Atrocious, evil, horrific, insane, monstrous, demonic. These are just some of the words I’ve heard used to describe the actions of Hamas in Israel since Saturday. And these words—except perhaps insane—are all accurate. The actions committed by Hamas are all those things. And frankly, words fall far short of the reality.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen footage of these atrocities—you should do. You should look at what is happening. You should look evil in the face. You should see what people made in the image of God do to other image bearers. You should see it; you should stare at it; you should let it sink into your mind so that you never again pretend that evil is a social construct. You should stare at what Hamas have done to the Jews so that you never again will be tempted to say that there is a moral equivalency between the Israelis and Hamas.
You should witness these events; you should watch people being gunned down, you should see corpses mutilated, you should fix your gaze on the bloodied bodies of raped women—you should stare at the beheaded babies. You should do this so that you can see evil for what it is. You should see that the struggle in this world is a struggle between Good and evil, between Christ and demons, between righteousness and villainy. You should hear the cries of mothers and fathers weeping for their children and children weeping for their parents. You should listen to the pleas of the kidnapped. You should see the vile and despicable mockery of small Palestinian children insulting orphaned Jewish kidnapping victims. You should see the pictures of small Palestinian children waving automatic rifles. You should see the hordes of demonic ghouls in business suits and in city streets around the world crying out their wicked Allahu Akbar’s—praising Satan, for none but Satan could claim the evil that Allah claims. You should see this.
And you should see the grotesque evil and moral retardation of Ivy Leaguers trying to run cover for the terrorists. You should hear our godless government excusing themselves for their own complicity in the events that happened. You should hear the media who have been lying for decades about how Islam is a religion of peace—you should hear them attempt to ignore their own responsibility for shaping public opinion such that people thought that you could negotiate with an Antisemite.
You should see and hear all these things and you should feel them too. You should let the enormity of it all punch you in the gut and make you feel feelings you hate. You should look at the mangled bodies of Jewish babies and weep for the horror of it all. You should do all this and then repent of the folly of thinking it couldn’t happen here. You should repent of the godless stupidity of thinking that that kind of evil is only something illiterate barbarians do. You should repent of the morally idiotic arrogance that thinks that this kind of evil is restricted to the Middle East.
It is not.
The evil that was and continues to be carried out by Hamas and by the people who call themselves Palestinians is not unique to them. It is not a racial defect. It is not a learning deficit. It is not a cultural byproduct. It is not an isolated phenomenon.
The evil being carried out by these people—not monsters, but men of like substance and like passions to you and me—the evil carried out by them is the evil that lurks, often deeply suppressed, but lurking all the same, in the stony breast of every man, woman, and child.
Because the evil being carried out is the result of the fallen nature being unrestrained by God. If you leave fallen man to his own devices with neither God nor government restraining his wickedness this is what fallen man does.
Fallen men behead babies and put their headquarters under hospitals. Fallen men command civilians to remain in a bombing sight to use as human shields. This is not extraordinary evil—this is just evil with all the niceties and trappings of Christianized society wiped away. The natural state of man is evil—as Hobbes says, life without government would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Tennyson says that the native state of man is red in tooth and claw. Or as Paul says, in Romans 3:9–20.
9 What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. 10 As it is written:
“There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.”
13 “Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit.”
“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 ruin and misery mark their ways,
17 and the way of peace they do not know.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.
People are evil. “The heart,” Jeremiah says, “is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” God says in Genesis that before the flood the thoughts of men’s hearts were only evil all the time.
What’s happening in Israel is not an aberration. It is not unusual. It is not insanity. It is not unpredictable.
What’s happening in Israel is what happens when people anywhere forget God. The German nation was the most educated and civilized nation in the world in the 1930s—and they committed the Holocaust. It is not a product of “religion” as the godless Stalinist Regime committed the Holodomor against the Ukrainians. It is not a product of grievance or poverty as the United States’ Government committed horrifying atrocities against the Indians over and over and over.
All throughout history, genocide is the rule—not the exception. All throughout history, rape, torture, kidnapping, slavery, murder, torture, and the thorough enjoyment of it is the norm. This is not an aberration—this is a return to normal.
Let me say that again. For those who were stupid enough to believe the lie that people are basically good, this is not an aberration—this is a return to normal. This is the natural state of humanity. This is what people do when they are neither governed by God nor ruled by the godly. This is what happens when Christ does not rule in the hearts of men.
Martin Luther King Junior said, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
To which I reply—Oh yeah? King presupposed the eventual dominance of Christianized values in the moral evolution of humanity. Which is preposterous—this by the way, is only one of many reasons why we can admire King for his civil rights’ work and his courage in the face of atrocious racism, but we can stop pretending he was a modern-day super-duper saint, or one whose theology or lifestyle should in any way be emulated.
And perhaps that’s as good a place as any to make the transition in this little essay from the news in Israel to what’s happening in our own country. Because the celebration of King’s good and the infinite forgiveness of his evil is a hypocrisy that is both annoying, cloying, and disingenuous. Why can we celebrate only the good King did—and he did do much good, and that good can and should be celebrated—but we utterly ignore his evil? And why with others do we ignore the good they did and do and focus only on their evil? I suppose because the current political and social Zeitgeist still views King as a hero. And he will remain a hero until the powers that be decide he’s a villain.
King, like all flawed heroes, will be loved by the godless progressives until he’s no longer useful and then all the bile will spill out. The godless left is essentially a gigantic blackmail scheme. All the important players are people that have a whole graveyard’s worth of skeletons in the closet. And the power players hang that Sword of Damocles over the heads of their underlings to keep them in line.
But political machinations aside, we as a society continue to celebrate and even beatify King despite his known evils—we do this knowingly—and why? For some, I’m sure, it is because we want to genuinely celebrate the good he did and chastise his evil. And that’s all fine and well. Even the good kings of the Bible did evil. We can be intelligent people and say that good people can do bad things. This is a nuanced take. But I don’t think that’s why most people continue to cheer and celebrate King despite his known and proven evils, but also want to deride Columbus for things we know he didn’t do!
Most people celebrate Martin Luther King Junior because of how it makes them feel. It feels good to be on the side of the peaceful civil-rights activist. Most of people’s political and historical opinions are based on how those opinions make them feel about themselves. But that’s another story for another day. But the crucial reality for us today is to realize that if I’m right that people are willing to overlook evil if it allows them to celebrate or accept something that makes them feel a certain way about themselves, then perhaps Americans aren’t so different from Hamas, afterall.
Certainly, I’m not accusing MLK of being a terrorist—he was a womanizer, Communist, plagiarist, and probably a heretic—but he did bad things. My point is not that MLK did things as bad as Hamas does. My point is that those who cry #metoo and wanted Harvey Weinstein’s head on a pike also seem to still consider MLK a modern-day-saint. Why? Because hating Weinstein makes people feel a certain way about themselves and loving MLK makes them feel a certain way about themselves—but the key point is this. They are willing to overlook evil if it suits them. They are willing to be hypocrites when it suits them.
And is this really any different to Arabs in Gaza crying out holding their dead children for all the world to see when those same Arabs celebrated with dancing in the streets when terrorists came and butchered Jewish children in their beds? It’s hypocrisy.
The attitude that says that my child’s life is precious but Jewish babies’ lives don’t count because they’re Jewish is the same attitude that says Weinstein’s casting-couch was vile but King’s was forgivable.
But it’s actually far worse than that. Because while we have some clearly demonic people celebrating Hamas’ actions in the streets of world cities—and by the way any person celebrating Hamas in a US city should immediately be arrested and deported, and if they are citizens then they should just go to jail for being vile people. We don’t care about former Presidents needing to break actual laws anymore, so why can’t we round up these scumbags? But while those people exist, there are the far more dangerous elements of society.
Yes the people waving the Palestinian flag are clear and present dangers. But there are people whose danger to society and to the West is far more insidious and corrupting. Those are the people who gasp in shock and horror at the murder of Jewish babies in Israel, who condemn Hamas, and wish Israel swift and terrible vengeance—but also support abortion.
You cannot oppose the murder of Jewish babies by Hamas and support the murder of American babies by doctors. I mean, you can hold those two opinions simultaneously, but not coherently. If you’re the kind of person who thinks that Hamas is evil and Planned Parenthood is good then you’re a moral idiot. Pick a side. Pick Christ or demons. There is no third way.
You might say, “But Luke these aren’t the same. Planned Parenthood murders babies with doctors, and it’s legal, and the mothers approve.”
That just makes it worse and more evil, you nightmare of a fool! The fact that it’s legal and celebrated and mothers are complicit in this evil makes it worse! It’s bad enough when someone illegally sneaks into a sovereign country and murders a baby against its mother’s wishes. It’s horrible and those who do, and even think of doing such things deserve to die, but for a mother to desire such a thing to happen to her baby and for some ghoul in a labcoat to murder the child under cover of law is worse. It is so much worse. Because terrorists are supposed to be scum. But mothers and doctors are supposed to protect their babies.
Why is it wrong to behead babies in Bethlehem but it’s OK in Baltimore? Why is it right in one place and wrong in another? There is no answer because it’s wrong. It’s wrong. It’s wrong.
For those in this country who are sitting on their high horses condemning Hamas while congratulating the Abortionist, you are hypocrites. And God knows. And God sees. And God will avenge. America will not escape the wrath of God—and indeed we aren’t escaping it. The very fact that Abortion is celebrated on our streets is proof that God is handing us over to our own evil desires. The fact that we are ruled by buffoons and the manifestly evil is evidence that God is handing us over to our own evil desires. The utter disintegration of our society simultaneously met by a combination of overweening arrogance and moral idiocy and damnable indifference is evidence that God is handing us over to our own evil desires.
We have two choices. We can continue on in godlessness, wickedness, and smug, cynical, self-righteous, self-justifying, self-assured, pompous, hypocritical rebellion. Or we can repent.
Those are the options. Destruction or repentance. Choose life or death. Let us choose to repent.
Fast and pray for Peace of Jerusalem. Fast and pray for the Repentance of America.