Bethlehem 2009: Christians should move beyond sentimentalism…
Sugary Sentimentalism and Harsh Reality
Sugary Sentimentalism rules supreme over Bethlehem during the Christmas season. On cards and in carols the place is depicted as a peaceful little town, with kindly inn-keepers, spotlessly clean cows, angels in the sky, and harmless shepherds on its hills. For the really gullible add some snow as well. Then and now, the reality is harshly different. Back in Jesus’ time, Bethlehem was under military occupation, the streets seethed with protest; there was violence in the air.
Today there is also violence in the air for the thirty thousand Arabs who live in Bethlehem, twenty percent of them Christians.
From the start of the second Intifada (Uprising) in 2000 against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Bethlehem was in the front line. Tear gas and missiles were regular visitors and then in April 2002 Israeli tanks rolled into Bethlehem’s streets, soldiers ran beside them and helicopter gunships hovered in the skies. Soon the ‘little town’ of Bethlehem was crackling with bullets and Palestinian leaders fled for refuge into the Church of the Nativity. Here they were besieged till early May, when they came out on condition they went into exile to the Gaza Strip or Europe. Eight Palestinians died, and one Armenian monk, killed by an Israeli sniper.
Life never returned to any sense of normality. Bethlehem remained a town under occupation with soldiers on the streets and all roads controlled by military check points. And then Israel’s determination to win security at any cost began to rise in the form of a giant concrete wall aimed at cutting of Palestinians from Israel. Known as the West Bank barrier it snakes down the Holy Land from Jenin in the north to further than Hebron in the south for 670 kilometers. The actual wall is eight meters high, and three meters wide, but the whole barrier with ditches, barbed wire and electric sensors is actually fifty meters wide with a round watch tower every two hundred meters.
Constantly threatened by suicide bombers slipping into their streets to blow up their innocents, one can understand why the Israelis wanted a practical security solution. They have a right to live in safety. But this wall casts a long shadow over the West Bank, and especially Bethlehem. As well as its menacing size, which visibly upset the Archbishop of Canterbury when he visited, it has sucked Bethlehem of any Christmas spirit. Locals have lost land and property to make way for the wall; any building within 35 meters of it has been destroyed; and most difficult of all, the ten mile journey to Jerusalem where many Palestinians have to work, can now take hours[1]. Though business this year has picked up, the immediate impact was to strangle Bethlehem’s tourist trade. In the 1990’s over a million tourists would come to visit the place of Jesus’ birth. After the violence they stopped, and now only come for a few hours with organized Israeli tours. They rarely stay the night, so crippling the hotel trade. Not surprisingly unemployment has soared. About half the Palestinian Christians of Bethlehem have decided that the town has no future for their families and left.
Those who stay, along with their Muslim neighbours and friends, must ponder the tragic irony of the stark fact that the place where the Peace of Prince was born is now surrounded by a dividing wall of hostility. It would be wise for all Christians this Christmas to join them: to move beyond the cheap sentimentality of the Bethlehem of the greeting cards, to consider how a true follower of Christ should respond to the sadness of this wall, and the fifty year conflict it symbolizes.
There are at least three ways a Christian can move beyond sentimentalism: to eschew Christian Zionism; rally round the wider church’s sensible and brave political engagement; and above all, to support evangelism and the encouragement of believers in the region.
Unhelpful Christian Zionism
Christian Zionism hurts the cause of Christ in Bethlehem. This teaching states that Israelis are still the people of God and that they have a divine right to all the land originally promised to Abraham. This position is unbiblical. Jesus said. ‘There is one shepherd and one flock (John 10:16), not two. The one flock is the people of God saved by grace in Christ’s sacrifice, now known as the church.
As for the teaching on the land, this is unbiblical as Christians are called to read the Old Testament through the New Testament, a fundamental law of Christian hermeneutics. So Christians today have no concern about a physical temple, as Jesus has made it absolutely clear that the locus for the acceptable sacrifice, and meeting with a holy God are in his body (John 2:18). It is the same for the other major symbols of Judaism such as circumcision or the Sabbath – in the New Testament they take on a different meaning. This is why it would be considered heresy for any Christian church to insist on the male being circumcised to become a member[2].
So regarding the symbol of the land the writer of Hebrews makes it absolutely clear that the Promised Land for Christians is not a physical place somewhere, but it is ‘a better country, that is a heavenly one’. (Hebrews 11:16). As well as being unbiblical this teaching is also irresponsibly unrealistic. For the land originally promised to Abraham includes all of Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, and large chunks of Egypt and Iraq. To preach that it is God’s will now for Israel to have all this land is an unjustified and unbiblical declaration of war on most of the Arab Middle East.
Christian Zionists often compound these errors by imagining they have Gnostic insight into the end of the world. This always entails scary scenarios of Israel being surrounded by its enemies for a huge Hollywood like Armageddon showdown. To increase the hype, these teachers always insist this is going to happen in the very near future. This is good for book sales, but again the emphasis is not biblical. Jesus told us that only the Father knows the hour when the end will come (Mark 13:32), and Paul famously got frustrated with the Thessalonians who were getting too easily ‘shaken in their minds’ about the coming of Christ. (2 Thessalonians 2:2). It is regrettable that Christian Zionists authors pretend to know about the mystery of the future that belongs to God. There have been over forty predictions about the end of the world in the church’s history[3] and from the Montanists in the 2nd C. who waited for Christ in the wastelands of Asia Minor, to the Millenarians just before the Reformation period, through to the modern cults of the Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons all have been consistently wrong. Now in the last forty years or so self appointed evangelical/charismatic ‘prophets’ have joined in and have also got it spectacularly wrong: in the 1960’s and 70’s they made the Soviet Union and communism centre stage in their ‘prophetic’ writings: now the Soviet Union is no more.
While in the West Christian Zionism is an irritating teaching that makes some preachers popular and rich by exploiting fear of the future and foreigners, in Bethlehem the impact is catastrophic. It is the enemy of evangelism, and it discourages Palestinian Christians. It harms evangelism because instead of hearing about the love of God in Christ for everyone, Arab Muslims get to hear about the love of God for Jews who armed with weapons from the ‘Christian’ West have divine right to steal their land. And if that is not off putting enough, they then hear that if they do not leave their land, they will face meltdown at Armageddon. Palestinian Christians are also discouraged as it is they who have to deal with the immediate hostility to Christianity the Zionist message incites in their Muslim neighbours, it is they who are also being told to leave the land, and while they are in fact the true brothers and sisters of Christians, as they wait at that wall to get to work they must sometimes feel that some believers in the West love the secular Israeli more.
Given this catastrophic impact, there is one simple way Christians can move beyond sentimentalism when it comes to Bethlehem this Christmas: eschew Christian Zionism[4]. And warn other believers that it is not a biblical teaching.
Sensible and brave political engagement
The second way to move beyond sentimentalism for Bethlehem is to rally round the sensible and brave political engagement of mainline church leaders. Springing from a Biblical belief that Christians should get involved in the world around them at a political level’[5] the main Christians denominations have spoken out for Christ’s standards in the Middle East. The Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, the Anglicans, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and the Assemblies of God –all have taken a stance in line with Christian justice. While there is varying opinion over the issue of whether Israel has a divine right to the land, there is general agreement over what a Christian position should be. It accepts the Jews have a right to live in security, and so fully support the existence of the state of Israel and consistently condemn Palestinian terrorist attacks. This position would enrage Arab extremists who see no reason why their land should be taken to pay for the European crime of the holocaust. While accepting the state of Israel, most Christian leaders call for a secure Palestinian state and condemn both Israel’s hard handed approach to putting down the Intifadas and its lenient policy towards illegal Jewish settlements on occupied territory. This position would enrage Israelis who believe they have a right to self defence, and the Orthodox who believe all the land belongs to the Jews.
The above is a sensible position, sensitive to the issue of justice for a persecuted people like the Jews, and the Palestinians, including thousands of Christians, who have lost land. The danger in this engagement though is that as the Palestinians have faced more difficulty, well illustrated by the wall, the distinctive Christian tone of the church’s contribution will be blurred and become indistinguishable to the general and usually angry protests of main line Palestinian groups. The church must unashamedly point to the teaching of Jesus as the source of its input on this conflict, not any nationalistic or secular creed. As long as the church refuses to dance to another’s tune, it should certainly keep up engaging in the issue, aiming to inspire hope, as the church did in South Africa, that a political settlement is possible.
This engagement is also brave as it involves getting involved with the warring parties as for example happened during the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002. As well as activists holed up in the church, there were Franciscan monks as well. And the negotiations that ended the siege were mediated by a priest from the Anglican Church, Canon Andrew White.
As well as infuriating Arab and Jewish extremists, this position of engaging with the political process taken by mainline Christian leaders also enrages Christian Zionists who have a regrettable tendency to then accuse their fellow believers of anti Semitism and a lack of faith in the Bible. Both accusations are ironic. for it is the Christian Zionist position that is laced with racism, both in terms of thinking that God would flout His own rules of justice to favour one group of people, of whom nearly half describe themselves as ‘secular’[6]. This racism is then intensified by the cavalier way destruction is prophesied over Israel’s enemies. As for not believing the Bible, it is usually wiser to respect the teaching of the mainline church who have rejected Zionism rather than a few self appointed preachers, however sensational their presentation.
So here we have a second way of moving on from the sentimentalism of the Bethlehem of the Christmas card: to support the teaching of the mainline churches and the attempts of the leaders to bring a political breakthrough to the Middle East.
Evangelism
While few of us can go to the frontline of political engagement as denominational leaders can, all Christians can get involved in the third way of responding to the tragedy symbolized by the Bethlehem wall. And that is to evangelize, encourage believers and where possible establish new churches. It is absolutely not the calling of the church to campaign for physical land for Jews or to speculate about the end of the world. Nowhere does Jesus command us to do that. But he does command us, and His apostles set us an example, to preach the Gospel to every nation and make disciples. Tragically Christian money has been going to fund the cost of bringing back non Christian Jews to the land of Israel because of the unbiblical teaching of Christian Zionism. How much better it would be if Christian money was spent on doing what Jesus has asked his disciples to do – evangelize. The Dutchman Brother Andrew, who spent most of his life smuggling Bibles into the Soviet Union, has set his fellow Christians a great example in this regard. Showing much more passion for people instead of prophecy he made it his main task from the mid 1980’s onwards to visit the Middle East to evangelize and encourage believers to stay. He sought out Arab Christian leaders, who were encouraged by his friendship as they felt ignored by much of the church. He also sought out the leaders of Hamas and the PLO, and made friends with them, which then gave him an opportunity to share the Gospel. So once in Gaza City he was invited to speak to 400 Hamas members, this is what he told them:
"I can't solve the problems you have with your enemies. But I can offer you the One who is called the Prince of Peace. You cannot have real peace without Jesus. And you cannot experience Him without forgiveness. He offers to forgive us of all our sins. But we cannot receive that forgiveness if we don't ask for it. The Bible calls this repentance and confession of sin. If you want it, then Jesus forgives. He forgave me and made me a new person. Now I'm not afraid to die because my sins are forgiven and I have everlasting life."
After this a Hamas leader said they had never heard a lecture about Christianity. This surely is the work of the true Christian. Not speculating from comfortable arm chairs about the end of the world, but sacrificially seeking out those alienated from the church and sharing Jesus Christ. Thankfully there are several hundred others who are doing this in Palestine and Israel, and they are seeing a response. Jews and Arabs are coming to faith and now in Christ they are brothers and sisters, the dividing wall of hostility is broken down. It is surely possible that Iranian Christians have a role to play here. They too can become missionaries and church planters in this region, even in Bethlehem, and while they too will feel the darkness of that wall, they will also rejoice as they see people come to the light of faith in the Saviour, born there all those years ago.
This then is the third way to move beyond the sentimentalism of the Bethlehem of the Christmas cards: to get involved in evangelizing the town and making friends with Christians and Muslims there.
All walls will fall, but the church will grow
There have been many walls put up to separate peoples; they all eventually fall. Gorgon’s Wall to separate the Iranian Sassanians from their enemies; Hadrian’s Wall, to separate the Scots and the English is no more; the Berlin Wall, to separate communist from capitalists, is no more. And one day, without doubt, this wall which casts its shadow over Bethlehem today will also fall. And when the wall falls and Arab and Jew are living together peacefully, at the heart of the peace will be a strong, vibrant church which has blessed all peoples, not with prophecy or racist claims about who should own the land, but with wise political engagement and above all, the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
[1] You can see what it is like in the early hours of the morning as Palestinians queue at the wall here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1FaWE1SIZk&feature=related
[2] The apostle Paul was actually blunter about people who insisted on this physical symbol: he cursed them, twice. Galatians 1:8-9.
[3] There have been at least forty four specific predictions about the end of the world in church history, all wrong. The most prolific sect for setting dates have been the Jehovah Witnesses: 1914, 1915, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941 and 1975 have been given. To see all the failed predictions visit http://www.religioustolerance.org/end_wrl2.htm
[4]. All the leaders of the established Orthodox churches of the Middle East reject Christian Zionism, as do the National Council of Churches in the USA, and main line Anglicanism.
[5] See article in issue number X of Kalameh for discussion of Christianity and politics.
[6] There are many reports that point to this figure. See for example http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3514242,00.html
Sugary Sentimentalism and Harsh Reality
Sugary Sentimentalism rules supreme over Bethlehem during the Christmas season. On cards and in carols the place is depicted as a peaceful little town, with kindly inn-keepers, spotlessly clean cows, angels in the sky, and harmless shepherds on its hills. For the really gullible add some snow as well. Then and now, the reality is harshly different. Back in Jesus’ time, Bethlehem was under military occupation, the streets seethed with protest; there was violence in the air.
Today there is also violence in the air for the thirty thousand Arabs who live in Bethlehem, twenty percent of them Christians.
From the start of the second Intifada (Uprising) in 2000 against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Bethlehem was in the front line. Tear gas and missiles were regular visitors and then in April 2002 Israeli tanks rolled into Bethlehem’s streets, soldiers ran beside them and helicopter gunships hovered in the skies. Soon the ‘little town’ of Bethlehem was crackling with bullets and Palestinian leaders fled for refuge into the Church of the Nativity. Here they were besieged till early May, when they came out on condition they went into exile to the Gaza Strip or Europe. Eight Palestinians died, and one Armenian monk, killed by an Israeli sniper.
Life never returned to any sense of normality. Bethlehem remained a town under occupation with soldiers on the streets and all roads controlled by military check points. And then Israel’s determination to win security at any cost began to rise in the form of a giant concrete wall aimed at cutting of Palestinians from Israel. Known as the West Bank barrier it snakes down the Holy Land from Jenin in the north to further than Hebron in the south for 670 kilometers. The actual wall is eight meters high, and three meters wide, but the whole barrier with ditches, barbed wire and electric sensors is actually fifty meters wide with a round watch tower every two hundred meters.
Constantly threatened by suicide bombers slipping into their streets to blow up their innocents, one can understand why the Israelis wanted a practical security solution. They have a right to live in safety. But this wall casts a long shadow over the West Bank, and especially Bethlehem. As well as its menacing size, which visibly upset the Archbishop of Canterbury when he visited, it has sucked Bethlehem of any Christmas spirit. Locals have lost land and property to make way for the wall; any building within 35 meters of it has been destroyed; and most difficult of all, the ten mile journey to Jerusalem where many Palestinians have to work, can now take hours[1]. Though business this year has picked up, the immediate impact was to strangle Bethlehem’s tourist trade. In the 1990’s over a million tourists would come to visit the place of Jesus’ birth. After the violence they stopped, and now only come for a few hours with organized Israeli tours. They rarely stay the night, so crippling the hotel trade. Not surprisingly unemployment has soared. About half the Palestinian Christians of Bethlehem have decided that the town has no future for their families and left.
Those who stay, along with their Muslim neighbours and friends, must ponder the tragic irony of the stark fact that the place where the Peace of Prince was born is now surrounded by a dividing wall of hostility. It would be wise for all Christians this Christmas to join them: to move beyond the cheap sentimentality of the Bethlehem of the greeting cards, to consider how a true follower of Christ should respond to the sadness of this wall, and the fifty year conflict it symbolizes.
There are at least three ways a Christian can move beyond sentimentalism: to eschew Christian Zionism; rally round the wider church’s sensible and brave political engagement; and above all, to support evangelism and the encouragement of believers in the region.
Unhelpful Christian Zionism
Christian Zionism hurts the cause of Christ in Bethlehem. This teaching states that Israelis are still the people of God and that they have a divine right to all the land originally promised to Abraham. This position is unbiblical. Jesus said. ‘There is one shepherd and one flock (John 10:16), not two. The one flock is the people of God saved by grace in Christ’s sacrifice, now known as the church.
As for the teaching on the land, this is unbiblical as Christians are called to read the Old Testament through the New Testament, a fundamental law of Christian hermeneutics. So Christians today have no concern about a physical temple, as Jesus has made it absolutely clear that the locus for the acceptable sacrifice, and meeting with a holy God are in his body (John 2:18). It is the same for the other major symbols of Judaism such as circumcision or the Sabbath – in the New Testament they take on a different meaning. This is why it would be considered heresy for any Christian church to insist on the male being circumcised to become a member[2].
So regarding the symbol of the land the writer of Hebrews makes it absolutely clear that the Promised Land for Christians is not a physical place somewhere, but it is ‘a better country, that is a heavenly one’. (Hebrews 11:16). As well as being unbiblical this teaching is also irresponsibly unrealistic. For the land originally promised to Abraham includes all of Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, and large chunks of Egypt and Iraq. To preach that it is God’s will now for Israel to have all this land is an unjustified and unbiblical declaration of war on most of the Arab Middle East.
Christian Zionists often compound these errors by imagining they have Gnostic insight into the end of the world. This always entails scary scenarios of Israel being surrounded by its enemies for a huge Hollywood like Armageddon showdown. To increase the hype, these teachers always insist this is going to happen in the very near future. This is good for book sales, but again the emphasis is not biblical. Jesus told us that only the Father knows the hour when the end will come (Mark 13:32), and Paul famously got frustrated with the Thessalonians who were getting too easily ‘shaken in their minds’ about the coming of Christ. (2 Thessalonians 2:2). It is regrettable that Christian Zionists authors pretend to know about the mystery of the future that belongs to God. There have been over forty predictions about the end of the world in the church’s history[3] and from the Montanists in the 2nd C. who waited for Christ in the wastelands of Asia Minor, to the Millenarians just before the Reformation period, through to the modern cults of the Jehovah Witnesses and Mormons all have been consistently wrong. Now in the last forty years or so self appointed evangelical/charismatic ‘prophets’ have joined in and have also got it spectacularly wrong: in the 1960’s and 70’s they made the Soviet Union and communism centre stage in their ‘prophetic’ writings: now the Soviet Union is no more.
While in the West Christian Zionism is an irritating teaching that makes some preachers popular and rich by exploiting fear of the future and foreigners, in Bethlehem the impact is catastrophic. It is the enemy of evangelism, and it discourages Palestinian Christians. It harms evangelism because instead of hearing about the love of God in Christ for everyone, Arab Muslims get to hear about the love of God for Jews who armed with weapons from the ‘Christian’ West have divine right to steal their land. And if that is not off putting enough, they then hear that if they do not leave their land, they will face meltdown at Armageddon. Palestinian Christians are also discouraged as it is they who have to deal with the immediate hostility to Christianity the Zionist message incites in their Muslim neighbours, it is they who are also being told to leave the land, and while they are in fact the true brothers and sisters of Christians, as they wait at that wall to get to work they must sometimes feel that some believers in the West love the secular Israeli more.
Given this catastrophic impact, there is one simple way Christians can move beyond sentimentalism when it comes to Bethlehem this Christmas: eschew Christian Zionism[4]. And warn other believers that it is not a biblical teaching.
Sensible and brave political engagement
The second way to move beyond sentimentalism for Bethlehem is to rally round the sensible and brave political engagement of mainline church leaders. Springing from a Biblical belief that Christians should get involved in the world around them at a political level’[5] the main Christians denominations have spoken out for Christ’s standards in the Middle East. The Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, the Anglicans, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and the Assemblies of God –all have taken a stance in line with Christian justice. While there is varying opinion over the issue of whether Israel has a divine right to the land, there is general agreement over what a Christian position should be. It accepts the Jews have a right to live in security, and so fully support the existence of the state of Israel and consistently condemn Palestinian terrorist attacks. This position would enrage Arab extremists who see no reason why their land should be taken to pay for the European crime of the holocaust. While accepting the state of Israel, most Christian leaders call for a secure Palestinian state and condemn both Israel’s hard handed approach to putting down the Intifadas and its lenient policy towards illegal Jewish settlements on occupied territory. This position would enrage Israelis who believe they have a right to self defence, and the Orthodox who believe all the land belongs to the Jews.
The above is a sensible position, sensitive to the issue of justice for a persecuted people like the Jews, and the Palestinians, including thousands of Christians, who have lost land. The danger in this engagement though is that as the Palestinians have faced more difficulty, well illustrated by the wall, the distinctive Christian tone of the church’s contribution will be blurred and become indistinguishable to the general and usually angry protests of main line Palestinian groups. The church must unashamedly point to the teaching of Jesus as the source of its input on this conflict, not any nationalistic or secular creed. As long as the church refuses to dance to another’s tune, it should certainly keep up engaging in the issue, aiming to inspire hope, as the church did in South Africa, that a political settlement is possible.
This engagement is also brave as it involves getting involved with the warring parties as for example happened during the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002. As well as activists holed up in the church, there were Franciscan monks as well. And the negotiations that ended the siege were mediated by a priest from the Anglican Church, Canon Andrew White.
As well as infuriating Arab and Jewish extremists, this position of engaging with the political process taken by mainline Christian leaders also enrages Christian Zionists who have a regrettable tendency to then accuse their fellow believers of anti Semitism and a lack of faith in the Bible. Both accusations are ironic. for it is the Christian Zionist position that is laced with racism, both in terms of thinking that God would flout His own rules of justice to favour one group of people, of whom nearly half describe themselves as ‘secular’[6]. This racism is then intensified by the cavalier way destruction is prophesied over Israel’s enemies. As for not believing the Bible, it is usually wiser to respect the teaching of the mainline church who have rejected Zionism rather than a few self appointed preachers, however sensational their presentation.
So here we have a second way of moving on from the sentimentalism of the Bethlehem of the Christmas card: to support the teaching of the mainline churches and the attempts of the leaders to bring a political breakthrough to the Middle East.
Evangelism
While few of us can go to the frontline of political engagement as denominational leaders can, all Christians can get involved in the third way of responding to the tragedy symbolized by the Bethlehem wall. And that is to evangelize, encourage believers and where possible establish new churches. It is absolutely not the calling of the church to campaign for physical land for Jews or to speculate about the end of the world. Nowhere does Jesus command us to do that. But he does command us, and His apostles set us an example, to preach the Gospel to every nation and make disciples. Tragically Christian money has been going to fund the cost of bringing back non Christian Jews to the land of Israel because of the unbiblical teaching of Christian Zionism. How much better it would be if Christian money was spent on doing what Jesus has asked his disciples to do – evangelize. The Dutchman Brother Andrew, who spent most of his life smuggling Bibles into the Soviet Union, has set his fellow Christians a great example in this regard. Showing much more passion for people instead of prophecy he made it his main task from the mid 1980’s onwards to visit the Middle East to evangelize and encourage believers to stay. He sought out Arab Christian leaders, who were encouraged by his friendship as they felt ignored by much of the church. He also sought out the leaders of Hamas and the PLO, and made friends with them, which then gave him an opportunity to share the Gospel. So once in Gaza City he was invited to speak to 400 Hamas members, this is what he told them:
"I can't solve the problems you have with your enemies. But I can offer you the One who is called the Prince of Peace. You cannot have real peace without Jesus. And you cannot experience Him without forgiveness. He offers to forgive us of all our sins. But we cannot receive that forgiveness if we don't ask for it. The Bible calls this repentance and confession of sin. If you want it, then Jesus forgives. He forgave me and made me a new person. Now I'm not afraid to die because my sins are forgiven and I have everlasting life."
After this a Hamas leader said they had never heard a lecture about Christianity. This surely is the work of the true Christian. Not speculating from comfortable arm chairs about the end of the world, but sacrificially seeking out those alienated from the church and sharing Jesus Christ. Thankfully there are several hundred others who are doing this in Palestine and Israel, and they are seeing a response. Jews and Arabs are coming to faith and now in Christ they are brothers and sisters, the dividing wall of hostility is broken down. It is surely possible that Iranian Christians have a role to play here. They too can become missionaries and church planters in this region, even in Bethlehem, and while they too will feel the darkness of that wall, they will also rejoice as they see people come to the light of faith in the Saviour, born there all those years ago.
This then is the third way to move beyond the sentimentalism of the Bethlehem of the Christmas cards: to get involved in evangelizing the town and making friends with Christians and Muslims there.
All walls will fall, but the church will grow
There have been many walls put up to separate peoples; they all eventually fall. Gorgon’s Wall to separate the Iranian Sassanians from their enemies; Hadrian’s Wall, to separate the Scots and the English is no more; the Berlin Wall, to separate communist from capitalists, is no more. And one day, without doubt, this wall which casts its shadow over Bethlehem today will also fall. And when the wall falls and Arab and Jew are living together peacefully, at the heart of the peace will be a strong, vibrant church which has blessed all peoples, not with prophecy or racist claims about who should own the land, but with wise political engagement and above all, the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
[1] You can see what it is like in the early hours of the morning as Palestinians queue at the wall here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1FaWE1SIZk&feature=related
[2] The apostle Paul was actually blunter about people who insisted on this physical symbol: he cursed them, twice. Galatians 1:8-9.
[3] There have been at least forty four specific predictions about the end of the world in church history, all wrong. The most prolific sect for setting dates have been the Jehovah Witnesses: 1914, 1915, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941 and 1975 have been given. To see all the failed predictions visit http://www.religioustolerance.org/end_wrl2.htm
[4]. All the leaders of the established Orthodox churches of the Middle East reject Christian Zionism, as do the National Council of Churches in the USA, and main line Anglicanism.
[5] See article in issue number X of Kalameh for discussion of Christianity and politics.
[6] There are many reports that point to this figure. See for example http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3514242,00.html
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