David Parsons, International Christian Embassy Jerusalem
May 23, 2005

America's 'culture wars’ took an unusual turn recently when a cross-section of Jewish leaders, rabbis, scholars and commentators - with comedian Jackie Mason thrown in as well - announced in late April the formation of a new group committed to fighting the "epidemic" of "toxic" slander and bigotry against Christians.

"Christians are under assault because of the values they embrace," said Don Feder, longtime columnist and president of Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation. "By maintaining their loyalty to the eternal values revealed at Sinai, Christians have become pariahs in the eyes of the establishment, but heroes in our eyes."

For several decades, Feder and many of his colleagues in the newly formed Jewish advocacy group have been standing alongside conservative Christians on such burning moral issues as the right to life, prayer in schools and public displays of America's religious heritage. Their current remarkable gesture of admiration and synergism arises out of a recognition that the fate of traditional Judeo-Christian values in the United States rests in the hands of the nation's much larger yet oft-ridiculed Evangelical community.

Evangelical Christians indeed have been feeling the sting of the cultural left of late, also due to our principled support for Israel. Time and again, Christian Zionists are being openly branded as dangerous, racist and thirsting for Armageddon.

In but one example, before her recent demise author Grace Halsell charged that Christian Zionists practice the same form of "muscular Christianity" that their forefathers once followed when they slaughtered Indians "to win the West." "The American fundamentalists," she claimed, see Armageddon as an event "most earnestly to be desired."

The irony is that - despite their animus towards religion - many in the radical left, not only in the U.S. but also in Europe and elsewhere, have aligned themselves with militant Islam out of their mutual hostility for America, for Israel and for the moral and democratic values these two nations share. In recent years, secular leftists and Muslim extremists have marched hand-in-hand to oppose the U.S.-led war on terror, the war in Iraq, and the legitimacy and very existence of the Jewish State.

It would seem that those passionately devoted to the humanistic ideals of liberty, reason and racial and sexual equality would steer clear of radical Islam - with its regressive ideology, oppression of women, hatred and intolerance of other faiths and cultures, and promotion of suicide terrorism in the name of Allah.

Yet these strange bedfellows have linked for what is shaping up to be an epic struggle over the continuing influence in our world today of the Judeo-Christian value system - founded on the centrality of the Ten Commandments.

It is thus well and proper for Jews to be joining with Christians to defend our shared biblical heritage - notwithstanding our theological differences. For although the laws of God were revealed to the Israelites at Sinai, even the great Jewish sage Maimonides acknowledged eight centuries ago that it was Christianity which took those commandments to the four corners of the earth and gave them universal standing. In so doing we defend not just a nice set of moral rules for individuals and societies to live by, but the revelation of the very nature and character of God to humanity.

The Ten Commandments were placed in human hands as an expression of God's holiness and glory. In His covenant with Abraham, God elected a man through which He vowed to redeem the world, but we were still not aware that we needed redeeming. The Mosaic covenant was then added to instruct us of our sinful nature and our desperate need for Him, much like a speed sign must be erected to inform us when we are going too fast.

Without the law, we would never have known when we have done wrong, and yet through it we are all shown our inadequacy to measure up to God's holiness (Romans 4:15; 7:7). His offer of grace to all humanity through Abraham's seed could only be fully appreciated if all humanity were shown its fallen nature.

The Jewish people consider the giving of the Law at Sinai as the birth of their national existence and a most crucial moment in their calling to be a "light to the nations" (Isaiah 49:6) and the divinely chosen channel for 'mending' the world (tikkun olam in Hebrew). Even to this day, Judaism sees at the core of its mission this original vocation as the chosen purveyor of ethical monotheism to humanity.

For Christians, Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount that he did not come to destroy the Law but to fulfill it, "For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." (Matt. 5:18-19)

Today, the Law is still as needed as ever to convict the world of right and wrong. It also still serves as a constant reminder that we are all accountable before the God of the Bible for our actions. At heart, the growing derision of Christians and of the Judeo-Christian ethic reflects humanity's growing rebellion against the whole thought of having to answer to our Maker.

David Parsons is the editor of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem(ICEJ) News Service.

Copyright © 2005 International Christian Embassy Jerusalem