How do we not lose our evangelical souls in the Middle East? While we will not always agree on how to carry out our responsibilities in the public and political spheres, one thing we must commit to is equally critiquing all parties involved in a conflict…Yes, Israel policies have sometimes increased Palestinian suffering and have been injurious but Arab governments themselves have also contributed to this situation—Egypt has closed their own borders and tunnels to Gaza and has kept aid from getting in.  And so has Hamas, who hid their soldiers at Al Shifa hospital, and who Palestinians themselves accuse of gross mismanagement, corruption and violence towards anyone who opposes them.

The current war between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas continues to ratchet up heat surrounding the most polarizing issue in our world today.  As Christians observing all this, our response can sometimes produce more heat than light but recently published articles like this one are well-intentioned attempts to navigate through difficult and complex current events.
Most Christians would agree that the events in the Middle East are more than political and military engagements—indeed, they also engage, at their core, moral questions concerning violence, justice and power.  But the difficulty for Christians—and where the debate really lies—is the movement from moral principles to public policy.  Suddenly, biblical principles struggle to shine with their eternal clarity as they bog down in the muck of a sinful world.  A complicated issue is made more complicated as a result.
Some have rightly argued that Dispensational theology—a recent invention in two millennia of theological reflection—has given rise to a carte blanche treatment of modern Israel and its policies towards Palestinians and Arabs.  If the modern, political state of Israel is indeed the prophetic outcome of the Scriptures, it makes sense to prejudicially side with the eternal victors as a moral “right.”  But modern, secular Israel is not a fulfillment of prophecy and Christians should be rebuked for embracing a position so poorly supported in the Scriptures themselves while ignoring or minimizing the plight of non-Jews made in His image that have suffered greatly throughout the Middle East.
But woe to Christians and anyone else who swing the pendulum so far the other way that they generate further confusion.  And because there is currently so much misinformation lobbed at us regarding Israel, it deserves an informed response. It has been argued, for instance, that because Zionism—the 19th century movement to create a homeland for Jews that eventually culminated in the establishment of Israel in 1948—is a secular enterprise, “Orthodox” and “Torah Jews” are even today opposed to the State of Israel as a secular, political entity.  This is proclaimed as evidence that Zionism, despite its current success, isn’t supported by religious Judaism but the facts do not bear that out.
While many Orthodox Jews did oppose Zionism before World War II, the Holocaust changed all that.  And just three years ago, Pew Research noted that support for the state of Israel is actually strongest among Orthodox Jews.
Another common assertion is as follows: when Israel was founded in 1948, Israelis immediately practiced “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” by “forcibly” removing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Arabs from their land (it is also claimed this happened again in 1967).  What isn’t given is proper context—the day after Israel declared its independence, Arab nations surrounding Israel launched a surprise assault in a united effort to sweep the Jews out to the sea (and it was war—in this case the “Six Dar War”—that preceded the 1967 refugee crisis as well).  It also ignores the historical facts that many of those who left did so on their own accord either out of fear of reprisal or because they rejected the possibility of co-existence with Jews.
It is morally troubling when assertions are made in such a way as to place moral blame almost solely on the Jews without understanding context and history.  The pursuit of a homeland is about more than a secular 19th century philosophy but about freedom from constant persecution.  Jews have been a minority for two millennia and wherever they have lived, persecution has followed them like a shadow.
There were the pogroms of 19th century Russia.  There was the Farhud (Arabic for “violent dispossession”) of 1941 Baghdad, home to an ancient Jewish community 2500 years old, where Arabs committed barbaric atrocities similar to those perpetrated by Hamas on October 7th towards Israelis.  And of course the Holocaust that killed six million Jews, which did more to unite differing Jewish opinion on Israel than anything else.  Jews have repeatedly been expelled from their lands and have come to Israel not as colonizers but as refugees.  The feeling of being hunted and hated is ever present.
Second, those opposed to Israel often use the “moral equivalency” fallacy.  It goes like this: “A has done bad things but so has B.  So B (in this case, Israel) is no better than A (Hamas).” For example, it has been said “Jews have their own terrorist organizations like Irgun,” ignoring the fact they were dismantled seventy years ago.  Or Israel is accused of genocide (while citing no evidence they are seeking to kill a whole people group) so that they are made to look no better than those seeking to kill them.
No, let us be crystal clear here—Israel is nothing like Hamas.  Let us not forget the charter of Hamas—its “constitution” and guiding document—which set out quite publicly its intention to destroy Israel and Jews when it said, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
We now know that on October 7th—in the largest loss of life of Jews since the Holocaust—Hamas committed beheadings, extreme sexual violence (mutilating sexual organs in addition to rape) and torture (though there are still people, just like the Holocaust deniers before them, who deny this and accuse Jews of fabrication).
It isn’t Israel that seeks to practice genocide (despite those now claiming Israelis are now “Nazis” in this war) but those who oppose them who are committed to obliterating their very existence.
Today, in the U.S and around the world, antisemitism is on the rise.  In the U.S., in the last year alone, incidents of violence, hate speech and similar behavior is up nearly 400% among Jews while anti-Muslim acts have risen only slightly.   The chant, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” which calls for the elimination of Israel and its Jews, is chanted freely in the streets by millions worldwide.  College campuses, bastions of far-left politics, have been the scenes of violence towards Jews at places like Harvard and Tulane University while the presidents of Harvard, MIT and University of Pennsylvania, under oath this week in Congressional testimony, couldn’t bring themselves to admit that calling for the genocide of Jews in speech violates codes of conduct and ethics on their campuses.
Meanwhile, on those same campuses, if you “misgender” a trans student, you are guilty of violence and hate towards that student and are then punished.  Such is the moral bankruptcy and hypocrisy of our times.
So, how do we not lose our evangelical souls in the Middle East? While we will not always agree on how to carry out our responsibilities in the public and political spheres, one thing we must commit to is equally critiquing all parties involved in a conflict (Israel is under a microscope in the global community so we don’t have to wonder if they will be critiqued).  Yes, Israel policies have sometimes increased Palestinian suffering and have been injurious but Arab governments themselves have also contributed to this situation—Egypt has closed their own borders and tunnels to Gaza and has kept aid from getting in.  And so has Hamas, who hid their soldiers at Al Shifa hospital, and who Palestinians themselves accuse of gross mismanagement, corruption and violence towards anyone who opposes them.  We must ensure that we do not create double standards concerning morality.
Violence in the Middle East is intractable, it seems, this side of the New Heavens and New Earth regardless of who perpetrates it. And so as we seek with wisdom to know how to act, we must also pray, “Maranatha, Come Lord Jesus!”
Scott Armstrong is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America is Lead Pastor at City Church-Eastside (PCA) in Atlanta, Ga.

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Run to God in prayer so God’s peace – right relationship with him, the joy of being his child, in his care, and it not all depending on you – guards your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  They must train themselves to think about the things around them that are excellent and praiseworthy not just the brokenness.

So one of the first things we need to do is stop seeing joy and hardship as opposites or adversaries. To stop making our joy circumstantial.
Sometimes in a bible passage there’s a thread that runs through the passage, sometimes there are lots. In Philippians 4 there’s  “in the Lord”. It’s key. They’re to “stand firm in the Lord”, to help Euodia and Syntyche “agree in the Lord”.  And they are to rejoice in the Lord.  All of his instructions are to be worked out in that context, as people who are in the Lord.
It’s a joy that has a certain hope in Jesus return(5) and so knows God is near, that his kingdom is certain and our hope is sure that leads us to gentleness and graciousness with others not a manipulative power tripping leadership.  It’s rejoicing in Jesus that enables us to care for the weak and injured not exploit them.
And it’s rejoicing in the Lord that will lead us to be quick to prayer and praise(6-8) when we feeling anxious, because we know he cares for us and wants us to give him our burdens and anxieties.  And so we run to him because our joy is in him.  And what flows from that is peace, an awareness of and a living out of the reality of a restored relationship and being God’s child and in his sovereign care.  That peace will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  Living out of that awareness of who we are stops the shouts of imposter, loser, or failure, that fuel our anxiety and drain us in ministry.
But that’s hard isn’t it.  Paul longs for the Philippians to know peace(7, 9) and he tells them how to practice peace.  Our thoughts often feed our anxieties, they drain our joy, don’t they?  And so he calls on them to think of whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy.   He’s not saying ignore the brokenness of the world, ignore the sin you see and the damage it does.  Keep pastoral crises and complexities at a distance so you know peace, that’s professionalism not godliness.  That’s not what he’s teaching them.  But run to God in prayer so God’s peace – right relationship with him, the joy of being his child, in his care, and it not all depending on you – guards your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  They must train themselves to think about the things around them that are excellent and praiseworthy not just the brokenness.
Are you an optimist or are you from Yorkshire, sorry, I mean a pessimist?  When you think about your church what comes to mind?  Isn’t it often the failures, the families that have left.  The person who showed interest but was dragged back into their old way of life, by drugs, or alcohol, or an unhelpful relationship.  Isn’t it how you are short of musicians, or leaders, or diversity, or money?  Or the spiritual immaturity of the congregations, the lack of growth, the unwise decisions?
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NATO has absorbed nearly all the former Warsaw Pact countries and Baltic states that were once aligned with the former Soviet Union. To channel Mearsheimer one more time, America and NATO want us to believe that all their actions and decisions since the fall of the Soviet Union were virtuous and morally right. “This war,” they say, “is all Putin’s fault, and we did nothing wrong.”

There is a simple fact with which evangelicals need to come to grips immediately or risk blaspheming the evangel itself. This fact is undeniable and unconcealable, and it is supported by insurmountable evidence. Attempts to defend any proposition to the contrary amount to a denial of the faith once delivered. And it is this: wherever on the globe American foreign policy goes, death and displacement of millions of people follow.
When it comes to foreign policy there are not two parties: one Democrat, and the other Republican. Rather, there is a Uniparty bent on keeping America engaged in endless wars resulting in untold horrors to human beings around the world—many of whom are Christian. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Ukraine all have one thing in common—American intervention or interference resulting in mass death and displacement. This is not to say that there are no other causes, complexities, or mitigating circumstances, but this is the one constant in the midst of all other variables.
It is time for evangelicals to untether themselves from this Nietzschean nightmare and denounce with one voice, with all the muster they have, all the warmongers who are bringing death and destruction wherever they go by promoting perpetual war.

Many Muslims have done a better job of denouncing the more radical elements within Islam than American evangelicals have done in speaking out against unjust and illegal wars fostered by their own government.

Some evangelicals seem to be schizophrenic in that they identify as prolife on the subject of abortion, but are pro-war and pro-death when it comes to foreign policy. Of course, this is more of a theoretical distinction than a practical one because most evangelicals do very little to oppose abortion in any concrete way. Nevertheless, this is an unbiblical and unchristian dualism, and it must be reconciled before evangelicalism loses it soul.
The soul of American evangelicals was stained by the so called “wars on terror.” Of course these wars were never really about America’s national security. They were always about regime change, and in every instance the regime change that resulted was a complete and catastrophic disaster.
In the same way, America’s involvement with the war in Ukraine is not about preserving democracy, or even preventing further Russian aggression. It is about regime change.
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