"White Moderate"

Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem

Psalm 122:6 (KJV) Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.

My wife, Sharon, and I just returned from a wonderful trip to Israel. While there we visited the IDF soldiers on the Lebanese border and witnessed their dedication to protect the people of Israel and the cause of freedom. This is exactly what they are doing on all of their borders.

How sad it is that our media in America paints such a twisted version of what is going on over there. The idea of a mean spirited people attacking their neighboring civilians is, quite simply, a bald faced lie. The truth is that Israel goes to great lengths to not hurt civilians caught in the battle between radical Islamist Jihadi’s and Israel. Civilians of Lebanon and the Gaza are victims of Hezbollah and Hamas militants, not Israelis.
In any war, civilians do get caught in the middle, as is happening in Syria today. What is not reported, as it should be, is that Israel is the one delivering aid to them in the form of shelter, food and medical treatment.
Moslems have more rights as Israeli citizens than they do in Palestine or the Gaza. One Moslem journalist we spoke to told us that he lived in Israel because it was safer for he and his family than in Palestine because he reports the truth without siding with the Palestinians or Israelis. Right is right and wrong is wrong.

What I'm thinking today, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, is this:

Just as Dr. King chastised the “white moderate” of his day in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.],"16 April 1963, So we need to catch the heart of what he meant for the Jew of today. Please read this quote from his famous letter and consider its implication.

“I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

I know too many Christian leaders that are the equivalent of the “white moderate” spoken of. In the case of Israel, and its right to exist as a nation, too many “Christian moderates” exist to stand for Israel in a meaningful way. Many Jewish people are, “gravely disappointed” with the “moderate” stance of many Americans who look the other way when Israelis are maligned and their right to exist as a people is challenged or ignored. They are unwilling, in fact, unable, to “wait for a ‘more convenient season’” and the paternalistic stance of America that “believes he can set the timetable for another" nations right to exist.

Thank God for men like Rev. John Hagee and his Christians United For Israel organization that have moved many “moderate Christian” leaders out of complacency into meaningful activism in order to put to flight the “lukewarm acceptance” which “is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

I, for one, join with Christians United for Israel to stand with Israel and the Jewish people. As a Christian, we have the obligation, yes, the duty, to not only “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem” but advocate for its peace with our elected officials.

God will prosper those who love Israel. So why not join the fight.