You are visitor: In Scotland the time is:
Christian Network

It has now been about a month since Israel began its military action against the terrorist organization Hezbollah in Lebanon. On July 12 Hezbollah, with the conspicuous backing of the Islamic Republic of Iran, launched a cross-border raid that resulted in the death of eight Israeli soldiers while simultaneously unleashing a barrage of missiles into the Jewish state. The response is now well known. Israel has sent an army into South Lebanon and her air force has conducted strikes on dozens of targets as far North as the capital city of Beirut.

In this new war in the Middle East hundreds of Lebanese civilians have been killed compared to a far smaller number of Israeli citizens. This has resulted in near worldwide condemnation of Israel and a call for an immediate ceasefire by the U.N. It would appear that the descendants of the Old Testament Hebrews in the "Holy Land" are now more unpopular around the globe than perhaps at any other time since the re-creation of the Jewish nation in 1948.

Christians are called to respond to war of any kind with prayer and with the use of our influence for the establishment of a just peace. Despite great sympathy for the Israeli cause among many evangelicals in the United States we are also open to the influence of media images of Lebanese children lying dead among the rubble of their homes after an air strike. How could we not be?

That said it is important to remember why these children are dying. Hezbollah feels no compunction about embedding their fighters and their weapons in residential homes and neighborhoods. This is consistent with terrorist strategy throughout the region. Fundamentalist Islam apparently considers everyone a candidate for martyrdom whether they are a combatant or not and whatever their age. If woman and children are killed in the "Global Jihad" they are aiding the greater cause of Allah. The death of innocents is acceptable as far as the radical mullahs and their followers are concerned. In fact it would seem their death is even considered a good thing, particularly if it results in world opinion turning against the hated "Zionist Entity".

Most thinking Christians who are not of the pacifist persuasion hold to some variation of Augustine’s "Just War" theology. One of its tenets is that for a war to be considered just it must not involve a disproportionate response to aggression. As the body count rises in Lebanon it is hard not to see the Israeli response to the events of July 12 as disproportionate. Certainly this is the idea being planted by coverage of the conflict in the mainstream media.

It is without doubt true that far more Lebanese have died than Israelis so far. But it must be remembered that it is impossible to effectively destroy an enemy that hides behind its women and children without many woman and children becoming victims. The terrorists understand this and that is exactly why they employ this strategy. They know that the rules of war that have been in place since the time of Augustine hinder their cause so they simply create a new rule that rules no longer apply.

The bottom line is that those who have pledged their existence to the destruction of Israel and the worldwide triumph of Islam will do anything they consider necessary to achieve their goals.

Whatever our theological position is on warfare it is vitally important that Christians wake up to this fact. We cannot afford to be uninformed on the truth behind the body counts. Israel is fighting not only for her national survival but also for the physical survival of her people against an enemy that wants to finish what Adolf Hitler started. This same enemy wants to then repeat the favor throughout the planet for anyone who does not believe that Allah is God. Before we New Covenant believers judge Israel we had better realize that while our God may have called us to personally turn the other cheek to our enemies, whether He called us to sacrifice our families and neighbors to the forces of evil in a global sense is another question.