Editorial: Facing the truth when we’d rather shop

I’m writing on Oct. 7.

If you shop on Amazon and are a Prime member, you know you can get a great deal on select items today, like 58 percent off a NET Bible Full Notes Edition. What’s not to like about that? Except maybe how it affects local retailers … if there still are any local Christian stores near you.

Full disclosure: I bought that Bible from Amazon this morning. It’s supposed to be delivered to my house later today.

It’s also Wednesday. So, you know, middle of the week, Hump Day. For Baptist Standard staff, it’s our weekly deadline, some last-minute scurrying to get the last few items of the weekly edition published today. That includes my editorial. This editorial.

Oh, and this is also the third anniversary of the horrific Hamas-led attack on Israel, an attack that set off a devastating response from Israel against the Gaza Strip, a response that hasn’t ended after three years.

Meanwhile, there are bills to pay, the approach of the most consequential election of our lifetime … until the next one, laundry to wash, growing concern about the future, kids to pick up from school, a yard to mow, hackers, a Bible study to lead, a car in the shop, rogue AI.

None of this is to take away from the amazing deals Amazon is offering on select items today.

Nor is it to make light of the horror of the Hamas-led attack, which should not be diminished.

Nor is it to absolve ourselves of the horrors we visit on each other. Yes, we.

The Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s pummeling response are not someone else’s concern. We cannot hold ourselves above or apart from it, as if that brutality and that war is not also inside us, ready to come out if we let it.

We must face the reality of this world and our own selves in it, no matter how good the deals may be somewhere else.

Don’t look away

To face the reality of this world means we don’t look away from it.

We must remember more than 1,100 Israelis and foreign nationals were killed, and many were brutalized, by a Hamas-led group in the early morning of Oct. 7, 2023. Young children and senior adults were among those killed. In addition, 251 people were abducted and held captive in Gaza, some for as long as two years, some who didn’t survive.

As of today, more than 74,000 Gazans of all ages have been killed in the resulting war, including more than 20,000 children. More than 175,000 Gazans have been injured, many severely.

In addition, some reports say more than 80 percent of the buildings in the Gaza Strip have been damaged, and most of those have been destroyed. Gaza Baptist Church is one of them. The land is full and piled with the rubble.

The war created a humanitarian crisis among more than two million Gazans who were displaced, many of them multiple times, and were cut off from food, water, and fuel. Christian Mission to Gaza continues working to meet these needs in Gaza.

In the United States and around the world, antisemitism has increased since Oct. 7, 2023. The Anti-Defamation League reports 2023, 2024, and 2025 as the three highest years on record since 1979 for antisemitic assaults in the United States. So far, 2026 is not any better.

Islamophobia has also risen, and Texas is at the center, with anti-Islam and anti-Muslim rhetoric expressed at all levels of government and throughout the populace.

This is our world, and we’re living in it.

What are we contributing to it?

Do something

We are contributing something to this world, intentionally or otherwise. Jesus calls us to be intentional about what we contribute. Furthermore, Jesus tells us pretty clearly what he expects that contribution to be—obedience to God’s will. More specifically, Jesus points to the commands to love God with our whole selves and to love others. Which some of us have reduced to a shopping trip to Hobby Lobby for Christian home décor.

Full disclosure: We have more than one piece of art in our home—not all store-bought—with “Love God, love others” on it. Because we need the frequent … ahem, constant reminder.

We need the reminder—all of us—because loving God and loving others is not something done in the abstract, which means it’s not easy. Loving God and loving others is far more than a warm fuzzy.

Loving God and loving others requires us to pick a side. And that side is not yours or mine; it’s not Israel or Gaza; it’s not Republican or Democrat. It’s God’s or the world’s. No halfsies. Or 60/40, 70/30, 80/20, or 90/10. It’s one or the other. Not much warm or fuzzy to that.

Hanna Massad, founder of Christian Mission to Gaza expresses it well: “Whose side are you on? … A better question: Are you on the side of the Lord?” Massad asks in a video on the Christian Mission to Gaza website. He answers by saying Jesus would physically be with the needy on both sides, in Gaza and in Israel.

“Jesus is my ultimate example,” Massad says. “He never took a life. Instead, he gave his life for humanity.”

Massad is putting action to his words by ministering to those in need on all sides of the ongoing war.

We can face the reality of this world well by doing the same.

Closer to home

What Massad holds to be true in the context of the horrors and brutality of the Israel/Hamas war is no less true in our disputes closer to home.

We need to decide whose side we are on, not just when good and evil seem clearly delineated, but also in our more familiar political, denominational, theological, and other conflicts, where the line between God’s side and what we want people to believe is God’s side is clouded by our pride, fear, greed, or other sin.

We also need to face the truth that the more horrifying events in our world start with the same sin common to us all. Yes, we, too, can visit horror on each other.

Well, on that note, those Amazon deals won’t last long. If you’re reading this Oct. 8 or later, you missed them … until July.

Eric Black is the executive director, publisher, and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at [email protected]. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.