by Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch
Massacring Scripture and history to push ugly antisemitism:
There is never a shortage of debates about politics and religion. As someone with an interactive website featuring 7000 articles and 91,500 published comments, I know all about this. I have lost count of how often an angry atheist or secularist or non-Christian will come here trying to tell me what Jesus meant, what the Bible teaches, or what correct theology is. Almost always ignorance and not expertise is being paraded.
Current heated discussions about Israel and Middle East have both biblical and non-biblical dimensions. Both can be weighed into, but one finds many who are just too far out of their depth. This is especially the case when someone who clearly has no biblical or theological understanding comes along pretending that he does.
A case in point is the radical libertarian John Ruddick who recently joined with other Israel-haters and Hamas-supporters on the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Pretending that was a ‘freedom ‘march’ was one of the bigger jokes, but when he starts pontificating on theology and Scripture, it gets even more ludicrous. Thankfully many members of the Libertarian Party left after that episode.
He thinks he is some authority on what the Bible teaches, and that he is some sort of theological expert. But it is clear that he doesn’t have a clue. His main religious ‘argument’ against Israel and the Jews is to make the bizarre claim that ‘Christian Zionism’ – whatever that is – is a “heresy”; to insist it is all due to the “perverse Scofield Bible”; and to claim we just need to “read the Sermon on the Mount”. Good grief.