The world saw a return of hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians over the Temple Mount/Aqsa Mosque area in Jerusalem for several weeks in spring 2022, and then again in the summer. Heaven and earth are said to meet atop the holy sites in Jerusalem and religious people of the largest faiths in the world all think they should control the sites.
Religious Christians and Muslims are not the only ones who are fervently concerned with gaining control of that particular area. Even those who are less religious have an almost innate tendency to become emotionally charged when discussing this subject, with many connecting it to political objectives and societal concerns.
Christians who are aware of the fundamental principles of salvation taught by their faith and who have a firm grasp of their theological convictions, on the other hand, cannot permit themselves to be sucked into any such frenzy for religious reasons.
All Christians who take their faith seriously should resist the need to adopt an unqualified theology of place.
There have, of course, been instances when sincere, professing Christians have seized the initiative and led military Crusades to “recover the Holy Land from the heathen.” The Gospel counsel to give what was rightfully God and Caesar’s appeared to have been put on the back burner while theocratic Christendom was on the rise ever since the Church, battered but triumphant, became entangled with a converted imperial order under the emperor Constantine in the early fourth century. After many years of violence, chaos, and destruction, Christians of all stripes finally returned to the standard stance that Jesus had established about the distinction between the sacred and the profane.
Christians naturally revere places they consider to be sacred. For a believing Christian, the phrase “Holy Land” has a significant connotation. Of the three Abrahamic religious creeds, it should be those who follow Jesus before the other two who view the locations where, in their eyes, God Himself lived, taught, worked miracles, pardoned sins, suffered, died, and rose from the dead on the third day. The Holy Sepulcher Church in the Old City, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the River Jordan, Lake Tiberias in the Galilee, the Mount of Olives and the Temple in Jerusalem, the Via Dolorosa, Gethsemane, and Golgotha, as well as other locations where Jesus is said to have visited according to the Gospels, all of these locations, along with countless others around the world where miracles are said to have been carried out by saint
But it’s important to note here two key differences. First, the origin of all these holy locations is far more significant than the locations themselves. Second, everyone can have a direct, intimate, and saving relationship with this reason (Jesus Christ) wherever they are in the cosmos. For Orthodox and Catholic Christians, this interaction is especially possible in the Holy Eucharist during Mass. Not the location, but the Person redeems and rescues. I don’t need to travel on a religious pilgrimage to any location, not even to Rome or Jerusalem, nor do I need to exert political influence over these holy sites in order to be a fully realized Christian. A theology of location is happily one of the many things that Christ has freed His people from.
Again, it is extremely natural to love and protect your country, as well as to fight for it and the people that live there. For instance, the Maronites of Lebanon have tenaciously held to their homeland in the country’s highlands over the years and have protected it from outside attacks. This is a reasonable stance to take as a historically persecuted local Christian community; yet, it is important to keep in mind that this stance has never included soteriological implications for individual Maronite believers. All persecuted Christian populations with roots in the Middle East and elsewhere are in the same situation. Because in the end, this is still your earthly home and not the Kingdom of God, which is where you should strive to be, according to the Redeemer Himself. This Kingdom is within you and is where the Father lives, both of which are quite different ideas of “location.”
Therefore, a Christian believer is not required to take part in the ongoing conflict over locations that the two other Abrahamic faiths regard as sacrosanct. And this makes it possible for the devoted Christian to serve as the broker of harmony, the healer, and the brother who extends a loving hand to both parties while pleading with them to, whenever possible, let go of some of this place-based emphasis and put more of their attention on the Transcendent. After all, isn’t this exactly what the native Christian, Abraham’s missing child, should be expected to do?
