“Hamas is an idea before it is anything else”
President Trump is meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this afternoon. According to Israeli officials, the future of the Gaza hostage release and ceasefire deal is hanging on the outcome of their talks.
Negotiations on the second phase of the agreement were scheduled to begin yesterday, but Mr. Netanyahu chose not to send his negotiating team before he met with Mr. Trump. This phase is supposed to lead to a permanent ceasefire and a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, but Hamas wants to end the war while staying in power, which Israel obviously opposes.
If Mr. Netanyahu does not resume the war, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich threatens to quit, stripping the prime minister of the coalition by which he retains office. If Israel does not move forward with the ceasefire agreement, one Israeli official said there could be at least another year of war in Gaza to topple Hamas.
How to defeat the idea that is Hamas
Israel says it has killed approximately twenty thousand Hamas fighters so far. However, the US estimates that the terror group has recruited up to fifteen thousand new members since the conflict began.
Here’s the problem: As one of my longtime Israeli friends told me, “Hamas is an idea before it is anything else.”
Its idea is that the State of Israel stole its land from the rightful Palestinian owners, constituting an assault on Islam. Palestinians are therefore obligated to act by any means necessary to reclaim the land Allah intended for them. Consequently, according to Hamas, its October 7 invasion was a necessary response to what it says are decades of Israeli oppression.
Of course, no nation would allow a terrorist group pledged to their annihilation to control an enclave on that nation’s border. Clearly, Israel must do whatever is necessary to protect its people from such a threat.
But how does it defeat the idea that is Hamas? With better ideas.
In the case of Gaza, this means rebuilding the region in a way that benefits those who live there. Under Hamas, life in Gaza has been horrific: less than 10 percent of the water is fit to drink, electricity is available only for about four hours a day, and 80 percent of the population depends on charity for food. Creating a better life under governmental leaders who serve the people rather than a terrorist ideology is vital, as challenging as that will be. If Israel and the West aid in this effort, we show that we are not enemies of Muslims and that we want the best for all concerned.
The alternative is to continue feeding the narrative that Israel and the West are a threat to Islam, which will only breed more generations of terrorists in the Middle East and beyond.
Why “Big Gods” are vital to society
Americans face our own “battle of ideas” today.
In his book Mind or Matter, Ernst Lehr calls the Scientific Revolution the “Second Fall.” In the first, Adam and Eve “succumbed to the temptation to acquire knowledge prematurely” at the cost of separating from “the original state of participation in the divine world.” The Second Fall, by contrast, resulted from “human action outrunning knowledge” as we came to grasp and use natural forces we did not yet understand, such as electricity.
We are doing this more now than ever as advances in artificial intelligence and gene editing threaten the future of our species. At the same time, our post-Christian, secularized culture has abandoned absolute truth, objective morality, and our nation’s founding claim that “all men are created equal.” From elective abortion to sex change operations to euthanasia, we are using scientific knowledge whose consequences we cannot yet understand. And we are making life-altering and history-changing decisions, absent of any moral or ideological foundations beyond “tolerance.”
How’s this working for us?
Fewer Americans than ever say they are satisfied with their personal lives. A record low in the US is likewise satisfied with the way democracy is working.
As cultural commentator Jonah Goldberg shows, human governments can, at best, hedge against the worst impulses of human nature. By contrast, intellectual historians have demonstrated that belief in “Big Gods” who threaten divine punishment for human sin has been crucial to the formation of functioning societies.
Roughly 77 percent of the world’s population identifies as Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist; in all four, moral transgressions lead to consequences in this life or the next. This viewpoint has proven essential to societies that form moral communities. When we jettison our belief in divine accountability, we are unable to govern ourselves or each other.
When enough people experience enough change
Here is where evangelical Christianity offers the best idea of all.
We believe in a Father who “is” love and can only want what is best for us (1 John 4:8). He therefore deals with us as gently as he can or as harshly as he must. When he holds us accountable for our sins, he does so only to lead us to repentance and redemption by his grace.
But our Lord offers not only a moral framework that leads to our best flourishing—he also offers the inner transformation essential to living in that framework. He can make us a “new creation” so that in Christ we become “the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:17, 21). When we submit to his Holy Spirit, he makes us holy people. He uses our transformed lives to attract others to the transformation they can experience by grace as well.
As a consequence, we love as we are loved (1 John 4:19). For example, we love Palestinians devastated by Hamas and the war in Gaza, and we want their best. Our enacted compassion then preaches the gospel in deeds and words, offering to hurting people the hope of a better future and a glorious eternity.
If enough people experience enough change, they become catalysts for changing the world.
“I shall begin to shine as you shine”
To this end, I invite you to pray these words by Cardinal John Henry Newman. Mother Teresa prayed them daily with her sisters, and God answered their prayers in ways that are still changing lives today:
Dear Jesus, help me to spread your fragrance everywhere I go. Flood my soul with your Spirit and life. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly that all my life may only be a radiance of yours. Shine through me and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel your presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me but only Jesus!
Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as you shine, so to shine as to be a light to others; the light, O Jesus, will be all from you; none of it will be mine: it will be you shining on others through me. Let me thus praise you in the way you love best: by shining on those around me.
Will you praise Jesus in the way he loves best today?
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“Beware of harking back to what you once were when God wants you to be something you have never been.” —Oswald Chambers
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