As I stood in a long queue in Leeds Bradford airport, getting my clear plastic bag and cotton handkerchief checked for explosives, I reflected on a month of sanctioned violence by Israel in Southern Lebanon.

Christian responses to Middle East events are generally pretty tragic. Zionists extol the virtue of the Israeli military and even financially support state violence, in attempts to fulfil biblical prophecy and bring about the return of Christ. Meanwhile, the left-wing Christians, after reading Noam Chomsky, will decry American imperialism and Israeli counter-terrorist efforts. For this side, Israel's continued injustices towards their Muslim neighbours only lead to terrorism.

Yet Muslim extremism is more than a response to injustice, since Islam has its own powerful apocalyptic vision that drives many to violence. At the same time, to conflate current Israeli foreign policy with God's plans for Israel smacks more of newspaper exegesis than a careful reading of Scripture.

And what about the rest of us? While not so extreme, many will follow a right- or left-leaning agenda, probably depending more on what paper we read than any serious attempt to discern how we should respond as followers of Jesus Christ. The rest of us will watch the television, and then turn back to our dinner, thinking of what is on the television for the rest of the night.

Is there a place in these violent politics for a suitable Christian response? Do we have something to say that cannot be said by secular politicians? Do we justify violence by our silence? Christians in the West have frequently failed those who suffer cruelty, whether in Israel or Palestine or Lebanon, Darfur or Rwanda, and anywhere else where we have watched our televisions while people die. I do not think that we have the ability to sustain a deep, continued interest in these people's lives.

The Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Beirut assisted with shelter and provisions for those Muslims who fled Southern Lebanon. Martin Accad, the Seminary's academic dean, writes:

"I am angry at self-centered Hezbollah, which has done the inadmissible of taking a unilateral war decision without consulting the Lebanese government of which it is part, never giving a second thought to the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Lebanese who will perish as a result of its selfish decision. I am angry that citizens of a nation like Israel, who have so suffered at the hands of others, would allow themselves such an out-of-proportion reaction, oh-so-far from the "eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth" principle that we might have forgiven them. I am just as angry at-I have lost hope in-the international community that is keeping silent and not even budging with an official condemnation of this senseless instinct of extermination. By both sides, I would be lynched for what I have just said, if they had the chance. But what have I got to lose anymore?"¹

Do we Christians in the West even have a hopeful message for Christians in the Middle East any more?

Gordon Brown

Martin Accad: "Another Point of View: Evangelical Blindness on Lebanon." Available at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/129/42.0.html. Copyright © 2006 Christianity Today.

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