How to Bless Israel

Continued from page 2

But there is an even more basic theological point to be made. Even if we believe that God wants the contemporary nation of Israel to prosper in the land that was promised to her ancestors, evangelical Christians do Israel no favors by refusing to criticize what the Israelis are presently doing in the Middle East. No one cared more about the well-being of the Hebrew people than the prophets of ancient Israel. Yet those prophets regularly criticized Israel's leaders for their corrupt practices. They minced no words when they were convinced that the people of Israel were guilty of injustice: "O Israel, return to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity" (Hosea 14: 1); "Woe to those who devise iniquity, and work out evil on their beds.[who] covet fields and take them by violence, also houses, and seize them" (Micah 2: 1-2). Why did they utter these harsh words? Because those prophets knew that God would never bless Israel unless that nation conformed to God's standards of justice and righteousness.

I know that the present situation is an extremely complex one. I am deeply appalled by suicide bombers who destroy the lives of innocent Israelis. I certainly have no clear proposal that would solve the present crisis.

My only point is this-and I believe it is an important one. For people who want to be faithful to what the Bible teaches, simply being "pro-Israel" has never been the posture that honors the will of God. Or to put it differently, to be pro-Israel in the proper sense is to urge-in word and deed-both Israel and her neighbors to heed the ancient formula for righteousness: "and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6: 8).