“God is the God of All”

I have been reflecting about how so many fellow Christians visit the holy sites and either ignore the realities of the occupation or wholeheartedly embrace Christian Zionist theology.

Visiting both the holy sites in Bethlehem and the border wall challenges Christian theology that is complicit in racism and settler-colonialism.

Seeing the site of the Chapel of the Milk Grotto -- the site where the Holy Family sought refuge from King Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents -- and later learning that 34 children were killed during the Great March of Return demonstrates the need for embracing theologies of liberation.

Later, we witnessed the West Bank border wall, adorned with art that depicts a range of emotions: anger, sadness, hope, resilience -- to name a few. It is hard to visit the holy sites and see such an attempt at desecration of this land, a wall that would have prevented Mary and Joseph from entering Bethlehem just as it controls migration of Palestinians today.

However, despite the abject horrors we witnessed, I cannot stop thinking about our first meeting of the day in Beit Sahour. We were privileged to hear Nidal Aba Zuluf of the Palestinian liberation theology organization Kairos speak about hope and faith. We learned of their efforts “to acknowledge the appointed time to see the grace of God for prophetic action” by organizing 60 Palestinian solidarity movements across the world.

Asking us to consider what gives us hope, Nidal reflected that he finds hope in witnessing a God of justice that allows us to act and respond to create a better tomorrow. He reminded us that theology must both resist evil and any theology that justifies oppression is a sin against God.

Imploring us to revisit our theologies, Nidal recalled the churches that supported apartheid in South Africa and churches today that invest in the arms industry.

The movement for international Palestinian solidarity, Nidal told us, is another source of hope for him as the movement continues to grow across the world, drawing connections between the occupation of Palestine with injustices everywhere, all showing that “God is the God of all.”