There’s a dangerous thing that happens when a sacred text becomes a blunt instrument instead of a healing balm. When people turn the Bible—especially the Old Testament or apocalyptic visions like Revelation—into a foreign policy manual, they end up baptizing the unthinkable: genocide, occupation, and the deliberate starving of children. And I say this as someone who knows that Book, who once held it like a sword in the pulpit and now carries it like a scalpel, still faithful to the Jesus I found within it, but wounded by what has been done in His name.
Let’s not tiptoe around the truth. What’s happening in Gaza is a catastrophe, not just of war, but of moral imagination. Children are being killed. Parents are digging through rubble to find their babies. Water is being cut off. Aid is being blocked. Whole families are being erased. And in some corners of the Christian world—especially in the United States—this horror is being not only excused but theologized. They say Israel has the right, the divine right, to do what it must. They quote scriptures about Joshua’s conquest, or God’s command to wipe out the Amalekites. They see the suffering not as a call to compassion, but as the birth pangs of prophecy.
And this is where the sickness lives. This is what happens when you confuse biblical narrative for political prescription. When you forget that the Bible is a library, not a blueprint, and that it tells a long, winding story of a God who is always moving His people beyond violence, not deeper into it.
Some of the worst violence in human history has been justified by people who thought they were acting in accordance with the will of God. From the Crusades to colonization, from slavery to apartheid, the holy text has often been twisted into a manifesto for domination. And now, in this modern moment, certain evangelical Christians are applying the same logic to Israel and Palestine. They imagine themselves as characters in a drama written long ago, and they are willing to cheer on the suffering of real people to make their reading come true.
It’s rooted in something called dispensationalism—a framework cooked up in the 19th century by men like John Nelson Darby, and later popularized through Bible prophecy charts and Christian fiction like the Left Behind series. According to this view, history is broken into neat periods or dispensations, and we are now supposedly living in the last one. In this final chapter, Israel must be restored to its biblical land so that end-time events can unfold. For some, this includes a rebuilt temple, a final war, and the return of Christ. In this telling, Palestinians become obstacles, not neighbors. Children become collateral, not image-bearers of God.
This isn’t theology. It’s eschatological nationalism. And it’s idolatry.
You cannot take the violence of ancient Israel and use it to justify the annihilation of innocent people today. You cannot read about divine judgment in Revelation and ignore that it is poetry, resistance literature written by a persecuted people under Roman rule. You cannot cling to the parts of scripture that serve your ideology and ignore the thundering heartbeat of the Gospel itself: love your neighbor, love your enemy, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The Old Testament prophets didn’t cheer on kings; they rebuked them. They cried out against injustice. They railed against those who trampled the poor and turned their backs on widows and orphans.
You want to be biblical? Then hear the words of Isaiah: “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees.” Hear Amos thundering, “Let justice roll down like waters.” Hear Jesus, weeping over Jerusalem, saying, “If only you had known what would bring you peace.”
And that peace never comes through bombs.
This is not about denying Israel’s right to exist. It’s not about endorsing Hamas or turning a blind eye to acts of terror. It’s about refusing to abandon the most vulnerable in the name of theology. It’s about reclaiming a faith that doesn’t require you to sacrifice children on the altar of geopolitical strategy. And it’s about being honest: if your God demands genocide, then maybe it’s not God you’re worshipping but your own sense of superiority dressed up in sacred garb.
If you’re reading the Bible in such a way that it makes you indifferent to suffering, then you’re not reading it like Jesus did. And that’s the ultimate test. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Not to destroy but to heal. Not to conquer but to redeem. Jesus didn’t call down fire on His enemies; He forgave them as they nailed Him to a cross. He didn’t side with the empire; He stood with the oppressed. That’s the Jesus I follow. That’s the Jesus I preach.
The tragedy in Gaza should break every Christian heart. It should move us to demand a ceasefire, to push for humanitarian aid, to lament the violence done in the name of God. We are called to be peacemakers, not prophets of doom with blood on our hands. If our theology leads us to cheer the deaths of children, then our theology is broken.
And maybe our hearts are, too.
Let us repent of any belief system that allows us to look at the suffering of others and call it fulfillment. Let us cast off every reading of scripture that makes us cruel, and return to the One who said, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”
Because in the end, the question isn’t whether your foreign policy aligns with the Bible.
The question is whether your heart does.
For more on the unintended consequences of bad theology, check out my book “The God I Was Given: Looking for faith after losing my religion.” Available from Quior Publishing August 26th, 2025.