Shannon Ashley,
You are free to share your opinion on the Internet, but your logic simply does not follow. For one thing, you label the American Christian support of Israel as being “selfish” instead of focusing on “others.” The problem is that before the time of Kant, selfishness was not regarded as a bad thing. If you said a man was selfish it simply meant that he took care of himself.
That’s why even English translations of the Bible before that time (such as the King James) did not use that term in a negative context (or at all for that matter).
C.S. Lewis said the following
If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
The Weight of Glory, by C.S. Lewis
As for your “Messianic Jewish” friends from your particular circle who deny the Trinity, why should I care if they accuse Israel of human rights violations?
If you want to accuse a nation of human rights violations, try showing verifiable evidence of such crimes. The anecdotal feelings of your friends from your fringe religious group are irrelevant to the validity of your claims.
And of course, why is it that those on the Left single out Israel, for alleged crimes, but when we have real evidence for actual crimes from Muslim and Arab nations, they are ignored? Why does the Left so often single out Israel, but ignore Iran?
I could take the time to respond to the rest of your article point by point, but honestly, your piece has no substance to it. All it amounts to is you not liking the Evangelical Right, and not liking Trump and issues with your mother not approving of the weird religious group you joined.
And that’s all well and fine. If you want to write about your feelings and your personal experiences, write about your feelings and personal experiences. But what you’ve written here really has very little to do with why Christians support Israel’s right to exist.
The fact of the matter remains that God does call us to bless Israel. It is right there in Scripture. Just because you scoff at it does not make it go away.
Also, yes, I do hope that the Jews on a large scale embrace Jesus as their Messiah. That is not elitism, that is caring about other people. Selfishness — i.e. caring for myself, does not mean that I don’t care about other people too.
As someone who grew up in the United States, I’ve had many of the greatest privileges the world has ever seen. My access to modern medicine growing up was greater than what the world’s richest kings had access to 100 years before. I’ve also had access to clean water, electricity, and color television.
And you know what? I want other people to have access to what I’ve been able to enjoy too. Somehow in the book of most Leftists that makes me a “Racist,” as if their desire for cultures to remain frozen in time were somehow morally superior to modernization. I don’t see white Leftists painting themselves blue and running around Northern Europe in Animal skins in the middle of winter. So why do people on the Left fight so hard to keep nonwhites down?
I hope that within my lifetime, every man, woman and child can have access to color TV, clean water, good food, and basic medicine and that they can hear about the God who loves them and who offers them Salvation.
And no, I don’t want them to hear about that from the false preachers on TV like Benny Hinn or Joel Osteen.
