In our study in Proverbs, we are told repeatedly that you cannot teach a fool. You can help them keep their folly to themselves only if you hold dominion and are prepared to use violence. For most of us, we seldom have dominion and violence is a real chore anyway. Thus, we end up often keeping our peace.
Easily the single biggest folly I face is people defending the modern State of Israel. Here in Oklahoman, very few people represent any opposition to Israel. I do see more support for, say, the Palestinians on the Net. However, I’m not sure all of those defending voices are genuine. I’m pretty sure at least a few of the more popular ones are controlled opposition.
Here’s the moral position: There is no single right answer. There are as many answers as there are Palestinians and Israelis combined. In other words, the moral consideration is that we are all individuals and even the people living there in that part of the world may not have a clear moral perspective. What they claim to want may not have any connection to reality in the first place.
God says in His Word quite bluntly that He is personally in control of all human politics. He also says flatly that it’s really none of our concern if we seek to serve Him. He is writing human history, so mucking about in politics distracts us from His calling and mission. That’s not to say we can have no personal moral reaction to this or that event, but that there is no one right answer. All human governments violate His revelation, so He isn’t working with any of them under any of the Law Covenants that He revealed. He doesn’t work with governments any other way, except to herd them like mindless beasts.
Is the State of Israel evil? Absolutely. Are the Palestinians good people? Not particularly. Even then, I’m using only relative terms. If you go to that land and deal with particular individuals, you’ll find things you can tolerate and things you cannot. And different folks there will find us varying degrees of tolerable in return. But outside of a personal encounter, we have precious little moral grounds for having much say in any of their conflicts.
As a scholar, I suppose I can tell you that Israel could easily drive the Palestinians out, but it seems there is some crazy government policy that requires they keep them around and abuse them. Do you wonder why the Palestinians stay when people suffering far less difficulty are stampeding out of that part of the world? There is no simple answer to that, I assure you. As a scholar of the Bible, I would assure you that God alone can change this awful situation. He alone can decide when it’s time to move things and people, same as He does with all the rest of the human race in other parts of the world. They don’t see His hand because they refuse to know Him.
Whenever I encounter a rabid fool spouting off about supporting Israel or defending the Palestinians, or just about any other brand of activism, I usually say nothing unless I can discern a moment when God wants me to speak.
