“When the Darkness Stares Back” The world on the brink of war.
December 3, 2023 Dr. Roger Ray click here to see the video
It is December and it is now a time of year for office parties, family gatherings, festive decorations, and a flurry of gift giving. . . but it doesn’t feel much like it, does it? I live in southern Florida now so decorations that involve snowmen and tinsel covered pine trees are always out of place but much more than that, it is difficult to be aware of what is going on in the world and to even fake being jolly right now.
We are now in an election year in which we will apparently, once again, have a presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, although, it seems likely to me that Trump will be in prison for two or three profoundly good reasons before next November and if I were betting on whether Biden would still be standing on his own power and capable of feeding himself by election day, I’m afraid that I would be inclined to vote against it. I wish him well, I sincerely do, but I’m from Kentucky and we are used to looking a horse up and down in the paddock before we place our bets on the track and I’m not liking what I see when I see news clips of our president.
We’re nearing a second year of war in Europe as the ground freezes in Ukraine and Russia regains the ability to advance against a people desperately locked in a battle to retain their freedom. And, ringing the familiar bells of what could lead the world into a global conflict, the battle between Hamas and Israel threatens to drag the West Bank, Lebanon, Iran, and Jordan into a battle that none of us can ignore.
I realize that the media makes money when they can keep us scared and glued to our TV sets and I don’t want to fall prey to that kind of hysteria, but, folks, seriously, there are dire circumstances in the world that we really must not ignore.
As a pastor, as a spiritual person, I have grown far beyond the superstition and mythology that concerns itself with souls, God’s judgement, or eternal prospects of imaginary heaven or hell. For most of us, spirituality has to do with our personal striving to be a better person and our corporate work to try to make the world a better place. Given the complexity and severity of our current circumstances, it is no wonder that most of the people I am meeting in my new community seem to want to avoid news about politics or global conflicts. Heaven knows, as the home state of both Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, no conversation lasts more than a few seconds before despair is staring you in the face.
We have, over the past two years, been easily decisive in talking about Vladimir Putin being a war criminal and we have confidently sided with Ukraine in a war that absolutely cannot be lost to Russia. Putin’s tactics of attacking civilian populations, stealing and deporting thousands of children to Russia to be brainwashed into being Russian. Hard data is difficult to be certain of, but it seems safe to say that nearly 10,000 civilians have been killed in the 20 months of this illegal war.
President Zelensky has said that nearly twice that number of children have been abducted and taken to Russia. This is an incomprehensible terror, and it cannot be allowed to continue, and Putin cannot survive this conflict in power. Ukraine simply must win. I’m all for peace negotiations but however this war ends, Putin cannot be rewarded with either land or power for this terrible war.
But I want to raise a more specific concern with you today about the war taking place in Gaza. As guilty as the Netanyahu government has been in its mistreatment of residents of the Gaza Strip, there is no plausible justification for the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas. They targeted the most vulnerable civilians. They raped women and murdered children, going specifically to childcare centers and setting up snipers to kill the elderly who were fleeing to find safety in underground bunkers.
It was ruthless. It was barbaric. And as much as Palestinians have complained about having been treated as if their lives did not matter, as if they were somehow subhuman, behaving in a manner that gives credence to the belief that they are subhuman certainly doesn’t help their cause in the eyes of the world. They are still holding hostages trying to protect themselves against counterattack by hiding behind hostages and their own civilian population, making demands that they are daily less likely to receive specifically because they are still holding children and the elderly hostage.
There is no nation on earth that would not strike back against such a heinous terrorist attack. It could not be ignored, and it certainly couldn’t be excused. However, folks, the mere fact that Israel has every right and obligation to defend themselves does not give them cart blanch to carryout a virtual genocide in Gaza.
There have been about 10,000 civilian deaths in nearly two years of Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, but people, there have been nearly 10,000 civilian deaths in Gaza in the first five weeks of Israel’s military response to Hamas. Yes, Hamas hides in tunnels and operates out of apartment complexes and hospitals. They are terrorists. They don’t fight fairly. But what is Israel if they can excuse such a massive rate of civilian deaths just because it is difficult to target Hamas without collateral deaths numbering in the thousands, most of whom are children under the age of 18!
It is not a 1 to 1 comparison. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked. It was inexcusable and it is a use of a nation’s military to accomplish terrorist ends. But even though Israel was attacked, they were not attacked by the children of Gaza! And if Hamas were hiding in tunnels under an Israeli hospital, Netanyahu would not order a missel attack on that hospital to kill Hamas militants. Israel doesn’t want to be tarred with the brush of terrorism, alleging that they treat Palestinians as being subhuman, keeping them confined in a virtual open-air prison for generations and killing them indiscriminately when there are hostilities.
Israeli officials take great offense at these allegations but it sure doesn’t help their case when they show the world through their actions that the allegations are true.
Even the war in Ukraine has its complicating factors. Prior to the February 2022 invasion, I was willing to say that Putin had a case to make about NATO expansion and he had reason to demand some redress. But his invasion of Ukraine and the war crimes committed at his command has made it clear that he is not a civilized global figure, and he simply cannot be trusted or tolerated in the modern world.
But isn’t this situation in Gaza eroding our ability to think of Israel as a civilized player in the global theater? Sure, Hamas is a terrorist organization. Putin is a terrorist with state credentials. But what is Israel? Is this in any way a defensible retaliation for October 7th attack, or is it more of a genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip? As horrible as October 7th was, isn’t it increasingly evident that Netanyahu is using public sympathy to carry out what he calls “mowing the grass” to an obscene degree? I have no idea what Netanyahu’s end goal is. Does he think this is going to force Egypt, or Lebanon, or Jordan to accept all of Gaza’s population as immigrants? Or does he, God help us, actually plan to kill them all?
I want to remind you of that famous warning from Fredrich Nietzsche that if you stare into the abyss long enough, you find that it is staring back at you. Netanyahu and other conservatives in Israel have focused so hard on their hatred of terrorists that, it seems, it is difficult to tell them apart. Hamas does what they do without any pretense of civility, but while Israel drops leaflets warning Gaza residents to flee to the south for safety, then they go ahead and bomb the south at the same time. They have a pretense of civilization, but it is like putting chocolate frosting on a brick. If you fight terrorists with same blood lust that terrorists use, you find that the abyss is already staring back at you.
Still, I get it, if Israel disarmed, their neighbors would kill them all in a weekend. If their neighbors disarmed, we might expect an actual state of peace; but the Palestinians are not going to disarm, and Israel isn’t either, but this is not a battle between aggressors and victims defending themselves. There are serious offenses on both sides and Israel has the bigger guns.
I don’t think that we, as Americans, the nation that has a larger Jewish population that Israel does, a nation that has a dispersed and diverse Muslim population living among us, and the nation that is singularly capable of arming Israel and making it victorious, even though they are massively outnumbered by neighbors who chant, “from the river to the sea,” and they mean it. America holds the real key to Israel’s continued existence but, in my opinion, they have gone way too far, and our support cannot be assumed in the face of what can only be called war crimes…. If you have, for a moment, called Putin a war criminal, you cannot look at what Netanyahu is doing and not see that it is even worse.
I have often articulated my regret that we took Palestinian land to create a Jewish homeland but, right or wrong, the holocaust was a historical event that demanded that the world provide a safe place for the Jews to live and to be able to defend themselves against that ever happening again. It is where it is, no matter how much I may question that decision, it must continue to exist, but not this way.
President Biden has explained several times that we had to support Ukraine’s war to maintain their independence to make clear to Xi Jinping that if China invades Taiwan, that they can expect us to help them in the same way. But if we are also supporting Netanyahu with money and weapons, no matter how cruel and monstrous his attack on the Palestinians is, then what kind of signal are we really sending to either Xi Jinping or Putin, or to Iran or North Korea, for that matter?
Putin’s argument always has been that what he is doing is no different from what other world powers do, pointing at our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. And if Netanyahu is murdering civilians ten times faster than Putin is, and we are still supporting his war effort, how wrong is Putin, really?
If our faith leads us to be the best people we can be, and to create the best nation and the best world we can create, then we cannot have an on again, off again relationship with the moral high ground. If war crimes are wrong for Russia and Syria, and Iran, and China, then war crimes are wrong for the United States and for Israel.
If we are sincerely outraged about the horrible offenses of Hamas on October 7, then we cannot be indifferent to the mass murders taking place in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli military. And simply turning off the news doesn’t change anything. Silence, in this moment, is equal to consent.
I’m going to try hard to work my way around to something like a Merry Christmas message because, this season of joy really is about our children, isn’t it.
But you know what else is all about the children? Peace. Peace is for
children. Peace is for Muslim children, peace is for Jewish children and Christian children, peace is for Russian children, Ukrainian children, Palestinian children, and Israeli children. And we grownups don’t have to give it to them or teach it to them, we just have to stop taking it away from them.
