Israel Reflection

“How was your trip.”

“It was great. I learned and experienced so much.”

“That’s great to hear. I’m glad you enjoyed it. Gotta go. Have a great day.”

And so it goes: the one sentence reflection of my 4 months in Israel. There’s also a thirty-second option and a five-minute option. Here’s that one.

I went to Israel with the words of dozens of my friends and mentors ringing in my ears: “My time in Israel made the Bible come alive. You will never read Scripture the same again.” Looking back, I suppose they were perfectly correct, but that life springing up from the page came at me in ways I would not have expected.

Class after class, field study after field study, reading after reading, I was coming up with more problems and questions than solutions and answers. I found myself empathizing with those who go off to higher education and lose their faith. Every day I was clinging with a firmer grip to Abba, as the vortex tugged at me. I don’t think I ever came close to giving up, but I definitely felt the child-like faith: a faith that doesn't necessarily understand, but has no reason to doubt the faithfulness of the Father.

It started with a conflicting perspective of who the Jews were and what they believed. I was confronted with diligent and disciplined people who are far more knowledgeable of the Old Testament than I am. Do I really believe that God condemns them to eternal punishment, these people who seem to have so much respect for YHWH and respond in what they believe to be obedience? What about the Jews of Christ’s day? Am I arrogant enough to believe that I would have responded any differently to a human claiming to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Creator of the Universe?

A second problem was a growing understanding of my own heritage, from the ancient Israelites to the catholic church. How do you respond to the fact that the ancient Israelites were polygamists, and seemingly worse that YHWH apparently did not condemn it for a time. Is it more revolting or less revolting that the ancient Israelites also practiced Marzeah – an ancient type of séance that included eating in the burial place of the deceased? More recently there is the bloody heritage of the Crusades, for which the Muslims still hold a grudge. Even today there is the convoluted politics of Zionism. I readily considered myself a Zionist until I saw the human rights abuses of the nation of Israel and then it was not so easy. One cannot ignore people that suffer at the hands of those who make no distinction between the state of Israel and the promises of God to the Jewish people.

As the semester came to a close, I realized that my faith had grown so much stronger. It’s not because I found perfect answers to the injustices, mistakes, and problems. Rather, my faith had become firmly grounded in reality. The heritage of faith is made up of people just as depraved and wicked as the Ninevites, but the same powerful grace of God that Jonah wanted to withhold has broken through.The free will with which we were blessed continually chooses the lie of the devil over the truth of God. The ancient Israelite narrative and the narrative of the church show our depravity and God’s grace demonstrated by His willingness to be incarnate in a fallen world, redeeming all of creation to Himself. That salvation history is as messy as it is long.

The very fact that God’s Word displays the messiness of the narrative is proof that it is grounded in reality. If this message was mans product, the disciples surely would not have shown how ignorant they were. They were no less ignorant than those whom the speak of Jesus reproving. Almost the only difference is that they chose to believe and follow the reality of Christ.

A parallel story is told in Matthew chapter eleven. The Jews are described as children playing games in the market place. They were adhering to the practices of religion though their practices were not connected to reality just as the children were singing a dirge though there was no occasion for mourning. It is no wonder that the people did not respond with mourning. When John and Jesus came, revealing the true reality, these Jews gave credit to demons, drunkenness, and gluttony. They had religion and reality all mixed up. In the following verses Christ’s warning is frightening. Will we be like those who have witnessed Christ’s work, but are stuck in a fake created reality? I hope we will instead be those who realize the reality of our wickedness and repent in light of the revelation of God incarnate, Jesus Christ.