Doubting Israeli Fidelity

eejoseph

Seventy-six years is more than sufficient for Jerusalem and Zion to dwell in safety and be the beacon for human beings to believe that there is one solution to conflict and family feuds.  Neither the pain that girds Israeli and Palestinian families.  Maybe the days are long gone when colonial powers and the colonized can jointly confess the same heritage.  Israeli crimes against humanity are out in the open.  The settler mentality is now deeply entrenched in the government: a brutal taking of land, a brazen mendacity about noble ideals, and the polemic against Gentiles.  Make no mistake: the forces that want Jerusalem divided also visualize the world fee of people who have different opinions from their own. Neither Palestinians nor Jews are ready for the Solomonic administration of the Holy Land.

Doubting Israeli accounts of the drive for peace and a civil society is inevitable, and the attacks by Jewish settlers and terrorist Palestinian factions are the product of depravity.

A blow to the head is suspect

There is a madness that accompanies the endless a cycle of bloodshed and deeper silos of political ideology in the Holy land. If we were to psychoanalyze the parties in the conflict, it would be reasonable to say that they are all suffering from a severe blow to the Head and their brains are now incapable of working.  We are at the place where only a distinctly Christian solution is likely to succeed; namely a rebirth from above. 

A tweak to my imagination

eejoseph,

What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?

I cannot count the times I have wished for something knowing that it was just a fantasy, only to be surprised when something with an even better “twist” arrives.   It is like misplacing an item and anxiously for hours looking for it and wondering,”Where, oh, where…”.   The thing I would like to tweak is my capacity to give up the anxiety more often and stick with the assurance that an even more fitting solution or delight is usually in the works.

The age of self-aggrandizement is over

eejoseph

Years ago I read a book by a well-known Christian author in which he said that Israel was the regional superpower.  I quickly recognized the spin the writer was engaged in but the proliferation of nonsense has reached catastrophic dimensions, with secular and religious authority seemingly in sync.  Christ never jockeyed to put himself or any of his apostles into Jewish or Roman government.  He also made it quite clear that his disciples did not need to draw attention to themselves by claiming to be exclusively his, one, by saying, by saying that it was neither in Jerusalem nor in Samaria where  worshiping the true God happens

Way too many Christians are setting up themselves to be “higher than” everyone else, a designation that was at the core of the Sinai Covenant.

Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; Exod 19:5

Hown many nations could God reasonably invite to be a treasured possession?

“For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. Deut 7:6

Wannabe victors of death and nothing else

People with little reverence for God can create an idol of deathless conquering believers who have no growth in grace to show. Twice in my life I have heard a preacher – obviously not a sent preacher – decree the end of death. One has to suppose that all the people who have died were outside of God’s “new” will. Humans being are mortal and immortality arrives at the end of the age. It is a fool, a fool, who instead of fixing their hopes on a new mind in his age and a new body in the next, dangle perfect ignorance in front of believers. We forgive them for their scattershot prophecy of reversal of fortunes and know that they only want to appear to have authority, when in fact they are mere storytellers. Stories in the Bible can inspire faith, but neither the ancient peopel of God nor their neighbours saw the end of death for any family. What a silly thing to say! the oldest people on the planet are less than 150 years old. How many Christians have died in faith? Even if the One with the Keys to Death and the Grave interruptred more than a dozen funerals death is still the last enemy to be sent packing. A premature immortality is a thirteen dollar bill. The death of every believer is preciius in God’s, so what preacher is going to make death a general shortcoming?

Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints. Ps 116:15

Is it a new sin when bereavement touches us? What happens to all those people who do not die in accordance with the PREACHER’S DECREE?

And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!” Rev 14:13

Who are we elevating? Is it Christ or our ancestral and tribal ignorance? It must be a new kind of humility that eludes the rest of Christ’s disciples, and even Christ himself. The crown of life is immortality, a gift without preamble, because in the resurrection of the dead death gets swallowed up. No-one can announce or predict the end of the age or resurrectioin morning. We ought to be magnifying the promise of Christ regarding the end of the mystery, not offering people deathlless, painless, trouble-free lives in the name of faith’s victory. We ought to be preaching the renewing of our minds after the image of love and humble service, not a fig leaf of irrational victories.

Political opposition leader, ignorant of the difference between win and lose

eejoseph,

What public figure do you disagree with the most?

In Western democracies people are elected to people’s houses with the losers taking down the role of “members opposite”.  However, many such persons take on satanic functions when they ridicule, and seek to overthrow the winning party.  Both slander and opposition are latent respectively in the Hebrew and Greek terms hassatan and ho diabolos.  If only they could have convinced the public to buy their ideas of governance at the polls.  Which brings to mind another important maxim, namely, “a house divided is sure to fall”