The land that you and your family occupy, and the house you’re living in, was promised and given to you via bribery, subversion, and double-dealing. It was savagely, and abruptly taken from someone else, who was then, either forced to move, terrorized, expelled, tortured, jailed, or killed. How can you even stay there? How can you honestly say it’s yours? How can you not understand the anger, hatred, and frustration of the people who were driven out? How are you shocked, confused, or appalled by their unrelenting fight to get their land and homes back—no matter how long it takes? What rest should you expect? How are the oppressed people your arch enemies, and not the devious, or perhaps, well-meaning people who concocted the whole mess, by giving you what already belonged to someone else? How can you say that God is on your side, knowing how un-righteously the deal was done?
No matter how fervently your allies pray for it, out of duty, obligation, or faith, how can you EVER expect peace until you make things right and fair? What makes you think the people, whose way of life, and peace YOUR presence disturbed, will just roll over? Is the goal to wipe them from the face of the earth— the way someone once tried to do to YOU? How do you not remember what happened to you? How have you adopted the ways of YOUR oppressor?
Genesis 12:2-3 and Psalm 122:6 were drilled into our Protestant/Gentile heads ever since I can remember. “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem” has been on replay in my mind as I see images on TV.
History will take you down a rabbit hole that starts way before 1947, or 1955, 1967. History explains why peace seems to be elusive.
I can be obedient and pray until my throat is parched, but what, or who is the hindrance to the peace you want and hope for everyone, everywhere?
Are we not praying correctly? Is peace the will of everyone, or is constant chaos providing a payoff for someone?
There’s so much information available that soberly explains why what happened yesterday keeps happening, and why choosing sides, remaining neutral, or both-siding the issue could land you in an argument, but it doesn’t make any of it less sad.
Whether it’s countries fighting or individuals, how the conflict started, who started it, and why, are points that can’t be ignored. The notion that hurt or oppressed people will just give up and go away seems to be a historic one. Oppressed and dehumanized people turning around and inflicting the pain they experienced onto others, is too.
War really is hell.
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