James M. Redwine

Christians

A Capital Idea

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President Trump has decided to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The Administration’s two main stated reasons for doing so are: (1) it simply acknowledges the reality, i.e., the Jews of Israel already say it’s their capital; and, (2) America’s decision will promote peace among the Jews, Christians and Muslims who live there. Of course, many of the residents of Jerusalem are sectarian and do not ascribe to any religion. However, none of them can escape their own or their neighbor’s cultural heritage.

According to the Old Testament people were already living in the areas we now call Palestine and Israel when the Hebrews migrated there. And according to the Torah, the Bible and the Quran, Arabs and Jews have the common founder, Abraham. They are genetically half-siblings at their origin.

This makes some sense to me as science has established all humans arose from one source in Africa and the Middle East is geographically connected to that source. We are all connected genetically, although it seems unfair I cannot understand nuclear physics nor run a 4.3 forty.

It is our elected federal government’s function to set and execute our foreign policy. I am good with that. But I would like to respectfully suggest to President Trump that if we want to truly recognize the reality on the ground in Jerusalem and promote peace as an honest broker, we should also recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, just saying.

The Mote v.s. Log Conundrum

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In one of the greatest political speeches ever made Jesus told the audience on the Mount they were hypocrites who could find the minute faults in others while ignoring their own major failings (Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 5).

Muslims, to whom Jesus is second only to Muhammad as a prophet, and Christians, to whom Jesus is a god, might wish to reread his teachings on human relations. Other peoples might benefit too.

Those of you who have slogged through the most recent Gavel Gamut articles might recall the major topic has been the difficulty of one nation, say North Korea or Iran, understanding the true intent of another nation, say the United States of America, and vice versa. Differing languages often cause what might start as hurt feelings to end with bloodshed.

It is hardly a novel thought that countries, just as individuals, often seek to impose upon others restrictions they refuse to abide by themselves. If we concentrate on comparing and contrasting America and Iran and/or North Korea, outside observers might conclude one country that has thousands of nuclear weapons is threatening to use them to annihilate countries who attempt to even develop one.

Such an investigator might observe that one country strains to dispose of billions of tons of wasted food while it imposes dire economic consequences on countries whose populations are starving.

When it comes to health care one country debates at length the investment in care for its most vulnerable citizens while it spends trillions to rain munitions instead of medicines down upon countries which stubbornly refuse to agree such an approach is altruistic.

If Jesus was correct in his speech (promise?) that “blessed are the peacemakers”, what might we assume the war makers will reap? They probably will not gain acceptance as “sons of god”, more likely as sons of….

Jesus of Palestine

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During these Twelve Days of Christmas my thoughts have been occupied with the birth of Jesus. According to Matthew, Chapter 2, and Luke, Chapter 2, Jesus was born in Bethlehem during the reign of Herod the Great, which was from 37 B.C. to 4 B.C. The Roman emperor Pompeii conquered the area of Palestine, which included Bethlehem, in 63 B.C. Bethlehem is an ancient city whose history dates back a thousand years before Christ.

Today Bethlehem is in the West Bank area of Palestine about ten kilometers south of modern day Israel, which was carved out of Palestine in 1948 by the United Nations.

Jesus was born in the city of Bethlehem. Bethlehem was then and is now in the country of Palestine. Some who wish to deny ancient or biblical or Roman or contemporary borders may cling to the fiction that Palestine never existed and Bethlehem today is part of the so-called “Palestinian Authority”. Such legerdemain simply pours fuel on the conflagration that is the Middle East. Call it a rose or call it a thorn; Palestine is Palestine.

Just as so many who reach our shores from foreign lands know, if your child is born in the United States, he/she is an American citizen. Ergo, either Jesus was born and died a Palestinian or, if one is a believer, Jesus was born and still is a Palestinian.

When the National Judicial College had me teach fourteen Palestinian judges and lawyers, including Palestine’s Attorney General who lived in Bethlehem, I found them evenly divided between Christians and Muslims. The Attorney General was Palestinian Christian and very proud to live in the “Little Town” of Jesus’s birth. He held out hope the Prince of Peace would return and bring peace to His birthplace and the world.

In this season of hoped for peace, my thoughts have turned to the origin of our troubles in the Middle East. Until the country of Palestine was occupied by forces enabled by our power and money, America had no problems with Palestinians. There was and is no just reason for us to help oppress Palestinians. We have somehow gradually stumbled our way into a morass of injustice and intrigue.

It would be interesting to see what today’s government of Israel would do with a group of rabble rousers such as the twelve apostles as led by that radical Palestinian, Jesus. Would Jesus today, just as Jesus two thousand years ago, be arrested at the behest of the Israeli hierarchy and held in jail?

Perhaps the people of contemporary Jerusalem would call for the release of some other alleged criminal, such as a contemporary Barabbas, and call for the crucifixion of Jesus as a terrorist. If so, would we in America finally have the scales fall from our eyes or would we play the part of new Romans and be complicit? At a minimum, now that we find ourselves in this deep hole, maybe we should at least stop digging.

Anyway, Merry Twelve Days of Christmas to all and to all a peaceful New Year.