Saturday, December 22, 2007
Krista Johnson was the Sabeel/United Church of Christ activist who Israel wisely kept out of the country when she tried to get back in after the Sabeel conference held here in Boston. Dexter Van Zile does a great job responding to a prayer Johnson wrote: What kind of god?
Judging from a prayer she wrote to be used in worship services on the last two Sundays of 2007, Disciples of Christ member Krista Johnson worships one of two gods.
The first god is deaf to the calls of those who call for Israel’s destruction, blind to acts of violence perpetrated against Israel and dumb enough to believe that anti-Semitic groups like Hamas and Hezbollah can be mollified by conciliatory behavior on the part of the state they want to destroy.
The second god is too weak to be asked to address the really intractable problems facing humanity and can only deliver what is reasonable -- not what is necessary.
Johnson, a Sabeel activist who was recently denied access to Israel for problems with her visa, wrote a prayer currently published on the website of the Global Ministries Board, an institution supported by the United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ. The prayer offers a general petition for "peace with justice and security for Palestinians and Israelis." But when it comes time for the rubber to hit the road and for Johnson to make specific requests that reveal her understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict, her indifference to Israeli suffering becomes manifest...
...Are these issues so far removed from Johnson's prophetic imagination that she can't be bothered to raise them? Is it impossible for her to ask that Palestinian leaders come to their senses, that the rocket attacks come to an end, that the incitement on Palestinian television stop? Are the kidnapped Israeli soldiers and their families so distant from Johnson's circle of Christian concern that she can't be bothered to offer a petition on their behalf? Has she not heard about Sderot's suffering? Is there no balm in Krista Johnson's heart for the Israelis?
Maybe there is another explanation for her silence on these issues. Maybe she understands just how intractable problems on the Arab and Muslim side of this 60-year-old conflict are. Maybe she secretly believes that the hand of the god she worships is too short to fix these problems and that it is not worth the effort to ask...
