everything that was familiar, predictable and safe, and go to a place he did not know.
This was the beginning of the nation of Israel.
Thousands of years later, the plan of God for the nation of Israel and the Jewish people has been disrupted once more. The events that began October 7 have been all over the news ever since.
We have seen and read about things that no one should have to see and read about. There are a lot of things to consider about Israel and the Middle East, and I am certainly no expert. However, I would like to give you a few things to think about.
One is that all people matter. We must not lose track of the fact that every person in this conflict, be they Muslim or Jewish, Arab or Israeli, male or female, young or old, they are all valuable to God.
God created us all, he loves us all, he calls every one of us to love and serve him. Through the power of Jesus Christ his Son, God offers the good news of salvation to whoever will follow him.
God weeps at the death of every Israeli civilian who died in the senseless attacks recently, and continues to die in the fighting and bombing. He weeps at the death of every Palestinian civilian in the Gaza strip who died, and continues to die in the fighting and bombing. God weeps at the death of every Israeli soldier and at the death of every Hamas terrorist. He weeps for all, and so should we.
Another thing to remember is there is no justification, no explanation, for the horrendous attacks, torture, and execution of people who had nothing to do with the conflict. These innocent men, women, youth and infants died for no good reason, only evil ones.
One can disagree with the methods Israel uses in occupying disputed lands and administering those territories and dealing with unrest and attacks that take place, but there is no equivalence, moral or otherwise, between what Israel has done in its treatment of the Palestinians and what Hamas has done in its butchery of the innocents.
It is truly barbaric. In modern times, we forget that Hamas is using methods that were common in much of human history. The Assyrians and Babylonians, the Greeks and the Vikings, the Mongols and the Aztecs, all used similar methods. In fact, even here in North America, entire villages were slaughtered in warring between various Native American tribes, centuries before the arrival of European explorers.
The idea that those who are not involved in combat should be protected is a relatively recent idea, and its origin, like so much of Western civilization, is due to the influence of Christian ideals and values. Christianity believes that every person is valuable because every person is made in the image and likeness of God. Israel, as it bends over backwards to clear civilians from the areas of the Gaza Strip it plans to invade, as it strives to bomb only those places being used by Hamas and not those areas where innocent people live, does so in response to the Christian view of the importance of each individual that has been bedrock to Western values. It is Hamas that does not value life.
They do not value the lives of Israelis and they do not value the lives of the Palestinians they pretend to protect.
Their behavior in this regard is shameless. I do not see how any civilized person cannot understand this point and absolutely condemn such actions.
Hamas is not alone in such actions, to be sure. One need only look to the Rwandan genocide back in the 1990s, the present activities of terrorist groups such as Boko Haran, and the treatment by governments such as China, North Korea, and Burma of people within their borders.
But no matter who are members of this rogue’s gallery, it does not make it right. It is always wrong.
So what can we do? We can seek once again to recover the values and concepts of Western civilization. The barbarians are at the gates because many of those who are supposed to rally the troops and lead the way are either silent or sadly uninformed.
If Western civilization were to totally crumble, it would be a very dark world indeed. We also must recapture the Christian teachings that are at the heart of Western civilization. Alexis de Tocqueville, astute observer of the early United States of America, is credited with saying, “America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”
The only way for America to be truly good is for it to serve the God of the Bible, and it will only be truly great when it is truly good. One last thing we must do is pray. We must pray for peace. We must pray for the protection of all innocent people. We must pray for all people to come to know Jesus Christ. Then we must do all we can to see that our prayers are answered.
Kevin Barron is the pastor of Perryville and Crossroads United Methodist churches. He can be reached by phone at 573-547-5200 or via email at kdbarron@gmail.com.
