seed

Zionism: Dismantling the Cross, the Judeo-Christian Deception

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There was an act of vandalism in Wales.  A Christian cross made of stones, which had been on a hill in the countryside for half a century, was torn apart by Jewish tourists who used the stones to create the ‘Star of David’ or hexagram shape.  This act goes beyond total disrespect and destruction of a Christian display, but it is also symbolic of what Zionism is and what it has been doing to Christianity in the West.  

Zionism isn’t Jewish.  Many Jews, even who live in the Holy Lands, are as fully opposed to the ethno-supremacist state called Israel as their Christian and Muslim neighbors.  It is not something allowed by their religion, they insist, and I’ll let Jewish people debate their theology for themselves.  But the vast majority of Zionists aren’t Jews nor do they live in Israel.  Most Zionists were American Protestants who have become ensnared in this political ideology that rearranges parts of the Bible to justify taking property from a population who have lived in the birthplace of Christ since his birth.

Christian Zionism is an oxymoron.  It takes two opposites, the kingdoms of the world offered to Jesus during his temptation that he rejected and acts like Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, who goes back deceptively to get the gifts Naaman tried to give to his master and was then struck down with leprosy by the curse of his master.  There are many in church pews today who have betrayed their master and have rearranged the timeline of Scripture to embrace an evil replacement of the way of Christ.  They dismantle the cross and support Zionism instead.

Schofield’s Coup: Dismantling the Cross

In 1909 a new Bible was published.  It used the same English translation of the popular King James version and yet added notes of commentary written by a man named Cyrus Ingerson Scofield.  Dispensationalism is a relatively new interpretation of Biblical texts that started in the early to mid 19th century, initially invented by John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren in Britain, but it took Scofield’s in text commentaries distributed widely to finally sell it.

We could get into questions of exactly who Scofield was, his character, that he was a Confederate soldier (deserter?); who was an alcoholic who abandoned his family; a man who had defrauded several prominent Republicans with a railroad scam; who was arrested and jailed in St Louis for forgery and embezzlement, then had a dramatic conversion to Christianity and yet this essay will stick to the work he was known for: His popularization of a novel theological stance dividing Israel and the church in Scripture.

In the Christian Bible there’s a fairly obvious shift in tone between the Old Testament (or Jewish Torah, prophets, etc) and teachings of Jesus in the Gospels.  The conventional Christian perspective is that Jesus came as fulfillment of the law and supercedes the covenant that was given to Abram who became Abraham.  But Scofield turns the clock back, he ignores what the Epistles tell us about correct understanding, and he adds an idea that there are essentially two paths to God—one going through Jesus and the cross, the other by the Old Covenant.

Christianity, according to the Apostles, is the faithful remnant.  Israel is now the Church and the Church is the true Israel.

Where this was just an amateur mistake or an intentional deception doesn’t matter.  It has resulted in a battle between those who basically claim that “one way, Jesus” is anti-Semitic statement and smear it as being “Replacement Theology” (ironic, given this was, is, and will remain the only orthodox Christian perspective) for saying that the New Covenant continuation of God’s plan and necessary for salvation.  It ignores the New Testament books where St Paul and others give a correct Christian perspective of the covenant given to Abraham.

Always Through Faith, Never Bloodlines…

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

(John 14:6 NIV)

I’m not nearly as dogmatic as some when it comes to passages like John 14:6 (above) and yet do see it as foundational to correct application of Scripture from the Christian perspective.  Jesus was making a definitive statement about who he is and the absolute requirements for salvation.  

The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ.

 (Galatians 3:16 NIV)

1) The passage above makes it very clear that the seed of Abraham is singular: Christ Jesus.  St Paul is saying that Jesus is that promise given to Abraham, that the promise is what bestows grace and continues:

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

(Galatians 3:26-29 NIV)

2) We all become Abraham’s seed though faith in Christ and there is no distinction by religion (keeping the law) or race.  In other words, Jews and Gentiles are both saved in the exact same way and the old distinctions become moot in fulfillment of the promise:

It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith.  For if those who depend on the law are heirs, faith means nothing and the promise is worthless, because the law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression.  Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all.  As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not. 

(Romans 4:13-17 NIV)

3) Faith in Christ, nothing else, saves.

The Church and true Israel are the same, it is a group that is defined by faith both when those the Jews looked forward towards the promise and also in the Gospel fulfillment of the promise in the seed of Abraham that is Jesus.

Scofield, however, to justify Zionism, tries to drive a wedge between Christ and being the full fulfillment of promise or the seed of Abraham.  His footnotes take a passage like Genesis 12:3, addressed specifically to Abraham, about blessing those who bless him and cursing those who curse and then just hallucinate that it is speaking about all who ever have descended (but only through Isaac) from Abraham—no matter if they are faithful or not.  But this is in direct and total contradiction to the passages quoted above and simply meaning inserted into the text by a man fooled himself or just a fraud.

The Judeo-Christian Deception 

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 

(2 Corinthians 6:14-15 NIV)

Judeo-Christian is a term originally coined to describe a Jewish convert to Christianity, a Jewish Christian, but the usage has since evolved to become an oxymoronic coupling of religious traditions that formed up in full opposition to each other.  There is overlap, certainly, both started as religions rooted in the Hebrew Bible.  But one of the sides has rejected Christ, and is anti-Christ, while the other believes that the Torah can truly only be understood through the lens of Christ.  If your values start with something other than Christ then they’re not the same values as a Christian.

Starting with Jesus instructing his followers to let their ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and ‘no’ be ‘no’ (Matt 5:37) or to use simple honest language.  So much dishonesty comes in from of a subtle twist of words.  For example, calling majorly invasive surgeries and hormone treatments “gender-affirming care” is just not the plain reality of what is being done.  Semantics is all about describing reality, but can also be about distorting the perspective and an art of deception.  There is no similar rule about using honest speech in Talmudic or Zionist Judiasm.  Mossad, the intelligence agency of Israel, used “By way of deception, thou shall do war.“

Stratagem is part of war theory and tactics.  But it is not part of Christianity.  St Paul tells us:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 

(Ephesians 6:12 NIV)

The Christian doesn’t overcome the ‘enemy’ with deception.  They overcome them with good, with honesty and love, this is to reject the methods and means of those who see those outside their religio-political group as being terrorists to be destroyed or resource to exploited.  We are not required to reason with animals, we herd them, slaughter them, shoot them for sport, and impose our will—and is exactly what the Zionists do to those who get in their way.  There is no command to love enemies or good to those who those who hate you as there is in Christianity:

But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. 

(Luke 6:27-31 NIV)

Interestingly enough, Islam has a similar teaching, but we would never call this area of confluence Islamo-Christian values.  So why do we attempt to add the leaven of the Pharisees through this linguistic maneuver that marries us to a religion that has values completely different despite a similar origin point?  The “Synagogue of Satan” (Rev 2:9, 3:9) has never stopped hating Christ or His followers, they have simply committed to a long-game strategy of subversion or using the naive to do their bidding.  This isn’t even a value judgment, I’m not saying you should not be Jewish if that is what you believe is, but you can’t be a Judeo-Christian because it is a contradiction of terms.

If a suggestion of “Islamo-Christian values” causes you to erupt in riotous laughter, then the combo of the way of Jesus with that of Zionism is doubly as ridiculous.  

Philosophically there is zero compatibility in these perspectives.  It is impossible to love and bomb your enemies.  You cannot claim to follow Jesus, who rejected worldly power, and then support the violence being done in the name of Israeli statehood.  Zionism is a “blood and soil” nationalist movement, and is all about land, all about ethnicity, whereas the kingdom of heaven is about repentance, self-sacrifice and meekness.  The only thing that is sacrificed in ‘Christian’ Zionism is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the credibility of our collective witness—so our partners can slather themselves in misguided pride for being the chosen race.

Not good, especially when one is pulling the other backwards…

The real purpose of a term “Judeo-Christian values” is political and propaganda.  It is to throw a yoke on the neck of Christians and force them to work together.  It is simply a way to control one side and normalize the other.  There is no backward compatibility, a believer in Christ does not share values with those who reject him, with those who cling to national pride rather than the cross, and subjugate rather than serve.  Jesus opened his arms to children—Zionists justify killing children by starvation, by denying them care or even by burning them alive and gunning them down.

Origen, who is considered to be a church Father, may have toyed with universalism—an idea that all would be saved in the end.  But there is no parallel path that is given for anyone according to Jesus or the Apostles, most especially not for those who are far removed from Jesus as the Nazis—despite their claims to the contrary.  We cannot let the cross of Christ be rearranged into the symbol of a worldly kingdom.  Having some things in common with those who rejected Christ doesn’t make us the same.

I Don’t Care What You Call It

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I feel the need to preface this once again with a trigger warning for those who won’t read through and will miss my point. No, I’m not saying what Hamas did was justified. Nor am I saying that Israel should not respond. But I am trying to confront a bias, motivated by a misuse of Scripture, that is leading our side to look the other way at what amounts to dumping white phosphorous on innocent children and then pretending this is a just response to the death of Israelis. I am addressing what clouds the moral judgment here and not saying that one side or the other should just take the abuse.

I’m addressing the false dichotomy exposed in this letter from Albert Einstein (Jewish) in his opposition to the terrorism that was taking place. He wrote this right after a massacre carried out by Zionist extremists and warning of what would eventually become the horrendous reality of the Nakba and why Palestinians today are reluctant to leave their homes today. They know the history even if you’re ignorant. Read what Einstein wrote and then study what happened next…

To be clear, Einstein was not against a Jewish homeland. He was simply against the violent means being employed that have led to the current hatred. Had more followed his advice then we wouldn’t be facing yet another bloody war today. When will we learn?

Framing Issues

Had the British managed to put down the bloodthirsty terrorists who fought to “water the tree of liberty” by violently taking over their American colonies, does that mean they never existed? No, they (along with their weird pagan offshoot religion that required regular human sacrifice to keep their tree nourished) did exist and they existed as a distinct entity the moment that they declared themselves to be independent. And to say otherwise would be dumb.

One of the stupidest arguments ever made is “tHeRe Is nO PaLeStINe” as if the millions of people pushed into Gaza and West Bank simply do not exist. By that sort of semantic and legal argument, there was never a state of Israel prior to May 14, 1948. Sure, there were a people called the children of Israel and a kingdom of David, but never a STATE by that name, and certainly not one that was a Western-style democracy, prior to a bunch of Europeans moving to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine (which is what it was called) and most certainly a nation with the world’s strongest standing army is not the same one as found in the Scriptures. No, that doesn’t mean they should be run into the sea or not recognized as a legitimate nation (although many do not) and yet we must deal with the reality that the land was occupied before European settlers arrived to claim it. Historical claims may make a nice romantic script, for those with no skin in the game, but telling people that their grievance of being displaced doesn’t exist because you don’t like the name is asinine. It is reasoning that may get you likes in your echo chamber but suggests you are silly and should not be taken seriously by those with a modicum of intelligence. It’s not like the Palestinians are going to stop their fight against those who took their deeded land because you claim they don’t exist.  

Furthermore, legal recognition does not change what something is. By now we all should know this. The governments of the world can call black white or white black and it doesn’t change the nature of color. Calling a man a woman or your affinity for your pet a marriage doesn’t make it true. We have the absolute right to question legal precedent or to hold to whatever existed in our minds prior to their changes. Maybe your modern definitions are simply ignorant of the original meaning and the other side is right. You might eventually be blotted off from the face of the Earth and forgotten. But it doesn’t mean you or the perspectives you held don’t exist. A person’s perspective still exists even if opposed by the powerful who have better propaganda and denying it exists is plain dumb.

Palestinians exist even if they are erased from the land or never officially recognized by many in the United States. That’s not a statement that will suit many from my fundamentalist religious background. But they’re simply not dealing with reality, it is denial, and ridiculous. Einstein called it Palestine. It was Palestine. The modern-day Israeli state came after.

Who were the Samaritans?

They were people deemed illegitimate by the pure-blooded religious elites.  They made a counterclaim to what the other descendants of Abraham Jesus mingled with saw as their own exclusive property.  The Samaritans had their own priests (apparently descendants of Aaron directly) and, contrary to the belief of their Jewish rivals, also continuously occupied the land like their Semitic cousins.

This is what makes how Jesus recognized these people so significant.  We learn, in his conversation with a Samaritan woman, that true worship wasn’t about location, including Jerusalem, but about Spirit and truth.  If this wasn’t clear enough, the parable of the good Samaritan was a slap in the face of those whom Jesus addressed.  A Samaritan more righteous than their own best?  Jesus was intentionally antagonizing. He intended to offend and insult them.

The point, however, remains that salvation is not a birthright.  It is not about your claim to be or ethnic inheritance.  The Christian truth is about what we do, and how we love, and never a matter of our worship ritual or genetics.  The measure of Christian pedigree is faith, pure and simple, like that of Abraham—which is what makes a person a son or daughter of Abraham.

Jesus didn’t mince words when addressing those who believed they would be saved by their ethnicity or Abrahamic bloodline:

Abraham is our father,” they answered. “If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the works of your own father.” “We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

(John 8:39‭-‬44 NIV)

There are not multiple paths, according to Jesus, but only one way, truth, and life for all to come to the Father.  Galatians makes it clear that Abraham’s seed is fulfilled fully in Christ and all who believe in Him:

The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ. […] So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

(Galatians 3:16‭, ‬26‭-‬28 NIV)

Romans affirms what St Paul said above in Galatians:

So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. […] What then? What the people of Israel sought so earnestly they did not obtain. The elect among them did, but the others were hardened…

(Romans 11:5‭, ‬7 NIV)

The “remnant” is those who believed in Jesus.  While the “hardened” are those who rejected Him and, in their unbelief and ignorance, crucified the one who was called their King.  And, for those who contort and turn the Gospels inside out trying to revert to a Covenant that passed away, Hebrews 8:13, I despise your bastardization of truth.  Those who would replace His Kingdom “not of this world” with a modern secular state are not legitimate scholars or Christians.

I reject your ignorant religion.

I reject your indifferent religion.

I reject your false religion.

The true Christ isn’t an ethno-nationalist or waiting on yet another stone temple to be built.  And I don’t really care what your Scofield reference or some random guy on YouTube says.  Christian Zionism is a contradiction of terms.  I’m perfectly fine with European Jews finding a homeland and defending it.  But it should never be confused with the fulfillment of anything more than that.  We should instead be looking for the new Jerusalem.  So stone me like Stephen for repeating what he said: “The Most High does not live in houses made by human hands.”

Count me with the Samaritans.

A blessing or a curse?

Since the 1950s, no other nation has shown more perfect loyalty or full allegiance to the state of Israel than the United States.  The Biden administration is no exception and doubling down on what Trump started.  For this have accumulated a mountain of debt, a decay of our institutions, and sharp moral decline as more and more Americans fall away from faith.  Sure, we are materially wealthy, for now, but churches are empty and those that remain are temples to consumerism rather than self-sacrificial love.  If support for this country is a blessing then I guess we’ll need to redefine that word like we have been with everything else lately.  Or maybe consider we’ve gotten things wrong?

The direction of the US doesn’t look good right now and maybe that is because we’re like the Jeruselum condemned by Ezekiel:

“‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen. Samaria did not commit half the sins you did. You have done more detestable things than they, and have made your sisters seem righteous by all these things you have done. Bear your disgrace, for you have furnished some justification for your sisters. Because your sins were more vile than theirs, they appear more righteous than you. So then, be ashamed and bear your disgrace, for you have made your sisters appear righteous.

(Ezekiel 16:49-52 NIV)

Maybe it is time to stop focusing on the sins of Samaria and consider our own. Sure, maybe IsRaEl hAs ThE rIgHt To DeFeND iTsElF, but then so do the other Semitic people in that region. Consider that we are Haman, from the book of Esther, unwittingly building our own gallows as we justify our unjust vengeance against undeserving people. We’re not a righteous judge. The children of Gaza did not attack Israel. It is not anti-Semitic to stand with Einstein or recognize the unjust suffering of the Semitic people in Gaza. It is not our allegiance to the state of Israel that will bring us blessings, only allegiance to the king of the true Israel can do that and we must all repent of our delusions otherwise.

But We Don’t Chant Death To Gaza!

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“The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.”

Aldous Huxley

Most on one side of this issue likely will not even get this far into reading this.  For daring to question the narrative they’ve swallowed I’ll probably be quickly dismissed by some as a “terror apologist” or worse.  Nevertheless, for those who know that I don’t take positions lightly or without due diligence, this post will help explain my position on the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.  But more important than that this blog is aimed at addressing the brazen dishonesty of the fundamentalist cheerleaders.

First of all, for anyone conservative who has come through the past few years and is still lacking skepticism about what the political establishment is saying really deserves to be exploited.  Now that Hamas has attacked we can now trust the same media that saw riots as “mostly peaceful protests” and then calls MAGA supporters “insurrectionists” for their questioning the election results???  Are you really that dumb?!?  Why don’t you at least consider that the same people who distort the truth here, who seize upon the parts of the evidence that support their own agenda on domestic issues, might also do the same thing there?

Second, okay, so you never heard ‘our side’ chanting “death to Gazans” and yet let’s not be cute about this.  Both sides are dedicated to the destruction of the other. Israel slowly but surely takes all of Palestine. Hamas is fully committed to ending Israel.  How genocidal that would end up being is anyone’s guess—but these stories from a couple Israeli Defense Force veterans can give us some idea, they burned people alive and shot school children—watch them talk about it and then moralize to me about how only one side is barbaric or evil.

No, this horrendous history of atrocities on both sides certainly does not justify anything that Hamas did in the past week.  But what should we expect to happen when that boy crying when an air strike killed his entire family grows up?  Is it a surprise when he’s angry and blames the nation that dropped the bomb?  Are we just going to gloss over the fact that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, is in a leaked video saying to make it painful for the Palestinians and that basically anything is a military target?  What does that mean?  Are we going to play ignorant?

This is why I can’t take seriously people who only condemn one side and never the other, this selective moral outrage is not about true care for children.  Those who quickly share unverified accounts of beheaded babies and then never even acknowledge those thousands of innocent Palestinians who have died in the indiscriminate and brutal bombing campaigns are being dishonest.  No, not saying that there must be complete equivalency or proportionality in a war. but let’s not pretend that only one side is a victim of terrorism.  It just looks really disingenuous to only care about the children of one side.

Getting this out of the way…

My point is not to convert you from one side to the other. My point is that the common presentation of this conflict is a false dichotomy and we have the option of choosing none of the above. We can stand with the true victims, those innocent people caught in the crossfire, and oppose all of the militant parties. That is where I stand. Furthermore, I will mostly address the propaganda and war crimes of one side. Why? It is because my typical audience is completely biased toward the West’s narrative and certainly not because I am unaware of what the other side has done. We don’t need to be partisans.

The big lie is that this conflict is not about ethnic cleansing on both sides.  Israel has systematically, since May 14, 1948, pushed the native inhabitants out of their land and then played the role of victim when their militarily weaker opponents employed asymmetrical warfare tactics against the occupation.  Israel has turned Gaza into an open-air prison, but we only care when Hamas strikes back.  American Evangeli-cons believe every claim without skepticism when it is made by Israel (burned babies) as if a party in the conflict has reason to be truthful—why are we such fools?

It Is Okay To Bomb Nazi Children!

Maybe you do not know what Jewish neo-con Ben Shapiro (as well as Isreal’s Prime Minister) meant when he pronounced the people of Gaza to be Amalek?

But I do: 

This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’

(1 Samuel 15:2‭-‬3 NIV)

We call that genocide. 

Sure, maybe Shapiro is emotional, he has a right, but these chants of “kill the Arab” or about Gaza becoming “a cemetery” with no school children left alive didn’t start last week.  And maybe that’s what US Senator Lindsay Graham wants when he says this is a religious war and he suggests the solution “level the place,” while also braying for a confrontation with Iran?  Apparently, it is okay when Israel ‘defends itself’ by wiping out men, women, children, and infants of any who resist their claim to the land.  I guess it is the privilege of being a chosen people, right?

Like an Israeli official said we shouldn’t care about Palestinian civilian deaths because they’re all Nazis.  Much of this is based on unverified accounts of partisans repeated as fact, even embellished by Joe Biden who claimed, with great sincerity, that he had seen the pictures of beheaded babies himself only to have the claim retracted.  So now we’re collectively punishing people, looking the other way at inhumane things done by the military, using the circular ‘punch a Nazi’s logic of the far-left and misuse of religious texts.  Are we better than them?

So let’s just be honest about it!  Let’s not say that this is about human rights or preventing ethnic cleansing when it is all about clearing the place for a Jewish ethnic state.  Stop being a coward, and say that you’re okay with babies being killed (as long as it is their babies) and with millions of people who are being displaced from their land—all because you have stupidly embraced an errant eschatology that replaces the Church, which was established by Christ, with reemergent nation of those who have fully rejected Him.  

Or you could just join me in agreement with St Paul: 

Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. […] The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ.

(Galatians 3:7‭-‬9‭, ‬16 NIV)

Understand yet?

Support for a modern ethno-nationalist state has no connection to the promises given to Abraham.  Sure, many have been made into useful idiots for this cause, by the twisting of Scripture, but Jesus didn’t promise a patch of land along the Mediterranean coast and the Jews do not share Christian values any more than Muslims do.  Both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have chanted for the death of the other. One sees us as being Infidels and the other calls us Goyim.  When has Israel, a country declared ‘our greatest ally’ according to many of our greasy-haired politicians, ever defended our borders?  The blessing is they get a ton of US aid and send propaganda pictures of their most attractive women in uniform in return.

There’s no denying the tragedy of what has been unfolding over the past few days.  We have seen the pictures and videos, very real, of terrified young people.  One moment they were enjoying a music festival, the next they were being mercilessly gunned down.  And yet I did not see the same level of concern from fundamentalists for the victims of the Pulse nightclub attack.  These same people overwhelmed with concern about Israel do not think twice about collective punishment and forcing Gazans into the desert before there is provision for them—this isn’t about protecting innocents or looking out for the most vulnerable, it is about wiping Gazans off the map by wherever means available at this time.

Christian compassion is that none should perish and all will be saved.  It isn’t about a political entity called Israel or any kingdom of this world.  Our battle, if we were indeed servants of Christ as we claim, should not be against flesh and blood.  Jesus commanded us to love our enemies and do good to those who mistreat us.  That’s coming from a man who was tortured, unjustly nailed to a cross, and killed by an occupying power.  So why again do we support the death of Palestinian children simply for living in the wrong place at the wrong time? 

Shouldn’t we love these little ones as much as their other more fortunate Semitic cousins?

Let the Seed Fall!

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Some might wonder why I have such a visceral reaction to wokeism.  I have written a few no holds barred blogs trying to warn people of what this is and where it invariably leads.  But each time I write it feels as if my concern is not well-explained.  I mean, I know some probably read and ask, “why is Joel attacking these well-intentioned people?”

However, I’m having a moment of clarity and therefore will try to expound on why it is absolutely necessary to shock people out of their stupor.  The reality is that wokeism (or grievance culture) and religious purity culture are two branches off of the same tree.  Both patriarchal conservative men and those angry pink-haired feminists are trying to create a world without suffering.  Both, tragically, create more problems than they solve.

First, what is purity culture?  

As I experienced it, in the conservative Mennonite context, it was a branch of Biblical fundamentalism (Protestantism) that had been grafted in to the Anabaptist tree.  It was a legalistic perspective.  The pure life was to avoid vice (no drinking, dancing, going to movies, etc) and remain completely a virgin until marriage.  It is not that the aim is entirely bad, but there was also a lack of grace accompanying this perspective.

In other words, there was no room for failure.  It a hellscape of unchecked perfectionist tendencies.  People who should be diagnosed as having obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), along with other mental illness, viewed as being virtuous.  And the rest of us struggling to meet an unreasonable standard without the actual spiritual help we needed.  

For example, girls who thought they were ‘defiled’ for simply talking to a guy that they didn’t intend to marry.  And heaven forbid you did date and break-up.  Then you were damaged goods.  Cursed to walk the earth, like Cain, a stigma tattooed to your chest, a scarlet letter.  

To those steeped in this religious purity culture it was about saving the next generation.  It was a reaction to a world of promiscuity and failed commitments have produced far-reaching consequences.  And yet, while it does work for some, those who check all the right boxes, it permanently marginalize others and gives them no real road to redemption.  Divorced and remarried?  Tough luck, you’ll need to break up that successful loving family to become a Mennonite.

That’s the purity culture I know all too well and, for reasons I’ll get to later, have fully rejected as being unChrist-like and spiritually void.

Wokeism, despite the vast difference in appearance to what I’ve described above, is another subset of purity culture.  It is a reaction to the ‘privilege’ of those who better represent the cultural ideal.  It is another form of utopian idealism.  

Whereas the latter religious variety of purity culture believes that if their children only kiss one person, never experience the pain or disappointment of a break-up, then heaven will come to earth—the ‘woke, by contrast, believe that if everyone was forced to tolerate their ugliness and embrace their toxic grievance; if they could live free of further offense, then they would be fulfilled.  

Both forms of purity culture are offshoots of Western values.  They both see suffering as a flaw in the system and try to eradicate it through their own means.  And they do have their valid points.  No, the girl, the victim of sexual abuse, who (because of her loss of self-worth) goes from one guy to the next, should not be called a slut.  But, that said, nor should her unhealthy coping behavior be normalized.  Instead, we should stop seeing people as damaged goods because they failed to reach some sort of phony cultural ideal.

The truth is, the woke, as much as they attack whiteness.  Or the feminist who acts aggressively and looks to a career as being freedom.  The patriarchal father, as much as he claims to be protecting.  Are all the thing that they despise most.  Religious purity culture, sadly, is hypersexual in focus and produces conflicted men like Bill Gothard, Doug Philips and Josh Duggar.  Feminism amounts to a form of female self-loathing that unwittingly idealizes the male role.  And so-called social justice is simply a means to manipulate and enslave another group of people.

All of them assume that if a person could simply avoid pain and bad experience they would find their completeness.  All seek a kind of perfection outside of Christ and very quickly, despite their wonderful intentions, turn into a dystopian hell.  

What is wrong is this idea that pain us is less for our good than pleasure.  The religious, ignoring the lesson of Job, neglecting what Jesus said about the tower tower of Siloam or the man blind from birth, see suffering as a sign of God’s displeasure and a punishment.  Likewise, the woke want to be embraced without repentance, if they would simply be called clean then they could finally escape their terrible anguish, right?

The truth is, bad experience is part of life and as beneficial as the good.  Growing up in a single parent home can be an excuse or a motivation to do better.

This is what makes the story of Jesus so compelling.  Unlike us, he was completely innocent, his intentions were pure and should have been loved by all.  But, instead of embrace him, his own people saw him as a threat, he would undermine their system and perspective, show them for what they were, thus had to be eliminated.  That he was executed with criminals would seem like a humiliating defeat.  He suffered and died for what?

The tree of life.

However, it was in this suffering that salvation came.  Sure, the burden of the cross comes with anguish.  We would rather seek pleasure and avoid pain.  However, in Jesus, the cross is transformed from being a brutal instrument of death into a well of eternal life.  How?  It is in the same way that a seed falls to the ground, is buried and leads to new life.  

Why would we cling to the seed or refuse to let it be buried and prevent the tree?

The overprotectiveness of religious purity culture, the refusal to acknowledge our brokenness and need of transformation of wokeism, both try to find salvation by human means.  One seeks to impress God, like the rich young ruler or proud Pharisee, whereas the other (like Cain) demands that God accept their unworthy sacrifice and then murders their righteous brothers.  Both need Jesus.

The wonderful cross

In conclusion. We’re all damaged goods and can be made more beautiful than ever through repentance. Jesus can make our pain as much a joy as our pleasure.

Sowing Ideas, Sticking Up For the Underdog and Getting Started

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Have you ever wondered how organizations like the Red Cross or Salvation Army got their start?

You can watch this video about the Red Cross for details. But the short version of almost every organization is that it always starts with an idea and an individual willingness to take initiative. A person sees a need to be filled, takes action, tells others and the effort continues to build momentum towards a solution.

Or at least that’s how it is supposed to work.

It doesn’t always work out. Sometimes an idea fails because it was poorly conceived. Other times the person with the idea lacks the motivation to see it through and loses interest themselves. Still, on some occasions, there may be times when the person with the right idea arrives at the wrong time, fails to make the necessary connections, and the thing fizzles on the launch pad as unrealized potential.

Soil and Seeds of Faith

In the context of ideas, the parable of the sower Jesus told comes to mind:

“A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.” (Matthew 13:3‭-‬9 NIV)

The interpretation of the parable is provided later on in the same context. Jesus is referring to his own message, that of the kingdom of heaven, and how the growth potential of this seed depends on the receptivity of soil. Bad ideas oftentimes spread like weeds while the good news is trampled underfoot by the disinterested masses. But we sow should sow good seeds, all the same, knowing that some will find the right soil.

And so it goes with any inspirational idea, even the best ideas die where there is no faith. Many ideas fail when they are faced with a challenge and the commitment is shallow. Other ideas are drowned out in the marketplace of ideas—their appeal is drowned out by the better positioned and yet inferior aims.

You get the picture.

We are both soil and sower. We can allow ideas, good or bad, to take root in our hearts, and from those ideas spring actions. Sometimes it is a seed someone else plants, sometimes we are the distributor of the seeds, but the mystery is in what causes the seed to grow. St Paul speaks of this in trying to explain who should get credit for the spread of the Gospel saying “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.” (1 Corinthians 3 NIV) And that is the mystery that is perplexing to me.

Sticking Up For the Underdog

I had always been a bit undersized for my age. Not sure if it was a result of my premature birth or if I was out-competed at the dinner table, but on my first license (at 16 years old) I was just 5′-3″ tall and weigh only 112lb (50.8kg) as a senior in high school.

But I never lacked for grit and determination. My name, at least according to the placard that had been placed under my baby picture, means “strong-willed” and I’ve always done my best to prove myself worthy of the description. Mom called me her fighter for my surviving a traumatic start to life and that resolve, for better or worse, is a defining part of my identity and perspective of the world.

That’s why I’ve always been on the side of the underdog.

I’ve always been interested in the person who has more to overcome than others, the one who works harder than the rest and still does not necessarily come out on top in the end. It is easy to recognize and celebrate the winners. But if the effort could be measured, then the underdog is the one who has put forward the most effort and has shed the most blood, sweat, and tears. In any context or conflict, I’m always cheering for the one in the game who has to overcome the most disadvantages.

Underdog

I suppose that is why I had a deep respect for a particular classmate, a Filipino-American who stood about 5′-5″ tall and yet was the starting point guard on the high school basketball team who would put up 20 points some games. He had incredible ball-handling skills and could score in the paint, in traffic, against the trees like our own version of Allen Iverson. For someone who always thought of his own stature as standing in the way of athletic success, this was inspirational.

And maybe that is the reason why the Philippines has intrigued me?

Finding the Right Cause

I’ve always been cause-oriented or at least as far as causes pertaining to people that I care about. I have plenty of passion. But passion alone is not enough, passion needs direction and too often—given my chronic difficulty with focus—I’ve struggled to know what direction.

Some of my pursuit of the impossibility was in search of finding that thing that I lacked as far as a specific mission.

I did not find that direction where I had hoped to find it. However, in the aftermath of that severe disappointment, something did rise from the ashes and provided a path where none had existed before. With the stability brought about by a committed relationship, it gave me a reason to travel to the far reaches of the world and with that came some thought about the potential. I had first traveled to the Philippines and then a year later had an opportunity to spend time in Taiwan.

It was in that travel experience that I became well-acquainted with the hardships faced by overseas Filipino workers (OFW), began contemplating the economic reasons for this unfortunate circumstance and the potential solutions. Many seek work abroad because they have no other good options available and despite the stories of exploitation and abuse. Many become victims themselves after having borrowed money to travel to their new employer only to find things are not as promised.

I actually wrote out the strategic vision for an organization months ago. But I got caught up in the details of how to do it the right way (was thinking of getting a special website made) and it ended up on the back burner where it stayed. It was a story about an OFW “domestic worker” who had jumped out of a window and broke both of her legs to escape her captivity that finally drove me to take action. At that point, the particulars didn’t matter so much, the idea needed to be put out there, it was the right cause and something worth my fighting for.

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My hope is that the idea sown will find good soil to grow in, that others will join me in this righteous cause and that eventually, we can help to bring OFWs home. My hope is that someday those in the Philippines will not have to decide between gainful employment and their families. I especially want to make it so that fewer young women put themselves in situations where they are easily exploited. If the effort only helps one or two that is a success as far as I am concerned, but there is great potential.

So, all that said, you are invited to join me at the newly launched Filipino American Coalition of Trade blog site or the accompanying Facebook page.