Living
or Dying with Our History
The random violence which has
been repeatedly manifested in American society in
recent months, shadowed Nancy and me on our summer's
vacation. The lone killer (Smith), purporting to be a
member of the World Church of the Creator, was doing
his shooting in Chicago and Urbana and Indiana
precisely on the days we were at each site. Among his
victims were a black basketball coach killed in
Chicago and a Korean graduate student murdered in
Bloomington. His affiliation with the World Church
(although he had resigned the day before his rampage)
confused many people into thinking a radical Christian
organization was behind his hatreds. The World Church
is, in fact, no church. It is only a front name for
one more neo-Nazi skinhead group and it is avowedly
anti-Christian in its propaganda as well as anti-every
imaginable non-white minority.
The more recent lone killer,
Fuller, who murdered an American-Filipino postal
worker and nearly killed five children at a Jewish day
school in Los Angeles, had slightly more valid claim
to a religious linkup in that he belonged to the
Priesthood of Phineas or Phinehas. This Israelite
priest, a grandson of Aaron, is mentioned in Numbers
and elsewhere in the Old Testament as a zealous
defender of Yahweh and the true faith. Coming upon a
Jewish man having sexual relations with a foreign
woman at a Baal site, he killed them both and was ever
after presented as a model of Jewish zeal and
purity.
Of course, the neo-Nazis have
borrowed the name of Phineas and turned the concept of
Jewish racial purity on its head by targeting Jews and
blacks mainly as their mortal enemies.
There are throughout Jewish
history as well as our own Christian tradition many
instances of hyper zeal and religious intolerance.
While I don't believe any Jewish or Christian group
has ever adopted the idea of a priesthood of Phineas,
many Christians have often operated as if they were
divinely appointed guardians of their faith and
indulged in the intolerance that religious zealotry
encourages.
I was delighted to read in
the August l6 IHT that for the first time since the
founding of the state of Israel the history books used
in the public schools will finally acknowledge other
truths than the official Israelite version of the
series of wars, which established and enhanced the
Jewish State. Some long repressed truths are finally
surfacing. Official Jewish history has always
maintained that all Arabs voluntarily fled their homes
at the call of Arab fanatics and with the assurance
from their Muslim religious leaders that they would
shortly return triumphant to their homes and lands.
Now the history books allow that many Arabs were
forcefully removed from their homes by Israeli
military authorities for strategic and political
reasons to strengthen the emerging Israeli
State.
An Israeli historian, Eyal
Naveh, is quoted as saying "only l0 years ago much of
this (new history) was taboo. We were not mature
enough to look at these controversial problems. Now we
can deal with this the way Americans deal with the
Indians and black enslavement. We are getting rid of
certain myths.".
Every time a people are
willing to look at their actual history of dealing
with other peoples we improve the chance for
understanding and reconciliation and place a check
upon the fanatical self-appointed priests of racism
who are not interested in actual history but in
forging ahead with distortions and hatreds.
Pastor Gene Preston