Why I am not a Christian Zionist

I sometimes watch the "Disciple Dojo" YouTube channel hosted by James-Michael Smith, a Biblical scholar (or scholarly pastor; certainly his knowledge of the Scripture and the Biblical languages go much deeper than mine).  

Not so long ago he posted a video discussing one of the reasons he is not a Christian Zionist.  As with many theological terms, there will be different understandings of that one, but most Christian Zionists see the modern nation state of Israel as equivalent to Israel, the covenant people and kingdom in Scripture.  As such, the promises of God to Israel in Scripture - specifically the promises of ownership of the Holy Land - should be understood as applying to the modern nation-state of Israel.  This has significant geo-political or foreign policy implications. 

In practice, many Christian Zionists feel it is their duty to God, as Bible-believers, to support the state of Israel no matter what.  

I have long felt that there were significant problems with this approach.  Not least among them is the fact that the modern nation-state of Israel was created in part by the UN (resolution 181 in 1947), and orthodox Jews have always held that only the Messiah could re-constitute the nation of Israel.  Yet, ironically, many American Evangelicals who hold to Christian Zionism are often deeply suspicious of the UN.

The larger problem, however is that Christian Zionism simply ignores what the Bible teaches about the Church - both Jew and Gentile - being the covenant people and the Israel of God.

That is what J.M. Smith discusses in this article that I do recommend.  For those who are Christian Zionists, you may not agree with Smith's conclusions, but I suspect you will go back to your Bible wrestling with new questions, and that is no bad thing.   

I should also say, I think the instinct of the Christian Zionist is to see prophetic significance in the creation of the modern state of Israel, and on some level I also share that instinct. 
It would be strange indeed if there was no connection at all between the purposes of the God of the Bible and the re-emergence of a Jewish state in the Holy Land. 

But I wonder if the connection is not about the modern Nation of Israel simply being the continuation of Biblical Israel as such, but rather a place where Jews can be more easily reached en masse for the Gospel of Yeshua Messiah (as I am hearing reports is in fact happening in these days).  

I am intrigued by his suggestion at the end of his article that there are other forms of Zionism that might be more compatible with Scripture, and I'd love to learn more about what those possibilities may be.  

In any case, I will continue (as Psalm 122 says) to pray for the peace of Jerusalem - both the physical city on the other side of the world, but also the Heavenly Jerusalem, which is the true home of all the faithful believers in Christ (Hebrews 11; Rev. 21-22).

Why the World Feels Dead

Here is an interesting video on the de-enchantment or de-sacralization that has taken place in Western Civilization and how to re-enchant or re-sacralize our collective imagination in order to save the soul of our Civilization.

Though an Anglican, he is perhaps a little too hard on the Reformation (it is worth noting that the collapse of religious observance has been quite profound in culturally Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox countries as well as Protestant ones), but I cannot deny that some of the factors he mentions (such as the dissolution, rather than the reform, of the British monasteries) probably did not help much.  

I do not see anything fundamentally contradictory between monasticism as a vocation and Protestantism's recovery of the great truths of grace and Biblical authority and "heart-religion," and I'm glad to see that today there are some Anglican, Lutheran, and ecumenical monasteries and convents and similar monastic communities devoted to prayer, study, and simple acts of service.

In any case, I share this video because I think he is quite right in describing some of the spiritual problems facing the West today, and some of the potential medicines, including the importance of recovering older and more nuanced approaches to Scripture, and to the importance of symbolic forms of communication, than what is often on offer among Protestants (conservative or revisionist) these days.