To the editor:

Amy Zook is absolutely right to remind Christians that Christ liberates humanity from evil, which “separates us from God.” She did not say, however, that this same action is designed to liberate us from the evil that alienates human beings from each other. This includes political and social evils.

I’ll illustrate my point by reference to a gigantic American political wrong that is pervasive, bipartisan, entrenched, fanatical — and evil — both because of what it does to it victims and because of the hatred it generates against America all over the world.

I refer here to our blind, stupid support of the nation of Israel, which annually consumes billions of our tax dollars to persecute more than 4 million Palestinians, every single one of whom bears the image of God and who include Arab Christians.

Christianity historically teaches that Christ speaks for God because he is, in fact, God and that he speaks for humanity because he is, in fact, redeemed humanity, freed from its slavery to evil. As such, he freely binds himself to any word or deed of truth, religious or secular, that promotes or stands against anything that threatens the life of humanity.

America and Israel today threaten the life of Palestinian humanity. This is particularly true of fundamentalist and evangelical American Christians who are too blind or too cowardly to condemn what we have done to the Palestinians. If that condemnation is not a judgment of God, there is no such thing.