With All Her Mind
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With All Her Mind
Is God A Zionist? Author Interview! ft. Chris Kuehl
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In this episode I sat down with the author of the new book, Is God A Zionist to discuss the state of Christian Zionism, misunderstandings, the actual process of writing such a controversial book, and the state of US-Israel geopolitics.
The author is actually my favorite podcast guest...my husband, Christopher Kuehl!
He has worked so hard the last couple of years to bring this book to life, and it's such a crucial read for anyone who wants the nuanced, intellectually honest arguments that we need during a time as crazy as this, especially around a topic that is quickly becoming a powder keg in the church.
In This Episode:
0:00 Intro
1:01 Is God A Zionist
3:22 Dispensationalist?
4:57 From fringe to mainstream
12:18 What's it like to write a book like this?
15:32 Understanding primary sources
22:12 The most challenging thing
27:10 Advice for writers
28:00 Defining Zionism
33:45 The Church Fathers on Israel
40:55 The future of foreign aid to Israel
Resources:
Is God A Zionist by Christopher Kuehl: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GNP65L8N
Present Witness: https://www.presentwitness.org/
Feminist to Feminine by Justice Kuehl: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1957616512/
Follow Justice on IG: https://www.instagram.com/justicehopekuehl/
Hey everybody, welcome back to With All Her Mind. In this is this this real real life. We have your favorite guest back with us today. My favorite guest, my husband, Christopher Heal. Let's get a round of applause going for him. We're off to a really good start.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's so much controversy around this topic. It's kind of like exhausting sometimes, to be honest with you.
SPEAKER_02It's very exhausting. Okay, but um, for people who don't have any context, they don't know what your book is. Can you tell us the title of your book and give us like the little elevator pitch what it's about?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So the title of the book is called Is God a Zionist? Finding God's Story in a World Obsessed with Israel. So good. Um, and I didn't, you know, I wouldn't have, I actually don't think I could have told you, which is like a total oversight on my part, but how controversial having Zionists in the title would be. Because that means something different to every person you ask. I never get the same definition when I'm like, what do you think that word means? And so what I realized is how many people don't know what that word means. Yeah. Which I just didn't, I didn't like anticipate that part of this. But it's basically a cultural apologetic written on uh behalf of what I believe are God's promises for the Jewish people. And so the first two chapters are kind of a brief history. They're called The Parting of the Ways, where I talk a little bit about the split between Judaism and the church in the first three centuries. And then the next six or seven chapters are kind of a biblical defense, I guess you could say, of just different layers of this conversation as it relates to the Jewish people and the Bible specifically. And then the last four chapters are kind of modern implications. So I talk a little bit about um dispensationalism and Schofield and Rothschild, and all this kind of stuff that's being like thrown around right now. I just detangle a little bit of this stuff. I talk about the Israeli passing conflict, I talk about US policy and foreign aid towards Israel, and then I talk about it. APAC APAC.
SPEAKER_03People's favorite topic.
SPEAKER_00The big demon that sits on top of the whole world and controls us all, APAC. Um, and then uh I talk a little bit about um the Jewish question, which if people are not familiar with that term, that's just kind of people have been talking about the Jews for like hundreds of years, at least in this this kind of conversation. And it's probably forever. Yeah, but it was for a different reason, which is we could talk about, which is kind of interesting. But the Jewish question specifically means uh like what do we do with the Jews? Like that's like just people talking about like what do we do? So the Jewish question, so it's related to Jewish influence and um, you know, perceive or real or uh kind of all these topics. So that that's what that's essentially like a brief outline of the book.
SPEAKER_02Okay, and we're gonna get more into the details of this later on, but before people check out because they're like, oh, just another dispensationalist, yeah. You're not dispensationalists.
SPEAKER_00No. And actually, most of the the Zionists that I know, especially in the scholarship realm, are not dispensationalist. Um I'm I'm convinced that's just kind of an internet slander going around at this point, that people genuinely really don't know what to make of Israel. And so they think, like, okay, everyone's talking about Schofield being funded by the Rothschilds, which it the Schofield Bible was not funded by the Rothschilds, it was funded by uh Oxford University, which is Oxford University in England. So for better or worse, yeah. You know, it's not like you could hate it, but it's not funded by the Rothschilds. Um, and so I think people don't really understand that Zionism exists, Christian Zionism can can exist outside of a dispensational framework. I'm not even sure if they understand what dispensation means when they say that. I'm pretty sure most people who say this to me kind of just hate Jews and they're like, oh, you're a dumb Christian who believes this. So I'm gonna like I'm gonna say you're a dispensationalist when I don't even know what that means myself, you know. Uh that's basically like the room temperature that I feel like the conversation is at when I when I feel like most people are talking to me about it. And now again, these are like a lot of internet comments, so like people are not usually giving their best in the comment section, but yeah, so that's an episode we should do sometime is talking about being like a Christian in the comment section, yeah.
SPEAKER_02A Christian in the comment section because uh a lot of times the Christians in the comment section are worse than the atheists in the comment section, totally it's so true. Or just as bad.
SPEAKER_01That's so true.
SPEAKER_02Um, okay, so what was your purpose or mission in writing this book? Like what made you be like, I gotta write this?
SPEAKER_00Well, I I feel like I've been writing this book for 20 years, um, in some ways, because you know, this issue has been on my heart since I lived in Israel back in 2007 through through 2009. So, you know, I I've probably read, I don't know, what would you say, 500 books at this point?
SPEAKER_01Um something ridiculous.
SPEAKER_02I've I've read I've never seen so many books come in the mail before as as we had come in while we were in the writing process. I mean, I feel like I went through it with you. We kind of worried. You wrote it. But yeah, we would have like so many books come in and I'd be like, hey, are you even reading these? And then you'd tell me a bunch of stuff from it. And I was like, never mind, you are reading it, okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, it was it was an exhaustive process, but I've I've probably at least read over 500 books just on this topic, talking like scholar scholarship books like on this, you know, which are not usually like academic books gearing up for this. But I and I I tried to translate all of this for people in a way that was like culturally relevant, and you don't have to be a scholar to read this stuff. So it's like I call it like layman's theology. Like, we're gonna talk about things that are in the Bible, but like you're gonna be able to understand what we're talking about. And so I guess I started on that journey five or six years ago. I started writing, I guess, two and a half years ago, and I had no idea, you know, when I took this project on, like where the current conversation would be.
SPEAKER_02Because people need to remember that two and a half years ago, two and a half, three years ago, things were not at all how they are now.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02No, like things have escalated exponentially in the last like year.
SPEAKER_00It's crazy. It's totally a different, it's totally different right now.
SPEAKER_02And um But it's really to me, speaks to the fact that the Lord put this on your heart. Yeah, because you started doing this when it was like, well, this is sort of like a given, like Christians support Israel, and like, okay, what's the big whoop? But you were like really digging into the why. I think we've been digging into the why of a lot of things since we got married, of just wanting to know. Sorry, this is a side quest, I'm going right about. Um, of just wanting to know, like, as a family, like what are we about? What do we believe? And especially as we've talked about what we want to teach our kids and stuff, I know that you've really taken a lot of that seriously and wanting to figure out why the why behind so many of the things that we do and believe.
SPEAKER_00Yep. And, you know, I was starting to see these questions kind of surfacing, you know, in culture, but it was not nearly like the way that it is now, you know.
SPEAKER_03Just refringe.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and now I mean it's it's everywhere. And it's uh and I've been surprised at how quickly it it happened. And it's helped along by like a heavy dose of conspiracy around the Jews, which you know, like that's that's kind of moving everything exponentially faster. So when you have, you know, Tucker Carlson spending 90 days on a show just talking about one situation, it's like, okay, that's gonna speed things up. Same with Canvas. I mean, so you have these kind of obvious things. I think that the bottom really fell out after Charlie's assassination as well, um, which is tragic for so many reasons. But you know, that's just kind of where it is.
SPEAKER_02So I think he was holding a lot of things together.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't think people really I didn't realize it. I had no idea. Um, and I go back to that thing that Prager said about, you know, you never know how big a tree is until it falls, you know. And um that was definitely true with Charlie.
SPEAKER_02Definitely. Okay, I don't know if you saw this today. This was not one of my questions that I prepped you for, but um, there's a video going around of a couple, an Israeli couple who were in Vietnam eating noodles in a restaurant. Did you see this video? Uh I probably heard people talking, but yeah. And there was like two British ladies, I think, who are on vacation in Vietnam, and they saw that she had a tattoo of Israel on her. And so they're like, Oh, you have Palestine tattooed on you. And she's like, Yeah. And they're like, Are you from Palestine? Are you Palestinian? And she's like, It's it's difficult, it's a little messy. And they're like, Oh, what does that mean? So you speak Arabic, and they just are pressing them, and they finally find out that they're Israeli, and they just start basically screaming at them and being and saying, You're a monster, you're a murderer, you're evil. She doesn't know these two people. These are just two Israeli people who are having a meal in Vietnam, they're not even in the UK, which is so crazy. And um, what was really concerning also was the comment section. So for people who are like, okay, things are not really that bad though, like we can question Israel without it being anti-Semitic. We're not talking about when we're talking about like the anti-Semitism stuff that's going on and ramped up, we're not talking about it's because people want to ask questions. The the problem is that it's so far beyond that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that rebuttal that they try to give on just asking questions is it's totally nonsense, by the way. But we don't talk about that. It is just a it's just a like a shield. Um but the do you remember you remember when we were on our honeymoon in Costa Rica?
SPEAKER_01I was just thinking about that.
SPEAKER_00And that group of Israelis sat in front of us and I was talking, I started talking to them in Hebrew, and you you could see that they like froze, like like because like they cannot travel anywhere without crazy stuff like this happening.
SPEAKER_02I had no idea.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and this was what five years ago that we were on that in Costa Rica, and it's just like the reality.
SPEAKER_02And so, you know, I remember asking you, I said, I said, why wouldn't they just acknowledge that they're from Israel? Like you're speaking to them in Hebrew. Why wouldn't they acknowledge it? And you're like, babe, it's not safe for them to acknowledge it in public.
SPEAKER_00I had no idea. There's all sorts of things that that happened.
SPEAKER_01So crazy.
SPEAKER_00Which is really actually one of the ways that you can see how like anti-Zionism has become taken the form of anti-Semitism because we would do that with no other country in the world. Like you never see that. Like, when was the last time like you threw a grape at a or threw an orange at a Russian who was out somewhere? That's what I was gonna say. Because they attacked Ukraine.
SPEAKER_02We recognize it's not one and the same.
SPEAKER_00It does not happen. Like it it is a it is a standard that is completely applied only to Israel. And so, you know, none of this is like surprising to me. I see it, I'm like, yeah, this is just like people are unhinged, like they do not know how something spiritual to properly integrate what is happening in the world right now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. What I love about your book also is that you address, you talk about the spiritual nature of it, but you don't just leave it at that. You I feel like there is an answer for everyone. So for the people who are more spiritually minded, you have spiritual answers. For the people who are more scholarly academic minded, you have those answers. You have answers for all different faith, uh Christian faith traditions. So you've got stuff from Catholics and Protestants and Messianic people, like all different um theologians. And so I think it's it's really, really well done. And I have read it twice now. And every time I'm like, every time that I read it again, I'm like, this is a really stinking good book. This is so good. I can't believe my husband wrote this. Um, okay, so what was the actual like pivoting away from like talking about Israel specifically and all those things? What was the process like writing your book? Yeah. Was it like you thought it would be?
SPEAKER_00Well, it was kind of in some ways, it was it is very interesting. You know, this is my first book. Um, my background is like in finance and tech and things that were like I would not have said like lit myself to to to writing, you know. But um, you know, I I at some point I realized that like if you want to communicate, like you have got to learn how to write and you've got to learn how to spend you got to do these things. And so that at that point it became more of a priority for me. Um, but I definitely could not have done this without you, actually. Like you were like probably the the most helpful part of this, you know, with taking on more of the duties with Kalev, with just encouraging me. Um, you know, those those aspects that I feel like are super underappreciated is really what helped this project. In terms of the actual writing, I would just get into a flow. I don't know. I mean, before I started this, I probably spent three months in research after spending years reading all this stuff. And I had I kind of knew each chapter what sources I was gonna use. And so, like around my office, I have, you know, I've got 13 chapters, I guess. And so I had 13 piles of books that I knew from kind of each book like what I was gonna pull from. And so it was actually amazing how fast I went when once I started. Like I just got into the flow state, and I just would go in there and I would just bang out 2,000 words every morning. And sometimes it sucked and I'd have to redo it. But generally, like it got me close enough to where I was going when I was done with this project. It was 120,000 words, which is a massive book. Like that's not a product.
SPEAKER_02The average book, I think, is 50,000. Yeah, I think my book was 50 something thousand.
SPEAKER_00And so it ended up, my final ended up being 72,000.
SPEAKER_02And so we were we we we had to get an editor in there because we couldn't even I was too close. It was all so it all felt really important to both of us. So I don't think either of us were like in the position where we could really distinguish okay, but what's the most important?
SPEAKER_00I know, yeah.
SPEAKER_02That was hard.
SPEAKER_00It was hard, and it it was like cutting down to the bone.
SPEAKER_02The other thing is you are in a master's program, you have been for a couple of years because it's like part-time. Um, and so I feel like the writing that you were doing for your master's program helped prepare you to know how to you know write in your chapters too. And so for people who are something about like somebody, yeah, it's like, well, how did you just yeah?
SPEAKER_00Substack is a great resource to start getting like smaller set out of the public. Um, you know, I I think that definitely I wanted to write a book that like was not overly academic and scholarly because like no one reads those books except for people like me. And except for us. Yeah, and and but at the same time, I wanted to give people like good primary source information. Yeah. And so, you know, there's a lot of translation involved in that. So I mean if you're if you're trying to do something like that, you want to learn how to like source correctly and do research correctly and you know, like research matrixes and things like this that are helping, you know.
SPEAKER_02That is, I need to learn. I need to learn. But okay, I have a question about this because this is something that I think is super important I've learned about in the last few years for learning how to ascertain truth um or like truthful information about what's happening in the world. Primary sources. Can you, in layman's terms, just explain to people what that is? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so like like if I go read like a popular history book, I'm gonna be reading a historian's work. And sometimes that historian can be as unbiased as possible. Sometimes they're not, sometimes they they do have an agenda, but they're gonna be going. The best kinds of historians will go look, they'll they'll figure out how to read some German document from the Nazis and figure out like what that means and its context, and then they'll tell me about it, you know. But they'll the primary way that they will come to some conclusion will be by evaluating that primary source.
SPEAKER_02The primary source meaning being a very good thing. It's like the original source. It's like the the document where the Germans were actually writing out that would be a primary source.
SPEAKER_00That's an example of one, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, you know, when you when you're when you're studying the the start of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you can read the letters between all the different people that were interacting on on this topic. And so, you know, those are primary sources. Um and no, no retelling of history is perfect, right? Because it it's there's so much going on, like with all of our lives, with nations, with all these things. And so, but primary source at least gives us something that we can be sure about to some degree. Yes. Um, you know, it's not totally fictional. And so, you know, one of the reasons why scholars are considered scholars is because typically they have one very deep focus. Okay, that focus could be a language, it could be a period of time in biblical history, it could be whatever it is, you know. So there's and so, you know, I I wanted to give people the ability to feel like they're reading, you know, what Luther said about this, or what some of the church fathers said, or what snapshots into those and then I am putting my own kind of analysis on like where this fits in the puzzle, you know. Um, so that that's that's basically and so and I'm doing that in a layman's way where you don't have to be a scholar to read this. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Hey, part of the reason I wanted to ask that question is because in my last episode I was talking about the history of Easter and I had some people arguing with me in the comments, respectfully. Um, and they're saying, you know, like they're talking about how you can't really like ascertain knowledge from scholarship because um when you go to school, you're taught inaccurate information. And I think that probably is true a lot of the times. I mean, if we've seen history books where they literally, like in our public schools, depending on what state you're in, what curriculum they're using, are teaching that Trump is fascist, which is very interesting. There's many criticisms that you could have of him that would be correct. Uh fascism is not one of them and um not even remotely close. And so we're not talking about I read this in a history book when we talk about primary sources and when we talk about scholarship. We're talking about we can go back and look at a little snapshot in history and and see what people at that time actually were communicating about something or saying. And so um just that's I think that's helpful for people to know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and so I mean a lot of history books are not, you know, they there's I mean, there's a lot of stuff that what what's not what's the problem about history books, I would say, is actually that many of them are not using primary sources. Like they're trying, they actually have an agenda behind what they're doing, and they're and it's a dishonest thing to only tell one side of a story, for instance, you know, and so if you're there are there are dishonest ways to do all of this. Like you have to start out with someone who's good faith, who who's really trying to get to the bottom of something. But the best way to do that is to look at primary sources of whatever it is that you're look that you're looking at and look at all the the narratives and try to put together the the pieces the best you can, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yes. That that's to me a dividing line between like true conspiracy theory, and what I mean by that is like in a negative way versus the things because over the recent years we realize like a lot of things that they call conspiracy theories are not.
SPEAKER_03Right, totally.
SPEAKER_02But looking at primary sources is a really great way to to debunk those things, and I just think that's an important thing for people to be aware of, especially as you're talking about Israel.
SPEAKER_00And I think a lot of people will believe that they are reading something historical or reading something true, or they they think that this 90-second I was well reading this study that was talking about how some massive percentage of news and information uh reels on Instagram are just completely fake. Not like they got some things wrong or there's another side of this, like just totally fake, completely manufactured, completely manufactured, it's not real at all, you know? And so it's very hard when you're interacting with someone who's been formed by by things that are not even real. Like, like you know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_02Like we Which is really most of us today, unless we've intentionally unless we've intentionally not not uh gone after that.
SPEAKER_00And if you're if your primary way of interacting with the world and of receiving information is through your feed, you're honestly probably an abject moron. Like I'm not trying to be like I I'm not trying to be mean, but like your words not my thing. Like I'm just saying that it's not you have you don't even understand what you're doing.
SPEAKER_02But I would I would extend this because in our age group, that's gonna be like Instagram, maybe X, sure, uh TikTok, but for the older people, they have the same thing with like Telegram and Facebook, I don't even know. Yeah, I was reading Instagram because it was just like the but I I got family members send us things all the time, and I'm constantly telling them, hey, that's AI. Hey, that's AI. And we all just laugh about it now because they're not on social media, but they're on like their version of it and still getting all the AI stuff. Yeah. Anyways, sorry.
SPEAKER_00But I mean, like like the Talmud quotes are one of the ways that I see this all the time. There'll be something floating, this is what the Talmud says, and um without even talking about the Talmud, 80% of the stuff in there is just totally manufactured, like you cannot find it anywhere in the Talmud. But because no one has any idea, like, you know, it's just it's just out there somewhere. And so I think it's just an example of and I don't mean to call people morons. I'm just saying like it's not it's moronic is you are not well informed to like what is what is real and what is. fake and and what's really hard about that is you don't even know that like you think that you're you think you're in the truth zone but you know you've just kind of traded one deception for another yeah that's so true okay so when you were writing uh writing this book what was something that was really the most challenging or one of the most challenging parts of it and then what was something that was surprisingly very rewarding maybe not even surprisingly yeah well I think just the challenging nature of the moment that we're in right now I feel like I was like writing at the moment like in in every day you know watching in real time things you know like I had to I had to write the Israeli Palestinian chapter like over like three or four times because things kept changing so quickly. So that that that was practically challenging but I think that one of the hardest parts of this conversation for me is that whenever I talk about Zionism people think that that what I mean is that we have to support BB Netanyahu or that we cannot have disagreements about the Israeli Palestinian conflict or like some sort of blind yeah I just I just I don't know what it is but people cannot hear that word without thinking political Israeli Palestinian conflict you've got everything that's going on with Gaza right now or was going on during writing this you know so there's all these elements of it that like I found that just detangling people's perspective on that has been one of the most challenging things which is so interesting because I've honestly never given Bibi much thought. I've never really given the Israeli government much thought I don't give the American government that much thought you know what I mean like it's not this kind of thing that I spend like so much time like consumed over it. So to see how much it animates people was very surprising to me because that's not my orientation towards it. My orientation towards it is much more like okay this is obviously super messy. That could be in parts because Israel does things that are sometimes fair, sometimes foul. Certainly they are surrounded by Islamic nations that have vocally said they want to kill all of them. That can't be easy. To me it's obvious that God is doing something here even when it's messy. And so I try to find that storyline. But it has been surprising to me how hard it is for people to find that storyline. Yeah. Because they get consumed with okay what I think you're saying when I hear you say that is that you think I should support BB or you think we should be sending all this money to Israel or X, Y, and Z.
SPEAKER_02And so I think just like getting people to not think at that level has been It's very black and white thinking very as soon as you start talking about Israel, even though we have like nuanced discussions about pretty much every other country on earth as soon as we start talking about Israel it's like people become blind with rage.
SPEAKER_00They become the woman like yelling at the Israelis in Vietnam like it it's just it consumes people. And I don't know what that is like I I don't know what that is besides a spiritual element. Like tell me there there's no reason if you look at how much money we send Israel or this this tiny country of seven million there's no reason why it should make you that angry unless there's something spiritually going on. Like you know like I don't see any other reason for it. So that's my spiritual part of like challenging you know I go through that in a lot of different ways but I don't know it's hard for me to see this moment outside of that lens.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_00And what was something that was really rewarding in the process yeah um I don't know there was just times why I felt like I was in I was in such a deep flow and um writing the chapter the last chapter the conclusion this was really crazy but I actually like like intensely cried over this for a couple days which I never never cry about anything. And I was like I I was I was just like the Lord really like opened my heart towards this conclusion and um I don't know that that was a sweet way to end this project because it had taken so much work and it was so long and it was all these things and I I I just feel like the Lord personally met me in that place you know so yeah yeah and I mean it's been amazing it it it was on you know at on nine bestseller lists on Amazon on the first week like it was incredible there's been the feedback has been amazing. I mean I get a lot of hate too because it's a book about Israel but I'm surprised the hate is never like hey here's your argument this is what I don't like about it. It's like oh you crazy Zionists like or oh God hates the Jews or like you know you believe a a Christian heresy. It's always these dumb talking points that like yeah it's just these like honestly like silly talking points that that show me you didn't even read the like the material. You don't like so I I'm never gonna take that seriously. Well you can't you can't like it's like this is just someone who's just trying to throw shade because they don't like what you're talking about you know and you've had a couple people like actually have good faith conversations with you about it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah but those are so few and far between that I could like name a number of people who that was and it's really really um I don't know a sign of the times I think in many ways. Okay what would your advice be to other aspiring writers?
SPEAKER_00I think it's really helpful to pick a topic that you love and that you're willing to go to war over and that you will let consume you. And so I think that if you are not interested in this topic then probably no one else will be either so you first have to be a believer in your own heart you know and then I think there's a bunch of practical stuff after that but you just have to see it through I mean it's just it is a time consuming exhausting process especially when you start doing ebooks and audiobooks and all this stuff it's like gosh dude it's been going on forever I feel like you know really yeah you know you just that's what you have to let something consume you like you just have to let it burn you up you know I think that's very true and very good.
SPEAKER_02Um okay so I don't think we've actually explicitly defined Zionism. Yeah. So can you give us your explicit definition?
SPEAKER_00Well so Zionism political Zionism is the belief that the Jews have a right to their ancestral homeland. That's simply a like have a right of self-determination to be their own nation in that land. Um Christian Zionism is basically that same belief with the caveat that you believe the Bible is the one who ultimately gives that um God through the scripture scripture gives that right to the Jewish people.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But it doesn't have anything to do with with foreign policy it has nothing to do with with BB Netanyah. You can hate BB I mean 80% of Israel does you know so it's not like you you would be outside of the bounds of like normative Israeli thought to like have a problem with BB for instance you know there are massive debates on how to treat the Israeli Palestinian conflict in Israel. You know I mean there's a huge number of what can only be called as as social leftists in Israel who so like when you talk about Zionism you're not you're not saying like hey you have to have this political belief on this or you have to you have to believe this about Bibi or um you know I think that there's a really good argument to be made for America not giving foreign aid out at all until our budget is balanced internally and so I think that there's a there's a real strong reason for why we should be taking care of our own citizens at this point in our nation's history. I mean we are ballooning with debt you know um but I think there's also good reasons that people don't really listen to or don't want to hear for why American influence in the Middle East has has been there for the last 40 years and what this has done for us. And and people just think it's Israel which is a massive oversimplification to that to that problem.
SPEAKER_02A lot of those Islamic countries also want to destroy the West which they'll chant death to America and so you know it's different because the hatred that they have towards the Jews is very existential about being Jewish it's very different so I don't want to make a false equivocation that those are the same. But my point is that Israel being a defense against radical Islam in the Middle East is in our benefit. Yeah it really is in our benefit.
SPEAKER_00And people underestimate like what what what and why we have been there. You know I talk about this in my book a little bit but I believe that one of the main driving factors for American influence in the Middle East was the petrodollar deal that America signed with Saudi Arabia in the early 70s. And this deal was very simple like Saudi Arabia was worried about its militant neighbors it didn't have a military and so it said to the US hey if you guys protect us militarily then we will trade all the oil in the world that we that we ship out in dollars. So what that did for the US currency is overnight it made the US dollar the de facto currency for global the global reserve currency. And if you notice right after that that's when we got into the Gulf War that's when we got into all these things that had nothing to do with Israel but they were all with Saudi Arabia's enemies. And so I to me like just because Israel might hate a nation that we're at war against doesn't mean that we're there because of Israel. Yeah or or because they help us or because they help us it's also to their benefit totally so there there's times when it's like we we mutually share a benefit and people can debate about whether we should be doing this kind of stuff at all and there's and that's that's a good conversation to have but it is an oversimplification and honestly an unserious argument to say that Israel is dragging America around by the ear forcing us to get into wars. I mean even with this thing with with Iran everyone's like oh we went to war for Israel we went to war for Israel. Okay Trump went down to Venezuela and did the whole thing in Venezuela. He's threatening Cuba there was a pipeline in Saudi Arabia that was set up to start moving oil the second that we hit Iran you think that all this is not coordinated you know there's clearly something much bigger going on I mean Trump has said this over and over you can watch videos 80s of Trump saying that if he was president he would go into Iran like the there's just nothing about this argument that makes sense that Israel is the one the the ones blaming us. So I I just I don't know I it's hard this this current climate always we want to flatten everything we want to take the nuance out we want our grand unifying theory for why everything is wrong in the world and for a lot of people that has become the Jews in Israel.
SPEAKER_02Yeah they really have become uh the scapegoat the cultural scapegoat of all our problems the last thing I wanted to say something that helps me like tangibly understand Zionism as well is if you think about our Israeli friends they don't agree on how all of these things should be handled like all the different things that we've just talked about. They don't agree. We being Zionists we believe that they have a right to exist and to work that out amongst themselves how they're gonna be governed how they're gonna go through this process. So Zionism is not connected to a political view at all. It's not connected to a political view in Israel. It's saying that they have a right to figure that out they have a right to wrestle with God in all of that.
SPEAKER_00And there's a kind of an old Jewish axiom that says um if you ask 10 different Jews you'll get 11 opinions. You know it's just like that just shows like how even internally divided they are on things you know so it's like again people want to flatten Israeli society out pretend it's this monolithic thing that BB the the Khazar antichrist is running it. And so all Jews are like you know it's just that's that's kind of the narrative right now. And so I think one of the best things that people can do is just refuse to believe oversimplified explanations of the world because it's just they're never true. Yeah like they're never true.
SPEAKER_02Yeah it's true. Okay. Something that I really love that you do with your book is including theologians from all different theological traditions. And um I love that because whether somebody is a Presbyterian or a Catholic or a non-denominational Christian they will be able to find really good sources um that sub that can help them feel good about supporting Israel. And so what are some of the different ways um like how do you see Catholics and Protestants handling the Israel issue differently yeah well um I I think that for most people they're still kind of stuck on Zionism is a dispensational like theological heresy if if they're um even the pro-Israel people I find don't can't usually explain their position super well.
SPEAKER_00So it it's helpful to understand that many of the church fathers um you know Justin Martyr talks about this you have um Iranius you have Jerome you have Cyril Alexandria you have Eusebius all talk about the regathering of the Jews at a future point in in time which is really what even Aquinas says even Aquinas talks a little bit about it in his uh Jeremiah 31 uh 37 um treaty treat and treatise thank you and um so you have you find you can find this idea that the Jews would be regathered one day um in in the early church fathers and that's helpful for people to know because people don't don't understand that and it's also helpful to understand that when the church fathers spoke disparagingly of the Jews which many of them did they always predicated it so it was a presuppositional argument where the presupposition was like the Jews are outside of Israel Jerusalem has been destroyed that means God has rejected them. Okay so and they were writing about like reality for them like that's really what they were observing but it was a presuppositional argument. You never hear them say hey we inherited this from the apostles or we God told us this or we see this in theology whatever it is it's it's always based on this one factor of the Jews being outside of Israel and Jerusalem being destroyed. So now what happens in today where the Jews are back in the land and it's that Jerusalem is now under Jewish sovereignty I think if they were alive using their logic they would see that okay we we we have got something wrong. At the very least you cannot continue to use that argument in good faith because it's presuppositionally it's been proven false in the line of history. So you know you have that in the early church and then you have things like you know you have as soon as the Protestant Reformation happened this idea took over big time in much of the Reformation. You you see it in going all the way back to the to the 1500s that you have Cromwell who was in England who who let the Jews back into England because he believed that England would be part of restoring the Jews back to Israel. This is like 1550 um you know then you have some of the the biggest Protestant theologians you've got Jonathan Edwards you've got William S. Brackell I mean almost the entire Dutch reformers believe this that the Jews would be regathered to Israel. You've got Charles Spurgeon J.C. Ryle Jonathan Esmerles Hodge you know I mean you have just these major major Protestant theologians who all believe that the regathering of the Jews would happen in the future. And so now we're like living in that moment. And so I I'm trying to give people like look at the voice of many waters and the tradition of the church and say guys this is not we can find a pattern for this belief all throughout church history. And so I wanted to do that because I wanted to give people multiple footholds. I think sometimes we have blind spots in our own traditions. Yeah and there's there's reasons why people choose traditions and but I think that just then to assume that there's total error in another tradition is not the right way to be re what I've what I'd like to do and what I try to do with this book is try to figure out like where is the overlap in this discussion from from these traditions. And so that that's why I wrote it that way.
SPEAKER_02Yeah I love that. And there certainly were um reformers who were like anti-Semitic oh certainly I mean Luther was um but that your point is not that there were no Protestant reformers who were anti-Semitic nor is your point that there were no Catholic fathers who um weren't Zionists.
SPEAKER_00Your point is that there's some of each and both all along there have been seven major church councils in church history where the church kind of functioned as within its what it would claim is its role as producing doctrine and theology for the church. Binding doctrine and not in a single one of these councils was there anything ever related to what we would call replacement theology at this point. Now obviously all of the early the early church the medieval church they're always writing if the theologians of the day are writing yes but this is like small tea theology like it's not it's not like small tea tradition small but also small three like I mean it's I'm not saying it's irrelevant but it it carries less weight in terms of how you would compare it to the church council stuff. Yeah. So and Protestantism doesn't always recognize this but a lot of what they do came out of all of these these councils and beliefs and their evolutions from these things. And so you know what's interesting about this is that I think in the light of history in the light of reality even the church fathers who wrote about the Jews never being back in the land they've been proven wrong. Yeah. And people don't like to hear that. Right. But it's true and it it's annoying when people kind of try to pretend like that's not the case you know and so then I think the question becomes can you throw their arguments out on this issue because the foundation of it has been proven wrong in the in the light of history. And so um anyways I I just I wanted to give people a brief walk through history on these matters so that they had some basic contours of the map.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah I I could I could literally write a book on each chapter.
SPEAKER_02Right yeah so I guess what I was trying to do is more explain people who are like Protestant and have no grounding in tradition whatsoever like what the heck is a church father?
SPEAKER_00Church father would be writers and thinkers typically between uh the the second century and the sixth or seventh century.
SPEAKER_02So you're gonna have Justin Martyr you're gonna have Iranius Saint Jerome Augustine um Hippocrates I think is how you say his name Hippocrates Hippocrates thank you um John Christosom um there's you know basically um and not like everybody who wrote during that time is considered a church father there is like a technical definition that I can't remember what it is but basically like right after the apostles the apostles like discipled other people and those are called the apostolic fathers and then I think yeah I think that the apostolic fathers then the people that they discipled a lot of those are what we consider the church fathers but I don't necessarily know that all of them are anyway so that's a fun little tidbit for people who like me want context for like okay what is what is a church father what does that mean my last question for you is what do you think the future of foreign aid to Israel looks like you know that's interesting um I I think that I wasn't sure how like the Uber Zionists were going to feel about this because I I wrote about it in my book and I said um I actually think that first of all some context for all of the US foreign aid worldwide is less than 1% of our of the GDP.
SPEAKER_00So not even including Israel but all of our foreign aid yeah yeah so the idea I think it's like even less than half a percent I think it was like 0.37 or something so the idea that like that's gonna change American lives in some major way and most of that money also goes to like weapons defense contractors like it's not like we pay Israel which stimulates our economy stimulates our economy. So it's not the silver bullet that people think it is this foreign aid relates to only 20% of what Israel spends on its own defense. So America helps for 20% of Israeli uh military aid but which is coming from US defense um contractors like Lockheed and um Raython and these companies so I think it's probably time for that to be sunsetted um you know BB invested $100 billion over 10 years. He announced this last year and more of their own internal defense stuff. I think that one of the things that people don't realize is that USAID has been often used to manipulate Israel to prompt them to give up land for them to get into certain deals um which is not good for Israel because they want to be able to be like self-determining as a Zionist I want them to be able to make to make their own decisions. And so I think that we are headed that way um and I think if only the foreign aid stops there's nothing wrong with that. I'm worried that like if America ever starts voting against them in the UN or starts doing things like that, that is a huge problem to me. Like we can't like I do not support that but I do support a Israeli military and like a Zionist enterprise that is not it's more self-sufficient. It's more dependent on on foreign at all. And I think that at this point in the relationship it's the best thing for both sides. Yeah yeah definitely and it will shut the haters up until they find something else and then they'll realize that it was never really about the foreign they just hate Israel and that but that'll become more clear.
SPEAKER_02Yes I'm excited I'm excited for that clarity to happen. We need some clarity well okay something that's really encouraged me side note that I have seen from some of our Zionist friends that are really fighting this fight online is just like God has promised to be faithful to the Jewish people. And what's really amazing is like whether the whole world turns on the Jewish people again or not God is going to be faithful to them. He's gonna continue to preserve them that's like his promise to them. And so the question here is really like what side do we want to be on? Do we want to be on the side that caused more pain and yeah just C completely violating all of the the premise of scripture and everything towards his people, being hateful, um being, you know, even things escalating into like harming people, or do we want to be on the side that is like standing shoulder to shoulder and I know what side I want to be on.
SPEAKER_00And the conclusion I write about that scene in the two towers, um, where they've all fallen back at Holmes Deep and then those elves come, which is one of my favorite parts of any movie. And it's like heartbreaking to me that that Tolkien didn't actually write that. That was like that was Peter Jackson. But good job, Peter Jackson. Good job, Peter Jackson. But anyways, the the bottom line is that I I hope that the church responds in that way for those Jewish people right now because the level of attack, the level of criticism. Um, I mean, I I have so many good friends in Israel that are in so much turmoil right now. Because not only have they been living basically under constant bombardment for the last three years since October 7th, they have massive internal problems right now. Um, even like psychologically, depression, anxiety, all these things are so high. They're constantly, you know, people only see Israel responding to things, but it's like, why do you think Israel is responding to that? Like, what do you think? You think Israel's just will-kneeling? You think they just want to? Do you really think, like, you really think that the the primary Jewish concern is just killing Arabs?
SPEAKER_01Like, yeah, like so crazy.
SPEAKER_00Like you've clearly like never met a Jewish person, you know? And everything that's happening over there is in response to them being, I mean, so our our friends are in bomb shelters three or four times a day. Imagine like living in that for three or four years, you know. Imagine every time you go online, like what you're seeing about like what you're supposed to be doing and what you're supposed to be like, it's like it's very, very taxing, I think, for for many of them. Mentally marsh.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and so spiritually.
SPEAKER_00You know, I think that as Christians, we've got to pray for the peace in Jerusalem, which includes the Arabs. Yeah, I'm not saying that like that's not important, all this, it's totally important.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes, totally. Um, being being human life across the board is is so important.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely important. And to be pro-Jewish does not mean to be anti-Arab or vice versa, you know. Like, so we should be pro both. Yeah. Um, but yeah, that's why I love it. So you can get the book on Amazon. Uh the audio book will be out next week. Um, you pick up a physical copy or an ebook. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's so awesome. Thank you so much for being with us today. And yeah, guys, you gotta get this book. It's seriously phenomenal. You might be like, oh, you're biased because you're his wife. But actually, for Chris and I, we're kind of like the opposite. We're like, you're my spouse, I'm going to be Don't make me look bad. I'm gonna be very honest with you. Because yeah, we we need that though. We need people where we can like speak, but that's exactly. It was not like in a meat way, just we want to be honest with each other because we we both really have like a high level of um a high standard intellectually for like what we will and will not accept.
SPEAKER_03That's true.
SPEAKER_02And so uh, but your book is seriously so good. Every time that I've read it, I've been like, dang, I can't believe he wrote this. This is so good. Um and then also your website is Present Witness. Is it a present witness? No, it is Present Witness. PresentWitness.org.
SPEAKER_00And you have lots of great blogs on there if people if you like reading more deeper theology, that's where that happens.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because the book really, even with how long it is, it's still not able to like really go into super depth on some of these things. So your blog is a great place to do that. Thanks for joining us, babe. Love you.