"The Bushes feel that now as surely as the Balfours did a hundred years ago – and two thousand years ago the Caesars believed that gods were actually among their family members. None of them were good news for the inhabitants of Palestine, and I can't help feeling that Bush and his Texan Zionists are not so close to Jesus as they are to the Romans who crucified him."
This is probably one of the most insightful and well-crafted thoughts I’ve read from Andrew Brown.
He’s an interesting combination of thoughtful agnosticism and practical progressivism. I don’t always agree with him, but look forward to his perspective whatever it may be.
I think however he misses something important here:
I fully understand the political hubris and religious chutzpah here; there’s no denying that it takes a lot of unexamined nerve to say “I’m right about ultimate reality and you’re wrong,” but that’s exactly what is happening.
More to the point, most evangelicals who feel burdened for Jews are acting out of an abundance of sincerity, of the sort normally found when someone wishes they could stop a car from hitting a dog, or intervene when a child is being abused by a parent in a grocery store.
I have no idea if Bush is sincere. I didn’t like him as a president, don’t think he’s especially bright, and he was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people who would have lived to work and play a little longer had he not pursued a war based on manufactured claims about weapons of mass destruction.
But what I think of him as a president and Christian is unrelated to his sincerity. That’s between him and his conscience.
And sincerity of course has no relationship to what’s ethical, practical, or expedient.
[2013-11-15]
c0
If you ever wonder how a writer feels about his own work, I think this is a very well written post.
ReplyDelete--c0
Why yes, yes it is!
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