Raymond Klassen – Ideals and Identities

Dearest Lord, Thou has told us that if we confess our sins that Thou art faithful to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Dearest Lord, I dare to name the sins of my people, and especially the ones of which I am also responsible. 

I have been an imperialist expander, a believer in the old imperialistic motto that peace is achieved by economic improvement. As you have taught us, that it is easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than to enter the kingdom of heaven. Lord, help me and us to remember this very important lesson. We know that all violence needs a justification, but economic expansion is no justification.

Help us to remember that we have the ability to take more than an eye for an eye, but also an arm and a leg. You have claimed vengeance, and we in the West have tried to claim it from Thou. We have acted out our murderous, violent hearts on people who did not deserve it, on Palestinians, Israelis, and many other foreign nationals from other places who were there to make peace, to dance, to earn a living, to collect the food that we eat – and I especially think of the thirty-one Thai people who were initially killed and hurt in Hamas’s attack, and the Canadian peace builders – and the multitude more of both Canadians and Thais who have been destroyed by Israeli air strikes; on Jews, Christians, Muslims. The war crimes are bad enough, but I know these would not happen without the imperialistic and technocratic reasoning that is an abomination to Thy love.

We have lied about the Palestinians by claiming that Hamas has decapitated babies, that they use human shields without conscience. We have not only sinned, but we have lied to cover it up. We have revealed our despicable nature by claiming it is “they” who are “barbarians.” We all have a despicable nature, and we come before you deserving death, but knowing, that if we are honest in our hearts, that you will forgive our sins.

We have also sinned by believing the lies of the media (the ones operating on the technocratic rationality of economic expansion), and in doing so, have sinned: 

One, that the Israelis and the Americans tell us: that they want to “root out” Hamas once-and-for-all. We have, like fools, believed that Hamas is not somehow part of the very heart of the Palestinians in Gaza. We have believed that violence has not been bred into more than 2 million people that have been confined against their will in an open-air prison for decades. We are fools because who are the Palestinians without Hamas? They are like those in the West Bank, who are being killed just the same, and are afflicted by an occupation of an oppressing army who set up barriers and checkpoints between father and son, between farmers and their land, between a member of a religion and their holy sites. 

Two, that all the Jews are Zionists: that ALL want to ethnically cleanse Gaza. We, in the West, have not really looked into those communities where Israelis and Palestinians have lived together peacefully. We have fallen into the sin of reductive understandings, one of which is to see this as a religious conflict, when it has been a political one for a century now. We have been wilful fools Lord.

We have committed the sin of idolatry Lord, by believing the Americans are honest brokers of the conflict, and here in Canada, to not stand up and say what the Americans are doing is wrong. In doing so, we have continually aided and abetted the supply of the economic means to commit a genocide. We have believed that by siding with THE economic power, that somehow we would end up on the right side of history. We have foolishly believed that the judgment of history was the worst one we could face.

And we are bringing onto ourselves an even worse one now – we are creating our own hell.

We did not confess our sins in Europe during WWII, and have acted out of guilt and the attempt to appease our own guilt; we have believed that we could earn our way out of the wages of sin by not playing our role as a friend to the Israeli state AND the Palestinian people. We have not listened to them as they spoke for themselves. And now we reap the rewards of a violence that we have instilled.

Lord, I confess these sins on the promise of one day being forgiven. And I confess these sins in this way, knowing that at least one more person will do the same, and that they will add to this list, and share it with others.

Lord, let us not fall into the temptation of hoping for a solution. But guide us to stop immediately killing – what we call a ceasefire. Let us return all prisoners who are held only because they are Israeli – starting on October 7 – or Palestinian – who have been rotting in jail for years. Let us remember that the blessings and curses of Thy covenant, the oath of which Thou took on Abraham’s (and his descendants) behalf in Genesis 15, will again be the covenant which holds us together, and that we remember, that through Jesus, Thou has already taken the curse of the covenant.

In Thy name I pray,

Amen