Seeds of Turmoil

In Seeds of Turmoil, Bryant Wright, the recently elected head of the Southern Baptist Convention, traces the roots of the Middle East conflict beyond Israel's 1948 establishment as a nation, to its Biblical roots. He asserts that Abraham's decision, suggested and encouraged by his wife, Sarah, to sleep with her maid, Hagar, in an effort to produce an heir, demonstrated not only a serious lack of faith, but is the source of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Abraham and Hagar’s union produced Abraham’s first-born, Ishmael. Yet God’s promise to Abraham that he would be the father of many, was to be fulfilled with Sarah. When Abraham and Sarah were long past their child-bearing years, God blessed them with Isaac, the child of the promise, setting up the sibling rivalry that continues today.
Wright provides an important service in surveying the biblical and historical events that produced Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and tracing the history of the area from biblical times to present day. Yet, Wright reads Scripture through different lenses than I do, and it colors his understanding and interpretation of both ancient and modern history.
I mention only two of several points at which I take issue with Wright: the nature of God’s covenant promises to Abraham, and political reality.
Wright argues that God’s covenant promises to Abraham  - to make him a great nation and to give his descendants the land he inhabited - continue to this day. Thus, he maintains, Israel, as Abraham’s divinely appointed heirs, have a right to the geographic boundaries laid out in the Old Testament. This is a significant point at which Wright and I differ in our understanding of Scripture. I believe that the New Covenant, promised throughout the Old Testament, is fulfilled in Jesus Christ and supersedes the Old Covenant. God did, indeed, choose to reveal his purposes for humanity through Israel. He placed them in a strategic crossroads between two major continents to be salt and light to the nations around them. At the same time, throughout the Old Testament, God continues to point to a new and better covenant - a covenant to be written on the hearts of all believers; a covenant not bound to a geographic location, but lived out in the lives of those who recognize Jesus Christ  - in his death, resurrection, and eternal reign, as the fulfillment of the covenant. The covenant or God’s Kingdom is no longer confined to a geographic area in the Middle East, but is carried on in the redeemed people of God. Thus, to argue, as Wright does for Israel’s God-given stake to the land is, in my opinion, a misunderstanding of God’s intent and purposes.
Wright’s view of Scriptures leads him to view history through blinders. He sees what he wants to see. He points repeatedly to Israel’s miraculous survival since 1948 – surrounded by and overcoming enemies twice their size and capacity. He sees Israel's success in the Arab-Israeli War which established their independence and the 1967 Six-Day War as evidence of God’s purposes and desires for Israel. He completely ignores the political reality that without U.S. military aid, Israel would hardly be able to withstand the assaults on their nation. One-fifth of the United State's entire foreign aid budget goes to Israel. That hardly makes Israel David to their neighbors Goliath.
The Middle East is a complex situation for historical, geo-political and economic reasons. Wright touches only the surface of the problem, and hence, in my opinion, offers a rather simplistic solution. There will be no peace in the Middle East until the Lord returns. In the meantime, we should pray for peace (agreed),and love Jew and Arab alike (agreed.) But to assert that Israel is God's highly favored nation with a divine right to exist, is misreading Scripture.

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