After receiving several emails about my last column – titled “Carlson, Levin, and the Debate Tearing Conservatives Apart” – the notion of revisiting the subject occurred to me. The issue certainly hasn’t gone away, I thought. Then, while scrolling through social media, I saw a local pastor standing at the pulpit, behind which hung, not only a cross, but the Israeli flag. I knew I had my subject.
There seems to be little nuance from either camp on this issue, a fact that calls out for a solution. On the Carlson side, I was surprised to hear the latter promoting isolationism so much in a recent interview with Piers Morgan that he basically blamed Winston Churchill for the Nazi Blitz. On the other hand, there is what I can’t help but describe as theological problems in the pro-Israel camp.
Full disclosure: I grew up in a dispensational environment. As I grew older and pastors changed, our church developed a full-on end-times culture in which a parishioner’s view on the nation of Israel was a basic litmus test, not on a person’s salvation, but regarding Christian fellowship. If you didn’t have the right view of Israel, they would “break fellowship” with you.
This was roughly 10 years ago, a time in which I had already turned toward a more traditional Christian practice. I remember thinking how odd it was that the focus wasn’t on a person’s view of Our Lord – the central object of our faith – and instead on something so peripheral, indeed, on a doctrine that arguably didn’t exist until the 19th century, nearly 2,000 years after the Resurrection of Our Lord. Did the Dispensationalists realize that, by breaking fellowship with those who didn’t hold their view of Israel, they were doing so with a majority of the saints that came before them?
I’m not sure they did, because since then I’ve come to believe that their mind is largely on something else entirely, namely, protecting a cherished belief in which they have so much invested, similar to an inventor protecting a coveted trademark.
As mentioned above, for Christians to choose Israel as a hill to die on not only separates them from the majority of orthodox believers over the past 2,000 years and removes focus from the Author and Finisher of our Faith, it also places one’s theological foundation on a new-fangled idea that does not share – at least historically – broad support.
However, it isn’t for these reasons that an Israeli flag ought not to be featured in a Christian house of worship. For this, we must turn – somewhat ironically, for the Scriptures are full of irony – to the Old Testament nation of Israel itself, and its strict procedures on how, and how not, to enter the House of God. “But let none come into the house of the LORD, save the priests, and they that minister of the Levites,” it says in II Chronicles, “they shall go in, for they are holy: but all the people shall keep the watch of the LORD.” Further, there were cleansing rituals and requirements that had to be adhered to, in addition to the outright denial of certain people or groups.
I’m not here to say that these Old Testament dictates are still in place, for we are no longer living under these laws; but neither does it mean that any old pet project can be consecrated to our faith and brought forth into God’s sanctuary without evoking the Almighty’s judgment. Nadab and Abihu once tried this. Their attempt was called strange fire, ending in their destruction.
Neither is my purpose to beat up on well-meaning Christians, for I believe this is the case with most Dispensationalists. Rather, as with my last column, my desire is to offer an alternative path to the immoderate positions currently expressed.
Therefore, my solution is this: Despite the isolationist impulses of those in the Carlson camp, we should accept reality that, rightly or wrongly, we have an international economy, and the nation of Israel is our best ally in the oil-rich Middle East. They are also a partner against Islamist aggression. And, finally, there is the theological point that, according to Saint Paul, this people, once the apple of God’s eye, will once again return to the fold to be our true brothers and sisters – a fact that does not hold true for the nation of Islam.
Yet this does not mean we should adopt into our sanctuaries what the Almighty has not allowed to happen yet, which is in a sense what the local pastor was doing with his Israeli flag. Nor does it mean that we should refrain from reasonable criticism of the Israeli nation when such criticism is in order – as it no doubt has been of late. For instance, if the reports were true that Prime Minister Netanyahu pushed President Trump for a regime change in Iran, then I believe Trump was correct in taking out the nuclear facilities – then going no further.
Trump did not veer too far to the left or right in dealing with Iran, but in a very practical way took care of the job at hand. In so doing Trump revealed himself as an Israeli realist, and I think we should be Israeli realists as well.
Along with his father, Allen Keller runs a lumber business in Stevenson, Alabama. He has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Florida State University and an MBA from University of Virginia. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to [email protected].
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