5 Theological Problems with Christian Zionism

With tensions flaring yet again between Israelis and Palestinians, many conservative evangelicals -- such as the 1.6 million belonging to the organization Christians United for Israel (CUFI), founded by John Hagee and currently led by Gary Bauer who was an Under Secretary in the Reagan Administration -- are rushing to Israel’s side and loudly proclaiming the right of "God's chosen people" to defend themselves against the Palestinians. 

While many others have written about the politics of the situation, I would like to focus on the theology that has persisted in keeping American evangelicals solidly behind the modern secular nation-state of Israel, regardless of how contradictory their behavior may be to biblical teachings.

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Here are five theological problems with the movement CUFI represents, known as Christian Zionism:

1. Zionism hinges on a (Calvinist) belief that God loves some and hates others.  

Granted, some Christians do accept this view of God, but I don't.  "God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).  I take this to be central to the heart of God.  When approaching the issue of Israel and Palestine, a fundamental question each Christian needs to ask is, "Do I believe that God loves Palestinians any less than He loves Israelis?"  If you believe that God truly loves the world, as Scripture claims in John 3:16, then you will be concerned that, for example, in the last three days seventy-six Palestinians have died -- at least sixty of whom were innocent civilians -- and not a single Israeli has.  If you agree with the Epistle of James that "God does not show favoritism" (James 2:9), then the foundations of a blind support for Israel against the Palestinian people will begin to crumble.     

2. Zionism misunderstands the nature of apocalyptic literature.

Armageddon.  The Anti-Christ.  666.  The Beast.  The Whore of Babylon.  The United Nations, the Pope, Obama, Palestine, expanding the boarders of the nation-state of Israel?  There is a reason that the Left Behind series and now The Harbinger have been best sellers:  they claim just enough plausibility among those committed to a literalist interpretation of Scripture that they just might be partly right.  But there's just one problem:  The book of Revelation (and parts of Daniel too) were written in an ancient genre called apocalyptic.  Apocalyptic is nothing even remotely like anything we have today.  It was written to be deliberately obscure so that, should the manuscript fall into the wrong hands, it would not be understood.  Zionism is a product of our modern desire to solve puzzles and riddles (see point #3).  But apocalyptic literature was not meant to be taken literally!  I say again: It wasn't written to be read literally and it shouldn't be read literally.  When we do, it's not just a whoopsie doo; people can die.

John Nelson Darby

3. Zionism rests on a relatively new innovation called premillennial dispensationalism.

In the 1830's, a Calvinist Anglican named John Nelson Darby invented how CUFI reads the book of Revelation.  He spread a theory, now called premillenial dispensationalism, which claims that God works in different ways during different periods of human history, that Israel and the Church are two totally separate entities, that Christians will be raptured up into the sky someday, and that after the rapture there will be seven years of tribulation under the rule of the anti-Christ after which Christ will return to reign for a thousand years.  These views spread across the United States especially via the Scofield Reference Bible and are still taught today at places such as Dallas Theological Seminary, for example.  The point, however, is that the interpretive foundations for Zionism are about 180 years old and do not represent historic, orthodox Christianity.

4. Zionism violates a basic law of biblical interpretation: Let obscure texts be interpreted by the clear texts.

All of Darby's interpretations are speculative at best.  Today modern evangelicals tend to "see" certain realities in the Bible because they have been taught to see them.  But a good interpreter knows that anything unclear should be understood in light of what is clear.  And here is what is clear:  Jesus (he's pretty central, I would maintain) taught that we should love one another.  In fact, we should love our enemies.  He ushered in a new covenant based not upon ethnicity, but upon the cross and resurrection which is efficacious for all(see Acts 10, for example).  Zionists like John Hagee need to spend less time speculating about the symbolism behind the seven horns on the beast's head and more time meditating on Paul's instructions, "Let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another, for love is the fulfillment of the law" (Romans 13:8).

5. Zionism equates the Hebrew people of the Old Testament with the modern nation-state of Israel.  

The two are not the same.  They simply aren't.  The nation God desired to establish in the Old Testament was to be a Theocracy, directly ruled by Him alone through his Torah.  Remember how the prophet Samuel warned the people against adopting a king, Saul, like the other nations?  He warned them against this because God's people were to be different than other nations.  God's people were not to ride off to war, trusting in horses and chariots, like the Egyptians.  Instead, when God established his original covenant with Abram, he said, "I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing"  (Gen. 12:2).  We forget that last part.  From the start, God's plan was to bless ALL peoples.  The heavily armed secular Jewish state established in 1948 is not the circumcised children of Abraham chosen to bless the nations of the earth.  If they were, they'd start blessing the one next to them instead of… well, doing what they've been doing.