Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth for the Colson Center. I'm John Stone Street. Two years ago on October the 7th, 2023, thousands of Hamas terrorists entered Israel and attacked civilians, killing nearly 1,200 Jews. It was the largest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. In what seemed like a throwback to some distant barbaric past of human violence, the Islamic terror group targeted civilians, including beheading children, sexually assaulting women, kidnapping the elderly.
Among those killed were soldiers and civilians, men and women. Children and adults. Of the 250 hostages taken that day, officials estimate that at least 83 have been killed. At least forty eight remained captive. In the two years since the attack, Hamas has been largely devastated.
Much of the Gaza Strip has been reduced to rubble. the population there displaced. Many non-combatants have been killed in the crossfire, though it's impossible to know just how many. Hamas is notorious for exaggerating civilian loss, and Western news agencies are quick to report whatever numbers Hamas claims. Despite Israel's notorious precision, Thousands indeed are dead, and millions are suffering.
The world is weary of this war, hopeful that the peace talks that are being conducted this week in Egypt. will work. The key components of President Trump's plan for peace in the region include and I quote here, the release of all living and dead hostages in Gaza, a requirement for Hamas to lay down its arms, a withdrawal of Israeli troops from the territory, the delivery of humanitarian aid, and the installation of a civilian governing authority for Palestinians. Trump's proposal also came with an ultimatum. If they walk away from this deal, the President said, they'll be That will mean complete obliteration for Hamas.
Clearly, the Israelis are intent on putting an end to the threat it faces from all sides. From an amazingly coordinated Pager attack, which incapacitated hundreds of Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon, to a series of decapitation strikes that wiped out the leadership of that Iran-backed terrorist group, to a massive Israeli retaliation against Iran for its largely ineffective missile attack against Israel, it would be impossible to summarize all that's happened in the region over the past two years. Still, even Israeli citizens are now ready for this war to end. According to a poll conducted last week, 66% believe that the time has come to stop fighting. That's up from fifty three percent just a year ago.
Even if the current proposal holds and peace is achieved, which we can all hope for, scrutiny over Israel's conduct in waging war and securing Gaza will certainly continue, and it should.
However, what is clear is just how insufficient and morally bankrupt critical theory is for this kind of an analysis. both as an academic theory and as a cultural mood. Ideas like intersectionality, privilege, liberation do not accurately describe, much less address, the realities of the human condition. Despite all the talk of justice and oppression, critical theory has miserably failed. to make sense of one of the grossest injustices in human history.
After all, on this dark day two years ago, A religiously intolerant, misogynistic, anti-science, anti-democratic, and violently anti-LGBTQ group massacred men, women, and children. And yet, somehow, many progressive activists continue to champion this group according to some crooked intersectional hierarchy of virtues. A moral framework that decides whether mass murder is wrong by who did the murdering?
Well, that's no moral framework at all.
Now some may think that biblical notions of human wickedness are outdated or that humanity has somehow evolved beyond such categories. But the brutality of the October 7 attacks and the death, destruction, starvations, displacement, hatred, and killings ever since suggest otherwise. Like the similarly shocking events of 9-11, there's simply no way to square what happened on october the seventh. and sense. with simplistic moral notions that come from critical theory.
French intellectual Bernard Henri Levy put it this way All the strategies of avoidance and containment, all the tricks of conscience, all the conjuring rhetoric that we had been deploying for 20, 50, 80 years or more. All of it was pulverized by the event. Evil was there. pure evil, plain faced, gratuitous, senseless, evil for nothing and for no reason, evil raw and unadorned.
Now Western societies might have long ago abandoned a Christian vision of the human condition. But horrors like this should lead us back to the Bible, to reconsider it. Only the Genesis account of the creation of the world can ground the dignity of all people, as well as ground the moral framework that's necessary for holding peoples and nations responsible for their actions. Only the biblical description of sin and wickedness can sufficiently explain the moral guilt. and the potential for evil that we've seen on display for the last two years.
only the Christian story can proclaim. and have good reason to proclaim that evil in the world will not have the final word. Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, once proclaimed that there is a Judge of all the earth, and he will do what is right. Because of what Jesus Christ did, we can appeal to heaven that God will indeed do what is right in this awful situation as well. In fact, if, like me, you struggle for what to pray about this situation, Jesus gave us all the words that we need.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name Thy kingdom come. I will be done. on earth as it is in heaven. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. If you appreciate the daily clarity of these Breakpoint commentaries, please leave us a review wherever you download your podcast.
And for a version of this commentary that you can download or send to others, go to breakpoint.org.
