Medicine is the best medicine.

I’m a Roger Federer fan and find it difficult to pull for Nadal. He rarely smiles, gives the shortest answer possible in a presser and just generally doesn’t seem to enjoy anything in life but tennis. That aside, you have to give the guy huge props for his grit and determination. He lost in straight sets to a fellow Spaniard, Ferrer, playing out the match despite being in obvious significant pain. Something is clearly very wrong with Nadal physically, but afterward he refused to talk about the injury. No excuses.
Makes me think of a certain QB who has been in the news lately.

I sometimes see things on Facebook that confuse me. For example, sometimes someone asks people to pray for them because of a difficult situation of one sort or another. This is often followed by comments from people saying they’ll be doing so. But some of the comments in response use the phrase “Sending positive thoughts your way” or something similar.

I’m not sure what that means. Does it come from people who don’t believe in prayer but want to say something nice? Do some people believe in the power of positive thinking to improve circumstances, even across distances? Or is it just another way of saying, “I’m thinking about you and hoping things get better.”

Another thing I’ve noticed is a number of people joining “Christians United For Israel.” I went to that organization’s page and read about them. Not a lot of info; seems mostly to be an organization that keeps people aware of news developments they think threaten Israel, with particular focus on evangelical Christians as the target audience.

I’ve been troubled for some time by what seems to be unwavering and unquestioned support for the state of Israel by many evangelical Christians. I realize they see it as support for God’s chosen people but that just doesn’t hold up under biblical scrutiny.

On the one hand, if you hold to a Covenant Theology point of view you see OT Israel as a primarily figurative representation for the people of God in all ages. The biblical term “Israel” does not refer to a national or political entity, but to the spiritual people of God.

If, like me, you’re dispensational in your theology you believe God did indeed deal with the nation of Israel beginning with the Exodus and continuing into the NT. However, he has set aside Israel as his special people and now deals with all people without regard for their ethnic, racial or national identity. “Here there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, bond nor free....” God will, at some point in the future, take the Body of Christ from the earth via the Rapture and resume his dealings with the nation of Israel. But until that time he has set aside Israel as his special people. So why should a political entity with no more standing before God than Sweden or Nigeria get special support from believers? As it turns out, Christians suffer discrimination in Israel, with unfair restrictions on things like building churches and doing evangelism, and cases of physical attack have been reported. Israel is not God’s special people. They were, and will be once again, but are not now.

Worth noting is the millions of dollars that flow into Israel each year through tourism, most of it from American evangelicals. Then there’s the billions of dollars Israel gets in official U.S. aid, more than all African countries and South American countries combined, save for Colombia, which gets extra money to fight the drug war. That is, the state of Israel has a vested interest in fostering U.S. support for their country, and it especially serves their purposes to court evangelicals in America even as they impose unfair restrictions on believers at home. This popular support happens through groups on Facebook, but also as evangelicals lobby their representatives to give unquestioned support to Israel. Pity the politician who makes any statement suggesting Israel acts improperly on the national or international stage.

Do you support Israel? If so, why?