Keeping the Porch Light on in a Dark World
The Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity is an apologetics ministry offering cultural critique. From time to time, the institute offers lectures and special seminars. One such lecture last Spring was on Social Justice. Scott Masson presents a History of Social Justice.
I highly recommend this video, even if only for the audio. This is the message that needs desperately to be heard by the church.
The Left and Islam make strange bedfellows. The former is allegedly the political philosophy of freedom, liberation, social justice, women’s (womyns) rights, LGBT rights, animal rights, and warm puppies (well, Leftists actually are more likely cat people). Islam, on the other hand, promotes Sharia law, limits the role of women in society and the family, would hang gays, lesbians and the transgendered, is against free speech (must not insult the prophet), and is responsible for most death-by-terror in the world. Islam allows for rape, pedophilia, and recruits children as suicide bombers. As I write this, ISIS is demanding Iraqi women undergo genital mutilation.
But they can and do join forces against Israel.
One might think this is coincidental: Islam hates Israel because it has historically done so, and the Left is against Israel because Israel is perceived to be unjust towards its neighbours; these two entities (Islam and the Left) have otherwise nothing in common. The Left’s silence on the above Islamic social values is telling.
But I think there’s a much greater reason for the Left’s hatred of Israel: the natural rebellion against the acts of God in history.
The story of Islam is that Abraham’s son Ishmael, not Isaac, is rightfully heir to the land promise. God promised the land to Abraham (Genesis 12:7). The Bible is clear, however, that the land belongs to the heirs of Isaac, as he was the son of the promise (Genesis 21:12; Romans 9:7). Ishmael was born to a slave woman, Hagar (Genesis 16-21). This sets Islam against Judaism and Christianity, as the claim to the land and blessings of Abraham are seen to be usurped by Isaac, not divinely conferred upon him. Islam will forever be at war with the Jews, and the Jews know it. If Israel were to be eliminated as a state, no Jew would be allowed to exist anywhere else in peace. Islam will seek to eliminate all descendants of Isaac.
This too, of course, means that the story of Jesus must be rewritten by Islam. The Islamic Jesus is unrecognisable to Christians. The Islamic story of Jesus has nothing to do with the historical Jesus as described in the most accurate accounts of His life: the canonical Gospels.
Israel has a Biblical, historical, moral, legal, political, and theological claim to the land. [Important note: I do not believe that the theological claim to the land is absolute; I am not a dispensationalist, nor do I believe that Israel’s return to the land has eschatological significance].
The Left does not seem to get this, as the Left has little use for, or useful understanding of, Christian theology. Failing to understand this, however, means that he Left’s confusion about the events that are taking place in Israel must continue, with some sort of relativist understanding of “human rights,” or “social justice.” Justice is served when terrorists are rebuffed and punished. But if launching rockets from hospitals, schools, and homes are ok, and measured retaliation is not, then the Left is too morally and legally confused to comprehend. Starting with a hatred of Israel, no attack against Israel is unjustified to Leftist thinking.
The Left, by definition, tolerates religious faith only in its most private expressions. The existence of Israel, and from that the Christian Church, is an affront to an ideology that denies both God’s existence and His actions in history. Creation points to a Creator (Romans 1:18-28, Psalm 8, 19), and atheism’s feeble attempt to deny that is becoming apparent (“New” Atheism, Dawkins, Hitchons, et al). Creation points to a Creator, a nation’s existence points to a Lord of History. The nation of Israel also points to Christ. In fact, Israel will not be the end recipient of the wrath of Islam and Left, it is Christ and His church. The rebellion started before our first parents kept the garden, and the end of the battle is on the horizon. Sin and death were defeated on the cross.
Both Islam and the Left represent human rebellion against a God Who acts in history. It is the Christ who is hated who is also the Christ who can heal all divisions (Ephesians 2:11-22).
Real Christianity is intellectually vigorous. But in the end, one is saved not by their intellectual gifts, but by the grace of God, and oftentimes in spite of them.
2 assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, 3 how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. 4 When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, 5 which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. 6 This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. 7 Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power.
“Likewise I trust that we have seen again something of the nature of Christian truth. It is not ordinary knowledge. It is not something that the unaided human intellect can understand and receive. Without the enlightenment which the Holy Spirit alone can give, gospel truths remain as dark and as hidden to us as they did to ‘the princes of this world’ when the Lord of glory was actually amongst men. ‘But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit’. ‘We have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God’ (1 Cor 2:12). This is not ordinary truth. Whatever the power of our intellect, whatever our brilliance, it will never be enough. We must all become ‘as little children’. We need the inspiration and the anointing and the unction of the Holy Ghost before we can receive and understand divine truth.”
Lloyd-Jones, David Martyn. The Unsearchable Riches of Christ: An Exposition of Ephesians 3. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1972.