The Ottery
“If an otter can’t have fun doing something, it just simply won’t do it.”

Stepping out on a Limb

July 26th, 2006

I usually don’t write about politics on The Ottery, for several reasons: (1) The Ottery is my outlet for fun. Politics aren’t much fun. (2) I don’t want to draw the attention of Internet trolls. (3) I don’t want to alienate my current friends and readers, because it’s pretty certain that whenever I take a position, someone’s going to disagree with me. Disagreement is great. But, so many times, I’ve seen online political disagreement disintegrate into name-calling. I don’t want that, and I don’t think that my readers would either.

So, with that in mind, I offer the following links not only as political commentary, but as an expression of humanitarian concern, accompanied by some interesting spiritual reflections.

The topic is Israel’s recent war against Lebanon. Whomever you side with, I’m sure that most of you are saddened by this most recent, most bloody, outbreak of Middle East violence. I’m particularly troubled by the death toll among Lebanese civilians.

I offer for your reading two short editorials on Christianity Today’s web site, both written by Martin Accad, academic dean of the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Lebanon. The first piece challenges unthinking pro-Israel sentiment among evangelical Christians; the second challenges our impression of Hezbollah (while not at all condoning its terrorist actions), as well as our interpretation of the Good Samaritan parable.

May we learn to see the situation truly and clearly, and may the bloodshed soon cease.

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