February 8, 2013
I believe I need to take more time to
record my thoughts on my studies, on my life pursuit. I find the
further I go, the less clarity I have. I suppose that is true of
most things – the more you learn, the more there is to learn. The
more you know, the more you realize you don't know. The more I learn
about Israel, the the only thing that consistently becomes clearer is
the immensity of the problems, with seemingly endless scholarship to
accompany them all; plausible conclusions or solutions are hard to
come by.
I entered this field with only a couple
of things I solidly believed. The first was that Israel is a
legitimate state with a legitimate right to exist. The second was
that the Palestinians also had a legitimate right to their own state.
I believed that the Jewish people was and remains God's chosen
people. I still believe that. But what has become increasingly
difficult for me to reconcile is how God's chosen people can be so
thoroughly wrong in their approach to the problem.
This shouldn't surprise me, I suppose.
The Bible alone exhibits ample evidence that God's chosen people
rarely get it right. I wonder, does being God's chosen people mean
you are chosen to be downright idiotic? Perhaps the danger of being
chosen is the very real possibility (as evidenced by history) of
becoming overwrought with your own grandiosity, convinced of your own
rightness, never second-guessing.
And yet, I must interpose here and
contribute a personal note: it's my own tendency to step back and
consider that often stops me from acting – even when I should. Is
it, then, better to leap before you look? Don't consider or dither
too much? That is a question that one so prone to thought as I
cannot possibly answer. And it is a digression.
A passage in 1 Nephi 15 has caused me
to reflect on the possibility of God's chosen people being always
remembered in the covenant, but perhaps only chosen upon conditions
of righteousness. Verse 16 speaks of the House of Israel (referring
to Lehi's seed in the Promised Land – but certainly it may also
apply to the Jews) as being grafted back in, as a natural branch.
This is after they have “come to a knowledge of their redeemer”
and His gospel. So, it would seem their covenant might be in effect
only in that condition. After all, Doctrine and Covenants 121:34-37
teaches that chosenness most certainly operates only on conditions of
righteousness. They (the rights of the priesthood) can be
“conferred”, but when they are used for personal gratification,
“to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of
the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness” the
authority is gone.
So the question is whether this applies
in the case of the Jews as the chosen people. Are they, as the
inheritors of the covenant, the seed of Abraham (but then, the seed
of Abraham is as “the sands of the sea” - and it is beyond
question that the Palestinians are also the seed of Abraham), the
true heirs of the land? And if so, what of the Palestinians? If
not, have we interpreted prophecy all wrong? Did Joseph Smith,
Brigham Young, Ezra Taft Benson?
If it is the case that they are
fulfilling prophecy, how can its fulfillment be so entirely unjust to
another people? I find this irreconcilable, at the moment, at least.
But, again, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and of Moses, was
a God that I don't understand either. Complete demolition of the
Canaanites is beyond my comprehension. It is less immediate to me
now, and therefore, less distasteful. And I also realize that I am
looking at a finite picture, while God sees eternity. These are
merely blips on the radar. I do trust that all will be made right in
the final, eternal unravelling. But it is difficult, with my finite
perspective, to see the suffering of a people, believe that it is
part of God's plan, and understand all of it. In many ways, then, I
feel more unsettled than I did when I began.
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