Israel, Palestine And Cycles Of Violence

Off Stage with Greg and RD

On Saturday morning, we woke up to the news of the attack in Israel. Today, Greg and R.D. wanted to give their perspective on the conflict, its backstory, as well as what this means for Christians as it relates to the Bible.

Greg references our episode on Revelation.

RD reads from Miroslav Volf’s Exclusion & Embrace. Here’s the quote:

My thesis is that the practice of non-violence requires a belief in divine vengeance…My thesis will be unpopular with man in the West…But imagine speaking to people (as I have) whose cities and villages have been first plundered, then burned, and leveled to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been raped, whose fathers and brothers have had their throats slit…Your point to them–we should not retaliate? Why not? I say–the only means of prohibiting violence by us is to insist that violence is only legitimate when it comes from God…Violence thrives today, secretly nourished by the belief that God refuses to take the sword…It takes the quiet of a suburb for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence is a result of a God who refuses to judge. In a scorched land–soaked in the blood of the innocent, the idea will invariably die, like other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind…if God were NOT angry at injustice and deception and did NOT make a final end of violence, that God would not be worthy of our worship.

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