When will we wake up?
Because grief will always journey through anger. And anger can be an act of love | More reflections on Israel/Palestine
This weekend, my soul was finished holding grief. It could no longer carry the silence and the stillness of mourning. It had moved into the listless frenzy of anger. Anger at death, anger at those in power, anger at the insidious irony of funding devastation as if it is justice. Yet, we remain asleep.
Wadea Al Fayoume should not have died. 1400+ Israelis should not have died. 4000+ Palestinians (in Gaza AND in the West Bank) should not have died.
Nearly 1800 Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza. That's almost as many children as I have characters to write with in an Instagram caption. Can that even sink in? Every letter, every space—a child. Yet, we remain silent.
All of us are responsible for our actions. Hamas is responsible, and must be held to account, for the brutal, grotesque, and evil massacre it committed. May there be justice and judgement for their acts. There is no liberation in murder.
The Israeli government is responsible for the utterly reprehensible and egregious acts of revenge it is enacting on millions in Gaza, indiscriminately—both now, and for the last 16 years of blockade, siege, and airstrike after airstrike. They will not, and cannot bring security, safety, or healing. There is no peace in collective punishment or ethnic cleansing.
The lie that revenge will make us safer or more whole is pernicious and catastrophic. We must reject it with all that we have.
But I address this missive mainly to those of you, Christians, who sit in silence or turn your nose or nod your heads while the world burns. In love, here is my question for you, in the same way I offer it to myself:
Will we wake up??
Will we, the people of God, weep for all people, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, color, or creed?
Will we, the people of God, open our eyes to see that we have failed to love our neighbor as ourselves, that when we pray for the fires of hell to open above the earth, we are praying to the god of war?
Will we, the people of God, actually live as though our God has indeed ransacked death to declare his Kingdom is undoing the (violent) ways of the world and making all things new?
Every bomb dropped, every rocket launched, every gun shot, every hostage taken, every building collapsed, every child starved, every hope dashed and will smashed and soul crushed by violence now and inherited through generations—all of it is the sign of our evil age, is the seed of our self-destruction, is a damning declaration of our utter blindness and our blood-soaked hands.
There is nothing good, nothing true, nothing beautiful about death.
Yet, we remain asleep. We have celebrated it. We have called it moral courage. Called it "Just War." The problem with Just War, as Brian Zahnd says, is that it is just war. I, for one, refuse to believe that the murder of 1700 children and the bombing of a church, burying entire families in the rubble, could ever be called just, could ever be ordained by God.
For all of the ways that we turn a blind eye to, that we condone, that we celebrate, that we fund war, we must wake up.
And we must do so directly for the sake of all of our neighbors: for the sake of Jewish Israelis, who deserve life, a safe home, and healing from generations of trauma and violence. And for the sake of Palestinians, across the world and especially in the region, who have endured dispossession and oppression for decades while the world has turned a deaf ear to their cries for justice. While the church has turned a deaf ear to the pleas for mercy from their very body—the community of Palestinian Christians that has carried the flame of the gospel through empire after empire.
There can be no peace until there is justice for all. Until those who have abused their power are held to account. Until oppression is upended and dignity is restored. Until the buried causes of injustice, deep in our shared history and springing to bitter-life today, are uprooted. Those who say and believe otherwise, who believe more weapons and utter destruction will bring peace, condemn Israelis and Palestinians to more suffering, more death, and more grief. That is not love. That is not support. That is not "standing with" anyone. That is the condemnation of a death sentence.
There is another way: the transformation of injustice into flourishing; the interruption of the downward spiral of violence by the radical act of justice-in-love; and the participation in the coming healing for the world and the undoing of violence, forever.
This way is the way that we, the people of God, have been given the invitation to journey on. But we remain asleep, and we have walked right past it.
May God have mercy on all of us, may we wake up, and may we find this other way.
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What you can do right now?
Call your Member of Congress and demand: Ceasefire Now! (Call script and Congressional office numbers included in link)
Sign these petitions:
An Open Letter from Palestinian Christians to Western Church Leaders and Theologians
Ceasefire Now: From American Christian Leaders
Give to Telos
Repent and believe.
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