Worldviews Collision: Reflections on a Pilgrimage to Israel
All Bob, all the time, except this time! My friend and colleague, Paul Boatman, has written up a fine summary of what was experienced by us and nearly three dozen other pilgrims who journeyed to Israel in late December, 2008 and early January, 2009. The journey was a remarkable learning experience for all of us.
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When Worldviews Collide—Reflections on a Pilgrimage to Israel
Dr. Paul Boatman
Dean of Lincoln Christian Seminary
“Don’t go! A War is starting.” Friends and family were not encouraging our pilgrimage. For over a year we had been planning our tour of Israel. We knew that the “Holy Land” is a “hot spot” of international, inter-ethnic, and inter-religious conflict, but the desire to experience the physical life-context of Jesus, Peter, David, Ahab, etc. led us to risk committing to a tour right after this past Christmas.
In the weeks before we were to embark, the Hamas leaders of Gaza had engaged in persistent rocket attacks on southern Israel. Israel’s retaliation was inevitable. Conversations with the tour company assured us that their years of working in Israel enabled them to make careful choices about where to go and how to avoid trouble. With that assurance Dr. Lowery and I, along with three-dozen companions, left for Israel on December 28.
Over the next 10 days we saw various and vivid examples of colliding world views. However, the conflicts we encountered were not the ones our friends feared. Oh, there was evidence of the escalating warfare between Hamas and Israel: We saw the reports on Fox News when we retired to our hotel rooms. We also saw the ubiquitous military personnel in every town and occasional F-16s on patrol overhead, but these are typical of Israel at any time. Otherwise, life seemed to be going on as usual—highways busy, commercial districts bustling. We experienced just two significant influences of the war: (1) We had to stay away from the Gaza region and West Bank areas where an Israeli bus filled with Americans could become a target for Palestinian anger, and (2) Our tour guide got word that his son was being called up to the battlefield. We joined our guide in prayer for peace and for his son’s safety.
The story of conflict is much more pervasive and more persistent than the current bloody battle. At almost every turn we encountered the signs of conflict in this beleaguered land. Let me highlight a few instances. On the Golan Heights and along the Lebanese border, the landscape is sprinkled with the destroyed enemy armaments—tanks, armored cars, jeeps, left as “memorials” to announce, “You attack, we destroy.” But the signs point to a much longer history of conflict.
A major focus of our trip was visiting archeological sites, extensive cities dating back thousands of years. Every city was a walled city, walled because they expected attacks. Elaborate engineering secured access to water sources to enable the cities to survive a siege. The major events unearthed in each dig were most frequently battles—battles between the worshippers of Yahweh and the pagans, polytheists, and animists. Jericho’s collapse in the encounter with Joshua is well-known. Beth Shan’s history includes hanging the corpse of King Saul on its wall as a trophy of Canaanite victory. Masada’s historical mark is the choice of nearly 1000 Zealous Jews to withstand the Roman Forces, only to commit collective suicide in preference to Roman slavery. Megiddo’s placement overlooking the valley (the famed Armageddon) gave it the ability to play a role in international conflict—the armies of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon had to deal with the city fortress controlling passage through the strategic valley. Worlds have been colliding in Israel for untold centuries. But that is still only part of the story.
The most dramatic encounters with worldview conflicts can be tracked in the footsteps of Jesus. The Judean wilderness was an apt setting for Jesus to engage a direct challenge to the devil’s effort to derail his ministry. The ministering Messiah never got further from home than when he visited Caesarea Philippi, a Roman city with rampant paganism surrounding the temple to the god, Pan. Jesus chose this setting to elicit Peter’s definitive confession of the identity of “the Christ, the son of the living God”—in stark contrast to all other deities and their attendant worldviews. The Place of the Skull represents Satan’s best shot at defeating the creator-redeemer. The empty tomb represents the Messiah’s ultimate victory over the best that the Evil One could throw at him.
Our pilgrimage took us to the edge of a war zone. In the process we were reminded that we entered a war zone the first day we faced the question, “What will you do with Jesus?”
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