COMPLICIT CHRISTIANITY: How Gaza is shaping missions in the Middle East.
Complicit Christianity, pro-Israel advocates who support the military engagement in Gaza, will ultimately lead to the extinction of the Palestinian Church, the increase of persecution for local believers and a decrease in regional mission activities. The influence of Western Christian leaders and their vocal commitment to the destruction of Gaza could be compared to the Crusades which started in the 11th century, and will be equally devastating for the future of missions endeavours in the Middle East.
LEBANON: The People’s Reaction to the War.
At diaLOGOS (www.dialogos.co.za) and The Third Way, we are grateful to have friends, partners, and co-workers in regions that are impacted by the current conflict in Gaza. One of our partners currently serving as a diaLOGOS field journalist in Lebanon, wrote the following report:
A COLLECTIVE CALL TO THE GLOBAL CHURCH – from Middle East Evangelical Leaders
We, Palestinian, Egyptian, Jordanian, Lebanese, Syrian, and Iraqi evangelical leaders representing various churches and Christian ministries, warmly invite our brothers and sisters in the global Church to engage with us, listen to our stories, and together acknowledge the power of unity and the gospel to transform our broken and divided region.
A NEW CONSCIOUSNESS: Gazans killed will pass the 180,000 mark.
A recent report by the Lancet Group estimates that up to 186 000 deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza – 8% of the total population. This season demands of the church to become the visible and tangible tears of a compassionate God as He, and we, behold a community in ruins. As Christians, we need to reignite a Christian consciousness in order to reflect a Christ that came to redeem, rescue and release.
ELATION AND MOURNING – A costly exercise to free 4 hostages in Gaza
How do we as believers deal with the tension caused by the extremes of elation and anguish? How do we contextualise the celebration of freedom while seeking comfort for the innocent who suffered? How do we justify the deaths of so many people, especially 64 guiltless children, as the price of freedom for 4 hostages.
A DOMICIDAL WAR IN GAZA: and the blah blahs of the Christian Church
Sadly, it seems like the only appropriate response many Christians the West feel comfortable in offering to the current conflict in Gaza is the blah blah blah of theological rhetoric. Every discussion at every service and every meeting has been overshadowed by repeated, empty and overlong arguments of who is right and who is wrong, who is to blame and who is the victim. Quite frankly, I’ve had enough. And maybe you have too.
FAMINE IN GAZA: CONNECTED EXTREMES IN A DISCONNECTED WORLD
The IPC’s global hunger monitor says Gaza has already surpassed the first two criteria that define a famine- food shortage and malnutrition – and mass death will begin “imminently” without an immediate aid surge. But the global tragedy we are witnessing is not only because of war, hatred and extremism. The challenge is our connected extremes in a disconnected world.
GAZA – A PANDEMIC OF THE MIND
There is a new pandemic sweeping the globe. I suffer from it, you, as reader, suffer from it and every other human being suffer from it. This time, unlike the 2019 COVID pandemic that affected the lungs and restricted human movement, it affects the mind and restricts human reasoning. It’s called CONFIRMATION BIAS, perhaps better described as MYSIDE BIAS.
GAZA, THE GOOD SAMARITAN AND THE IDIOSYNCRASY OF JESUS
Today, two thousand years later, the setting of the Good Samaritan is fairly much the same as Gazans suffer beyond human understanding. Religious leaders, Christians, and politicians walk past, look at the broken bodies, quote scripture, fulfill their religious duties, shake their heads, shrug their shoulders, and carry on fulfilling the law. Ironically, their zeal for fulfilling the laws of Moses make them break the laws of Christ.
ISRAEL’S RIGHT TO DEFEND ITSELF: The 3 laws of a just war
Many Christians, with firm convictions that Israel is acting purely out of self-defence in Gaza, are good people acting in good faith. However, most of our thinking is often, for various reasons, warped by motivated reasoning and confirmation bias, and this leads us to replace complexity with simplicity. This is just human nature. The answer is not that simple though.