Irony of the Veil

I woke up this morning thinking about the message in the song performed by the Flotilla Choir, all the lies flying around about the “peace activists” being peaceful, the Israeli’s being brutal, and so forth. The truth is obvious to anyone who wants to see it, but as Prime Minister Netanyahu pointed out recently, many, many people — practically the whole world, don’t want to see that. They jump on the bandwagon that “Israel is guilty until Israel is proven guilty” with eagerness and great conviction. Don’t bother us with the facts. We have no need of them.

The irony in it is that this same attitude was practiced by the Pharisees of Jesus’s day with regard to His position as their prophesied Messiah. He did miracles, He taught with authority, using the Scriptures, He argued them into silence because they had no words with which to respond. He fulfilled something like 600 prophesies of the coming Messiah, and yet they, the most knowledgeable of all the Jews when it came to the Scriptures, didn’t see it. Instead of going to those Scriptures and looking at the prophecies and how the elements of His life and person matched up, they preferred to accuse Him, test Him, argue with Him, insult Him, discredit Him, and ultimately kill Him. When He told them the truth, they became enraged. When people said they thought he was the Prophet, they’d fixate on one element — “Surely the Christ is not going to come from Galilee, is He? Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David and from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” (Jn 7:41,42)

How hard could it have been to find out that He had indeed been born in Bethlehem (Micah 5?2), and gone to Egypt and been called out of it (Hos 11:1) and now from Nazareth, a Nazarene (Is 11:1 branch = Naytser) These are the scripture experts, the ones who supposedly had memorized the whole thing down to the least jot and tittle.

But they refused to see. The Word says they had a veil over their eyes — the veil of negative volition. (2 Co 3:14)

And even as they were not interested in facts, only in believing their own lies in those days, so they are now. I recently read a fascinating book called Why Are Jews Liberals? by Norman Podhoretz, who is editor of the conservative political magazine Commentary. In the book, Podhoretz poses the question of why, despite the fact that the Conservatives are now unquestionably the side of the political spectrum that most faithfully and even adamantly supports the Jews and Israel, the Jews themselves remain steadfastly liberal. Refusing to see the Anti-Semitism of the left, they dismiss it with the idea that the liberals don’t mean it, or in the case of antagonism toward the state of Israel (which not all of them support), by agreeing with Israel’s critics.

The very first thing Podhoretz brings out is that the main reason Jews aren’t Conservative is because they are terrified of Christians. Terrified that should they ever come to power that they will forge a new state church that will begin anew all the persecutions the Jews have endured over the last two thousand years and only recently escaped. Even though it was socialist/Nazi Germany and communist Soviet Union though administered the greatest attacks against the Jews in history. And were the most recent to do so.

I’m not saying that Christianity as an institution (as a religion, really — and I don’t believe that true Christianity IS a religion) hasn’t had its dark days with regard to how it’s treated the Jews, but nothing it did was ever so dark as what went down under those two “liberal” or “progressive” regimes in Europe.

The book traces the fascinating if necessarily brief story of the Jew’s history in Western Europe and the US, because that history is definitely part of their reasoning for siding against Christians. But history isn’t all of it. Many of the Liberal Jews have the same unreasoning, illogical, irrational, hard-hearted antagonism toward  Christianity as their Muslim/Arab enemies have toward them.

And I find that ironic.

More on the book tomorrow (If I get back from my mother’s cancer treatments with a reasonable amount of time left in my day… unlike last week)

4 thoughts on “Irony of the Veil

  1. KC Frantzen

    Thank you. True for all of us, not that we have to sway with the wind, but that we should carefully assess the facts… Or find out what they are first, before discerning what’s what.
    Wonderful Monday morning read. Thanks Karen.
    Hope your Mom is responding well. Let us know!

    Reply
    1. karenhancock

      Thanks for the feedback, Karen! I always appreciate it. My mother is doing very well. I’ll post more later.

      Reply
  2. Alisa Hope

    Wow! This is great stuff. I haven’t been exposed to this topic, but I’m curious to learn more about it through your blog.

    I just bought your first Legends book on Kindle! I can’t wait to read it.

    Reply
    1. karenhancock

      Thanks for the comment, Alisa. Glad you enjoyed the post. And I hope you’ll enjoy The Light of Eidon as well. 🙂

      Reply

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