"Well the bible says those who bless Israel will be blessed" - Ted Cruz.
What Ted Cruz thinks the Bible says about Israel puts proof in the pudding that our country fails almost every metric of basic biblical literacy.
I don't expect Cruz to be a theologian, and he doesn't pretend to be. Not in any way. When pressed, he'll mumble something vague like "support Israel, it’s in the Bible" as though that settles it. "Blessed are those who support Israel" "Blessed are those who support Israel". We're doing foreign policy by bumper sticker. And somehow that passes for statesmanship in this country!
The Tucker Carlson interview with Cruz was pathetic. For Tucker and Cruz. Tucker, who usually prides himself on asking the "hard boiled questions a newsman is afraid to anymore" suddenly flatlined the moment theology entered the chat. He pushed back a little, tiny bit, "why support Israel unconditionally?". The moment Cruz invoked the sacred word "Bible," Tucker more or less failed to hit the nail on the head. Tucker pressed him - "what verse?", as if quoting a verse is theology.
It wasn't that Ted's not a biblical scholar or couldn't quote the verse - that was the beef Tucker engaged. The issue is that even if Ted quoted it up and down, he'd still be wrong as hell.
These evangelicals idiots have no idea why they support Israel. They think it’s biblical, but they don't know that the "biblical" view theyire parroting comes from a 19th-century theological offshoot called dispensationalism, which was made popular by some charts, a few bestsellers, and a hell of a lot of self trained 'ministers' from less educated parts of the country. It's Hal Lindsey and Left Behind baked into real national policy.
Meanwhile, for 2,000 years, the wider Church, the Catholic, the Orthodox, and the Protestant alike held roughly the same view. A view called supercessionism: that the Church is the fulfillment of God's covenant promises, not modern geopolitical Israel. The Church supercedes Israel, in some form or another.
Supercessionism is historic orthodoxy. But somehow, through neglect, cowardice, or sheer irrelevance, the institutional churches let this newer theology hijack the conversation. I'm not saying they all agree 100% on how it plays out, but the whole Israel must be a nation to fulfill armageddon crap is totally an American dispenationalist thing.
And now we've got senators citing the most idiotic reading of the text sending weapons overseas, and no one in the press, let alone the pulpit, is calling them out.
So yeah, it's a theological problem. But it's also a political one. When your elected officials build foreign policy on eschatology they barely understand, you are gonna have a bad time.
P.S:
If you want to support the nation-state of Israel, do so. But not because you
think dispensationalism is good theology. It's heresy.
P.P.S:
A Dispensationalist and a Zionist walk into the bar. They never talk to
eachother and accidentally nuke Iran for completely different reasons.
Not random texts I claim no copyright. Random texts, I do not claim copyright.