Tom DiLorenzo, the president of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute and author of numerous books, including The Real Lincoln, has an article today at LewRockwell.com that I must recommend. It is titled “Christian Worship of the False God of Politics“.
It includes these appropriate observations about Christian support for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians:
Millions of American “evangelical” Christians have been indoctrinated in the idea that they must be worshipful of Israeli politicians and bureaucrats. This is so because they are taught by preachers like John Hagee that the Bible says that God will bless those who bless the nation of Abraham. The absurdity of it all is that pop religionists like Hagee falsely conflate the Israel of the Bible with today’s politicians and bureaucrats of the seventy-six-year-old government of the country of Israel. The two have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. Israel’s politicians can be just as sleazy, immoral, corrupt, criminal, and murderous as any politicians anywhere. Hence the spectacle of American evangelical Christians cheerleading the killing of fellow Christians in Gaza by the Israeli military….
What exactly are evangelical Christians worshipping when they so slavishly worship the government of Israel? They are not worshipping God or Godliness – just the opposite. They are worshipping the kind of people described by George Washington in his Farewell Address as “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men.” Ordinary politicians, in other words.
When politicians of any country use the coercive powers of the state to confiscate one person’s property, give some of it to political supporters, and keep some for themselves they are engaging in theft. Calling it “democracy,” “majority rule,” or “the only democracy in the Middle East” does not make it any less sinful.
DiLorenzo appropriately goes on to explain how the worship of Israel or any other state is un-Christian.
Read the full article at LewRockwell.com.
Among Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians that many Christians support is Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. DiLorenzo’s observations reinforce the point I made in my recent post “To Solve the Israel-Palestine Conflict, End American Ignorance“.
As explained in the post, “To end the Israel-Palestine conflict will require correcting Americans’ twisted perceptions — especially among Christian Zionists.”
The post also contains links to additional past content of mine elaborating on the problem of Christian Zionism and illuminating why we if we hope to end the Israel-Palestine conflict, we need to get through to Christians whose religious devotion to the state of Israel blinds them to reality.
Explore this problem more here ?:
Update: After publishing this post, I also learned that an article by Lew Rockwell was published yesterday by the Mises Institute titled “Beware of the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act“.
As Rockwell rightly points out, “We need to ask ourselves, why the Act has been passed at the present time. The answer is obvious. It is to block all criticism of Israel. And Israel should be criticized, because of the genocidal policy it is following in Gaza.”
My cousin is a devout Christian and largely self-taught biblical scholar. He has changed his mind about various pieces of church teaching over the decades. I would like to send him this piece, because whenever I bring up what Israel is doing, he tends to say something to the effect that it is God’s will and that God promised to lift up the Israelites again, so he will do it “because He promised to do it, not because the Jews deserve it.”
I don’t think that my cousin would agree that he worships Israeli politicians. He has hardly ever mentioned any of them by name. Are you aware of a column or source elsewhere that would refute this justification for Christian Zionism?
I addressed your cousin’s argument briefly in this old post:
https://www.jeremyrhammond.com/2010/07/08/woe-to-you-christian-zionists-hypocrites/
Which is linked to at the end of my post to which this one was a follow up:
To Solve the Israel-Palestine Conflict, End American Ignorance
https://www.jeremyrhammond.com/2024/05/09/solve-israel-palestine-conflict-end-american-ignorance/
For anyone to actually read the Bible and miss the central theme of how the Israelites violated God’s Covenant must be pretty difficult to do.
Thanks so much for the reply, Jeremy!
Is there anything in the Bible that refers to a time later in Biblical history/prophecy than the citations that you introduced by saying “But they willfully neglect to point out what happens later in the story:” where God went ahead and promised one more time that the Israelites would be restored to the land of Canaan or whatever? I don’t know the Bible well enough to even know how to look for something like this.
There is discussion of a restoration of Israel, but this ties into prophecies of the Messiah. Christians who are not Zionists interpret it metaphorically, a prophecy that was fulfilled by Jesus’s sacrifice, not literally a reestablishment of an actual kingdom/state of Israel. Anti-Zionist orthodox Jews view the creation of Israel in 1948 as a heretical act of men defying God by reestablishing such a state on their own instead of awaiting the Messiah. I don’t know specific verses offhand. It’s been decades since I read the Bible.