Oxymoronic Christian Zionism
13 “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is constricted that leads to life, and there are few who find it. Matthew 7:13-14
Oxymoron - (noun): a combination of contradictory or incongruous words (such as cruel kindness); broadly: something (such as a concept) that is made up of contradictory or incongruous elements. (Merriam Webster Dictionary - https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oxymoron).
Zionism in its modern usage is not a concept to which the Bible testifies. By testify, I mean what 2 Timothy 3:16-17 clarifies: “All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man or woman of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work.” The Bible indisputably is the Word of God for the people of God. Who are the people of God? The Bible tells us in the same 2 Timothy passage: the woman or man of God is the person whose life is centered in and seeks to be characterized fully by the truths and promises given in the Holy Scriptures. This is the sine qua non of historical Christianity among the many variants and claims of peoples’ responses to the Gospel of God revealed in Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Jesus was/is a first century Jew who over the centuries Christians affirm was/is the God-Man sent by God the Father and followed in world history by God the Holy Spirit. Jesus, the Messiah, was/is the historical and present spiritual Presence of “Immanuel” - “God With Us,” as foretold by the Jewish prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 7:14) seven hundred years before the appearance of the God-Man in earth’s history. Jesus, according to the Bible, is the exclusive fulfillment of the covenantal promises of God given to historical patriarchs of the God-elected Hebrew tribal group for individuals throughout the world. According to the Holy Scriptures, one’s acceptance of Jesus, His gospel (“good news”), and personal belief by faith, acceptance, and true confessional following as disciples of Jesus as provided above in Matthew 7 and in Ephesians 2:8 - “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God,” is the sole way that is given for salvation from the fallen world, the fallen self, and the fallen life of all who enter into world history. Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6).
The exclusivity of Christian discipleship and the simple but sublime truth of what it means to be a disciple of Christ Jesus includes the warning given clarification by the God-Man Himself: the Way to life with Christ Jesus and the Triune God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit is in the narrow way untraveled by the crowds. This doesn’t mean, of course, that any way of living that is obscure, traveled by few, or with wanton, immoral, or a self-created protocol meets the criteria of discipleship of Jesus. But the Way to the Triune God as a true and faithful disciple of Jesus will be narrow and difficult, completely impossible without faith, to live out by human effort, human means, human identity, human understanding, human affinities, or human wishes.
This is to say that “Christian Zionism” is an oxymoron and a Christian Zionist is a thing that doesn’t exist. At least in the Holy Scriptures, the Word of God. A Zionist by meaning is a Jew who affirms the desire for a modern Jewish state (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism). It is inconceivable that a man or woman could be both an orthodox Jew in rejection of Jesus as the Messiah and a follower of Christ. If anyone thinks there is a compatibility between being a Christ Jesus-rejecting Jew and a disciple of Jesus Christ, that person needs to spend time contemplating and reading about the Cross - both the history of the crucifixion, the theology of the Cross, and the social and political impact in history of the Cross of Christ. This is to say that the moniker, “Messianic Jew,” is also an oxymoron that elevates and separates Jewishness from the goyim, or "Gentiles” - those who are not a Jew. The early disciples of Christ were mainly Jews. They were not referred to as Messianic Jews; they came to be known as Christians. Is this just a debate over semantics? Yes and more, when one understands that values - social and political, are formed and become a part of, if not constitutive, of social and political practice through time by the ‘normalization’ of words and their meaning. This Jewish website, “Heyalma,” calls attention to the Cold War emergent myth of a Judeo-Christianity - https://www.heyalma.com/the-myth-of-judeo-christianity-explained/.
All of this matters as the genocide of Palestinians continues by Israel under the support and endorsement of the ravenous U.S. Military Industrial Complex and all of the U.S. lettered agencies that are in on the post-WW2 scam of the complete, “full-spectrum” institutionalization of the “free market POP” - “Profits Over People.” POP is the ideology and practices of “market fundamentalism”, which was introduced and cheered on in becoming institutionalized in America and the world by the Christian Right, who became the “Christian Zionists” who backed Reagan. The Reagan Revolution in the 1980s has undermined and continues to destroy any republicanism still alive in what used to be an American “democracy.” For those who aren’t knowledgeable, “market fundamentalism” is another, dressed-up phrase meaning “legal theft of wealth by central banksters and Wall Street financial crap shooters.” It’s not that “free market” ideology was never not a part of an American consternation between “captains of capitalism” and those committed to more caring communities of economic justice since the nation’s founding. I think…I hope Reader, that you have awakened to the fact not just that our government and big business - Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big (fill-in-the blank) has become increasingly corrupt since 9/11. It has and is. But since the “Reagan Revolution” and the takeover of American institutions by the Christian and Jewish Zionist neoliberals under the careful and attentive George Bush Sr and his cohorts who migrated to the Bush Jr. administration (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism), American government and big business have made legal, unregulated theft by neoliberalism the lodestar of American ideology, domestically and internationally. Due to the internet, we now have access to sound, accurate, and documented analyses by quite skilled researchers to share the results of their research independent of the controls of the ruling elite so that increasingly, we are finding increasing exposure to true, accurate history and how American government and business leaders have used “the system” to enhance and increase their schemes for nationally and internationally stealing wealth, not to mention undermining and essentially destroying any semblance of enforcement of constitutional powers for and by common folk.
Back to “Christian Zionism”… As a group Christian Zionists, I think, are travelers on the broad way - not on the narrow way described by Jesus in the Scriptures. By championing Israel in its recent and ongoing genocidal rage against others - specifically the non Jews - in this case the Christian and Arabic Palestinians, such would-be disciples of Jesus are denying that for over two millennia the Jews have been and are today anti-Jesus and anti-Christ. The modern state of Israel is not the “New Israel” referred to in the New Testament. Modern Israel is not the fulfillment of a restored, promised land of God. The promise of a future, restored land of the New Israel remains to be fulfilled. Christian Zionists will not hasten the Almighty God of Jacob to send Jesus in His second coming to Israel by departing from the narrow way of the Gospel of God by giving a moral pass to Israeli genocide. It is disgusting to witness the Israeli genocide and the meaning of “Christian” is bastardized in “Christian Zionism” which supports the Jewish genocide of the non-Jewish, Palestinian people. It is ultimate stupidity demonstrated by those who confess allegiance to Christ Jesus by ignoring the moral and theological significance, as well as the clear Biblical teaching of the exclusiveness of the Jesus Way of discipleship, in Israel’s high crimes against humanity. The Israeli genocide is little different in its moral outrageousness from the Nazis’ holocaust of the Jews. It is a truism for right-believing and right-thinking, intelligible Biblical followers of Christ Jesus, that “Christian Zionists” are displaying a great “falling away” from historical Christian orthodoxy. By this falling away from historical Christian orthodoxy, they have gone ga-ga and joined “lock, stock, and barrel” the world’s political, elite globalists in their embrace of an Israeli-justified “moralism” unhitched to normal, human standards of moral conduct, and tied to the fantasy of a Judeo-Christian“ theologism, functioning surreptitiously to give moral cover to the great crimes against humanity perpetrated by Israel for one or more nefarious aims. Judaism, like Judeo-Christianity, is anti-Christ, and the probability is high, based on a basic understanding of world history since WW2 and in this present generation, that a more powerful regime of those opposed to Christ Jesus can emerge with the support and advocacy of this oxymoronic “Christian Zionism.” My disobedience is that I cannot leave alone reprimanding and disparaging “Christian Zionists.” Disregarding Jesus’ admonition to his disciples in Matthew 15, I have troubled myself to criticize and demean the blindness and waywardness of “Christian Zionist” from the straight and narrow path of Jesus’ Way. This is the relevant passage: Matthew 15:12-14 - “Then the disciples came and said to Him, ‘Do You know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this statement?’ But He answered and said, ‘Every plant which My heavenly Father did not plant will be uprooted. Leave them alone; they are blind guides of blind people. And if a person who is blind guides another who is blind, both will fall into a pit.’”
If you are a “Christian Zionist,” I implore you to seek and ask for deliverance from your spiritual, theological, social, political, and historical malady and to seek the narrow Way of Christ Jesus. The Israeli genocide is a continuing moral outrage. There is no good thing or theological gloss to what the Israeli state is doing. Criticizing Israeli genocide does not endorse nor negate the moral wrong and evil of Hamas terrorism. Remaining silent to Israeli crimes against Palestinian humanity endorses the evil that showcases itself under some kind of theological and Biblical immunity from God’s judgement of the Jews’ in their rejection of their Messiah and their consequential spiritual and moral blindness. Conflating some moral high standing to the Israeli crimes against humanity by an equally oxymoronic “Christian Zionism” is itself oxymoronic. Amen.