We Remember

The Changing Colors of Trees and Conflict in the Middle East

The month of October has generally been a season of celebrating the changing colors of the trees, complete with everything pumpkin and spice. But in recent years, I’ve noticed a different kind of change.

Front yards are turned into fake graveyards with plastic tombstones. Shredded cotton covers the bushes to look like cobwebs. And pseudo skeletons hang from trees. One neighbor even sets up a fake guillotine with red liquid dripping from its “blade” and a basket beneath to imply its holding the contents of such executions.

Every year it seems the stores add more and more aisles to offer a growing plethora of Halloween decor. Orange and black is everywhere. But it’s more than the decorations I find concerning. It’s the way our culture is stylizing death as entertainment.

Some might argue it’s all just innocent fun. Maybe for some it is. But I can’t help but think there is something more sinister going on. Who decided that Halloween should rival Christmas as a holiday?

When my kids were little, I let them dress up in fun and silly costumes but never the kind that glorified gore. Then we would walk around our cul-de-sac together and knock on our neighbors’ doors. We passed around candy and chatted on sidewalks with friends. That was the extent of it.

It was one day: October 31. Now it’s more like an entire season. Still, I mostly ignore it and look forward to November and its timely reminder to give thanks. But this past week we went from faux celebrations of death to actual rallies.

On college campuses across America and in cities around the world, people gathered on streets to celebrate the rape and murder of over a thousand innocent people in Israel, including children and babies.

In “Campus Cowardice and Where the Buck Stops,” journalist Bari Weiss said it well:

Contrast what colleges will tolerate with what they won’t. Microaggressions are met with moral condemnation. Meanwhile, campuses will tolerate—even glorify—the wanton murder of Jews—actual violence. (Bari Weiss)

Gone are the celebratory days of gauzy ghosts and cheep cauldrons. People around the world literally watched on personal handheld devices humans being slaughtered. But instead of reacting in horror, many cheered. They actually defended these atrocious acts against humans by saying, “This is what decolonization looks like.”

For the record, this is NOT what decolonization looks like.

This is what the hatred of Jews looks like.

If you’ve been reading my work for any length of time, you know I virtually never comment on anything political. But this isn’t political. This is spiritual. Deeply spiritual.

When I taught high school English, I read Night by Elie Wiesel with my students. It’s Wiesel’s personal account as a teenage boy in a Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz with his father, who eventually died before the liberation. Wiesel’s mother and sister were murdered in the gas chambers.

From a literary standpoint, what stands out in his book is the fact that Wiesel wrote his account of Nazi imprisonment using understatement, so when we read of the horror, we read it understanding that it was even worse than stated.

Wiesel’s book won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. And the accounts of terror happening right now in the Middle East remind me of Wiesel’s words in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize:

Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere. This applies also to Palestinians to whose plight I am sensitive but whose methods I deplore when they lead to violence. Violence is not the answer. Terrorism is the most dangerous of answers. They are frustrated, that is understandable, something must be done. . . . Both the Jewish people and the Palestinian people have lost too many sons and daughters and have shed too much blood. This must stop, and all attempts to stop it must be encouraged. (Elie Wiesel, Night, p.119)

He wrote those words in 1986.

Few of us on the outside can truly grasp the extent of the conflict in the Middle East which spans thousands of years. I cannot claim to understand it all. But there is one thing I do understand very clearly. It’s what one Jewish writer named Paul once said to the church in Ephesus:

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12, ESV)

Some will say the conflict in the Middle East goes all the way back to Abraham. I think it goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. After Adam and Eve rebel against God and follow the invitation of the serpent, God prophesies in Genesis saying:

I will put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. (Genesis 3:15, ESV)

This is the pivot point that the rest of the Bible hangs upon. Throughout generations, the people of God would look for the one who would be born of a woman and who would “bruise” the head of the serpent. This prophetic language points to the Messiah who would eventually defeat the Evil One and save God’s people once and for all. And that Savior did come in the person of Jesus, a Jew from Nazareth.

After Genesis 3:15, when God declared this outcome, the Evil One searched for the offspring who would be his own undoing. This is why King Herod ordered all the boys under the age of two murdered when the three wise came seeking the new King of the Jews (Matthew 2:1-18, ESV). King Herod was influenced by the Evil One who wanted to destroy the prophesied offspring before he could grow up. But, of course, his plans were thwarted time and again. Until the cross.

When God said, “and you shall bruise his heel,” this refers to the cross when it seemed by all outward appearances that the Evil One had been victorious. But on the third day, Jesus’s death on the cross was followed by a resurrection.

At this point, one might think the Evil One would concede defeat. But the Evil One is filled with hatred for both the Jews, because it is through the Jewish people the Savior has come, and also for Christians who put their faith and hope in Christ.

Pure hatred is the signature of the Evil One.

So, when we witness hatred in action against Jews or Christians, we are reminded of Paul’s words to the Ephesians. There are spiritual forces in this world that we cannot see. But we do not live in fear, for God is greater. The Jewish disciple John proclaimed this truth when he said:

. . . he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. (1 John 4:4, ESV)

Why so much hatred against Israel?

Why not any of the other tiny nations in the world today? Like Luxembourg or Bhutan or Grenada?

Because God chose to bless the world through the small nation of Israel. It is through the Jewish people that Jesus came; he lived a perfect life and gave himself as the perfect sacrifice to atone for our sins so that we might be reconciled back to God.

Does this mean that the Jewish people have always been perfect? No. The Bible is very honest about the failings of all people everywhere (Romans 3:10, ESV).

Where does this leave us today?

I once heard someone say that the Nazis were not just trying to annihilate the Jews, they were trying to erase the memory of the Jews.

Think about that. If the Nazi regime had been successful, not only of annihilating the Jews, but also of erasing the memory of the Jews, then the memory of whom would also be erased?

Jesus, the Jew from Nazareth.

Now, who would like to erase the memory of Jesus from all of humanity? Who would like for people today to think that those stories about a Jew from Nazareth are just made-up folklore? The Evil One.

But every time we open God’s Word—written to us through many Jewish writers who were inspired by the Holy Spirit—we remember.

Every time we bow our heads in prayer to Jesus, we remember.

Every time we gather with our brothers and sisters to worship Jesus, we remember.

Every time we taste the bread and drink from the cup, we remember.

Every time we pray for the believers in both modern-day Israel and Palestine, we remember.

Every time we pray for the hostages, we remember.

Every time we pray that the human hearts of those who are bent on carrying out evil would turn toward Jesus, we remember.

Every time we walk through another store aisle, bloated with orange and black decor, we remember: death is not entertainment. It is real, but we serve a God who has conquered death.

And every time we witness the beauty of autumn, with the changing colors of the trees, we remember: death is not final. It is yet another way that God is showing us through his creation that, though there may be winter ahead, spring is coming.

Shalom.

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A Prayer from Psalm 122:6-9

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! “May they be secure who love you! Peace be within your walls and security within your towers!” For my brothers and companions’ sake I will say, “Peace be within you!” For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good. (Psalm 122:6-9, ESV)