I know it is popular among many Christians today to openly decry the acts of Israel toward the Gaza, but I can't help but wonder if we have forgotten something about the past in being too quick to pick a side. This evening a couple visited church, and we discussed a afternoon they spent with Iraqi friends who told them they needed to pick a side to understand the issue of the Middle East's struggles. Is the Iraqi friend correct? I don't know.This I do know, or I should say feel. I am of three main ancestral backgrounds: Primarily Welsh, then somewhere following Norwegian and Jewish. (Yet, I was never raised religiously Jewish, and do not have that background to attach to.) In the my Welsh ancestry I see similar yet less dramatic and tragic similarities to my Jewish heritage.
So tonight I heard this wonderful program on WBUR, an NPR station. It was a program presented at Boston University a week or so ago. I was driving home from church, and heard Elie Wiesel being introduced. I had to run in the house and listen to the program. To understand one perspective of the Middle East struggles, I recommend hearing this program which asks, "Can an Act of Revenge Be Just?"
Listen and go back to "Kristallnacht" The Night of Broken Glass.
More SynchroBlogs on Faith and Ethnicity:
Phil Wyman (That's me) on Seeing the Middle East from a Jewish Perspective
Joshua Jinno the Antechurch
Raffi Shahinian on Faith and Ethnicity: A True Story
Susan Barnes on Just a God of the West
K.W. Leslie on Why I went to an all-white church
Adam Gonnerman on Multicultural experience (and inexperience)
Matt Stone on Is the church ready for a multiethnic future?
Beth Patterson on Viva la particularities
Steve Hayes on Christianity and ethnicity"
Matthew Snyder asks What's Your Nation?
Jeff Goins on Gypsies in Spain
