Amid the Palestinian Holocaust that is currently raging, there is a thought that is weighing on many people's minds. Or perhaps it is more like a shadow. It is this idea of "the chosen people". The chosen people of Israel.
I know religious people who house this thought. You probably know them too. It is the hesitation in their voice, the lowering of the gaze when they're asked to support Palestine. It shows up in debates, in Facebook comment sections, and in church parking lots. "The chosen people of Israel. But they were the people chosen by God."
To a lesser or greater degree, the story of a chosen people - selected by God, especially hallowed, set aside for a blessing and a purpose - colours the Christian faith and narrative. Or in the least, their emotional/sentimental associations. It is, after all, part of the history - the story. It is also one of the reasons why some Christians watch the bombing of Palestinian refugee tents and beheaded babies and still hesitate to fully support the Palestinian cause of liberation and land back.
I was speaking recently to an acquaintance who identifies as Christian, from the Church of England tradition. He was clearly deeply upset about the violence being inflicted on the Palestinian people. But instead of concluding that we must fight for these people to be freed, or for the Israeli oppression to end, he reluctantly pushed through his teeth:
"I don't understand it, but we know that the state of Israel must be fully established and victorious before Jesus can return. And they are God's chosen people. I just wish such horrible things didn't have to happen in order for that to come true."
Let's put aside, for the moment, the erroneous theology that Israel must control the whole land and the Jerusalem temple before Jesus can return (a concept which is found nowhere in The Bible, yet continues to persist like a virus in large swatches of Christian teaching.) For now, I'd like to address the part about the "chosen people" argument.
Let's pretend, for a second, that the "State of Israel" or the Jewish people are still the chosen people. Let's overlook the fact that being chosen by God doesn't mean at all what it's made out to mean today. Let's overlook that God called Abraham so that he might bless all peoples of the Earth (blessed to be a blessing) - that God chooses all of humanity. And let's pretend that this whole "these people are better and more favoured than all others" is real. Even if you ignore all the facts, history, and theology which vehemently negate every single one of these points, and you truly believe that Israel is a God-ordained project, with a present-day, God-given right to the land of Palestine, and that they enjoy favouritism with the Creator... you're still making a huge error. You're still revealing that you don't understand the story. And the story must be understood.
Specifically, I'm referring to the story of the Exile to Babylon. It is one which badly needs revisiting. It's the story of the kingdom of Judah. A people who had, according to God's own words, become worse in their evil than all the surrounding nations (Ezekiel 5:6-7). A people who were meant to be a blessing to others had become a curse to others and themselves. And after years and years of sending prophets, warnings, urging Judah to stop, God finally steps in to interrupt the horrible things they're doing. Thus, the Exile. The people of Judah are displaced, led away to Babylon for 70 years. A "time-out" for the worst nation in the whole region.
But what even seasoned Bible readers often fail to note, is the actual evil acts which caused The Exile to have to happen in the first place.
What specifically were the people of Judah doing that was so horrible? What made them worse than any other nation? What was so terrible that God had to dramatically interrupt it?
The crimes of Judah are extensively listed by all the prophets from this time period. The list is always the same, repeated on a loop.
The highlights of Judah's crimes were:
Their treatment of widows and orphans
Their treatment of the poor or vulnerable in society
The murder of children (child sacrifices in idolatrous worship)
Corruption and lack of justice in the legal courts
Enslaving vulnerable people
Religious people often like to make abstracts out of The Exile - to boil the failings down to conceptual, vague, spiritual corruption. But the evil Judah was committing was specific. It was tangible and even thematic. It had everything to do with a lack of social justice. With exploitation. With violence against the weak. With how they were treating the most vulnerable members of their communities.
Many Christians will, of The Exile, simply summarise: "Judah sinned because they worshipped other gods". But what they often fail to address is the specific acts which came with this idolatrous worship - namely, child sacrifice.
The people of Judah were sacrificing their own children. They were cutting the throats of their infants, burning their bodies on altars to gods who demanded child sacrifices. For the promise of rain, blessing, abundance, fertility, wealth, prosperity, protection, and salvation, they were killing their own children.
As Christian singer, Michael Card, sings in his song, Spirit of The Age:
"Now every age has heard it, this voice that speaks from Hell
Sacrifice your children and for you it will be well..."
When I first heard the song as a child, I thought it bordered on absurd: that anyone would be willing to sacrifice babies to secure their own wellbeing or prosperity seems like insanity. But I understand now. I spent literal decades reading, learning about the event of The Exile, without hearing anyone explain it as: God couldn't stand to watch children die any more.
Some may call it reductive, but the biblical narrative is clear: God had to make it stop. He interrupted the conveyer belt of slaughter of children and the vulnerable. That is the cause of The Exile. Sometimes we talk as if God merely "allowed" the capture of the Judeans, and the victory of Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar. No, he actively willed it. God called Nebuchadnezzar his "servant"; he chose him to save his people from themselves. Or in the least, to stop the oppression and slaughter.
Despite God putting in place systems and laws to protect widowed women, orphans, those who sought justice from the legal system, those in debt and enslaved, and the people of Judah failed to uphold these protective laws. They preyed on their weakest. Judah was cannibalising itself - a society rotting from the inside. And always, always at the centre of the prophets' warning and accusations against the people was the same message: widows and orphans. Widows and orphans.
The treatment of widows and orphans has always been the barometer for determining the spiritual state of God's people. Always. Social justice is not one arm of spirituality and faith, it sits at its heart.
And so, with this in mind, let's return to the "Israel, the chosen people" idea....
Even if you believe all that stuff, about the state of Israel being "chosen", "ordained", etc. Even if you believe in some non-biblical, heretical prophecy about Israel needing to militarily control the whole region so that Armageddon can happen and Jesus can finally return, there remains the matter of widows and orphans.
The Israeli occupation is, and has from its conception, targeted women and children. They have and are torturing, abusing, raping, imprisoning, massacring children. On purpose. The world saw two nights ago, during the Rafah Tent Massacre, as parents held up half of their infants - beheaded by the Israelis. We've seen the toddlers shot in the head by Israeli snipers. We've seen the burnt car where Hind sat and begged for someone to come get her. We've seen the Israeli occupational forces, with machine guns slung over their shoulders, drag away a 3-year-old boy who would be arrested, tortured, starved, stripped, and kept indefinitely in an Israeli prison. We've heard Israeli leaders, when their murder of children is questioned, firmly pronounce that "there are no innocents in Gaza". And all the while they spin and spin the lie that the sacrifice of these children is necessary for Jewish safety. "Sacrifice your children and for you it will be well." It truly is the Spirit of the Age.
Whatever angle you may be coming at the Palestinian genocide from - religiously, socially, philosophically, culturally - you cannot look away from the reality that the Israeli occupation and the Zionist project is purposefully, willingly, gleefully murdering children. Their soldiers hunt children. We've seen them laughing in self-posted videos on social media, as they lie in baby cots, cycle around on tricycles, hold up the bloodied baby clothes of the children they've just murdered. Instead of a stone altar on an ancient Judean hilltop, it's happening in Gaza's refugee camps, ghettoes, bloodied prison cells, street corners, in the food line around aid trucks. The concentration camp of Gaza is a slaughter factory.
And if you have any question about how God is going to respond to this heinous evil, look to the story of The Exile. How did he respond the last time? The oppression and slaughter of his children caused the destruction of Jerusalem, it being overrun by enemies, his people being carried away, and God himself leaving the temple. Let that sink in. God left - removed his presence - from the midst of a people who did these things. He won't stand for it. He won't be apart of it. God will not forever be silent. And when he rises, what a horrible, wonderful, and justified day that will be. We have already seen, we already know, what happens when people harm widows and orphans, when they enslave and oppress.
Amid all this "chosen people" talk, remember, remember The Babylonian Exile. Let it be an anchor to silence all other arguments. Know thy history. Remember how far God would go to end the slaughter of children, chosen people or not.
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