Tuesday, July 6, 2010

peace quote of the day

I'm not sure this qualifies as a peace quote.  Maybe a justice quote?  Or maybe it's just a self-interested attempt to separate myself from Christian Zionism.  It just continues to baffle me how anyone reading the bible could believe that God is somehow disinterested in Palestinian pain.  Could believe that prophetic fulfillment is somehow more important than mercy, justice, or compassion.  Could believe that speaking out against murder, theft, and lawlessness is somehow to be anti-Israeli.  

Was it not the prophets -- those who condemned Israel the most strongly -- who wept for her the most passionately? "Since my people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn, and horror grips me. . . . Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears!  I would weep day and night for the slain of my people." (Jer. 8:21-9:1)

But perhaps it is only those who can do both who have the right to speak  We talk of the "prophetic voice," but until I can weep over Israel's pain, do I really have the right to say anything at all?

Jeremiah 7:3-11:
This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place.  Do not trust in deceptive words and say, "This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD!"  If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers for ever and ever.  But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.

Will you steal and murder . . . and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, "We are safe" -- safe to do all these detestable things?  Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you?  But I have been watching! declares the LORD.

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