It’s just dirt. 

Not special dirt; there is no spectacular mineral inside it for which the next age of mankind will be built off of, nor are there wells of untapped liquid black magic sauce to fuel economies under it. It, like all dirt, is probably some shade of brown with hints of red or grey depending on the clay or iron content. Yet, the inhuman and depraved obsession that a large cut of humankind has over this particularly thin slice of land over the last six thousand years would probably beg more research be done into what makes its dirt so incredible. 

“I say as a Christian, it should be mandated that you should have to go to Israel before you get to Heaven.” As said by Paula White, President Trump’s “spiritual advisor.”

Here is another strange statement by Senator Lindsey Graham:

“If America pulls the plug on Israel, God will pull the plug on us.” 

His state was hit by a hurricane and then he went on Fox News to talk about it, when he said, “Like most people, I haven't slept much, but look at what’s going on with Israel, they are running out of ammunition in Israel, we have to help our friends.” And another from him: “I’m going back to South Carolina and I’m asking them to send their sons and daughters to the Mideast.” 

Does raising one’s son in Israel give them bigger mustaches? Or do daughters get bigger eyelashes? Is that what all the hubbub is about? Is that why Middle Eastern men get those swanky mustaches?

 This could be an article on the strangeness happening with U.S. politicians putting other countries before their own people; however, I think a better article would be simply talking about theological paths of illogic. This is not a dis at religious people, nor am I an antisemite, nor is it to present accolades. Those who live with and are controlled by trigger words should step out now (such that when you hear ‘Israel’ or ‘Christian’ or ‘Ted Cruz’, if those words direct your heart to hate or love or spite [ Just kidding with Ted Cruz, it's okay to be triggered by him. Ha-hah! ] ).

Right, so explicitly: the “land-area” of Israel is just dirt. I’m not equating it degeneratively, but I am saying that dirt can be found anywhere. There are countries of every culture and every religion, and even countries without religion, or even some like America, where it was founded on the freedom of any religious practice. In many spaces of the earth, God or your chosen pantheon can be exalted in public or private. What in truth matters more than a patch of dirt for any religion is the members having lots and lots of babies while also financially and emotionally supporting the members of the religion so that the religion doesn't fade due to the lack of people keeping its traditions alive (and those members feel welcome and safe inside it, instead of gradually disenfranchised). Religion is a construct of peoples, rather than a construct of the Earth; it is not tied to any area of land, and it can (only) maintain if people keep it. 

In a tepid imagining of what a reader or otherwise might counter the above in immediate protest towards my seemingly hippie point of “land is land", they (erroneously) may retort with something along the lines of, “Muslims in the Middle East hate the Jews and want to see them dead. The Jews have to fight!” These lazy counterarguments ignore that, A: “the nation” of Israel (and the United States) attacked Iran first, B: Egypt is Muslim and has no intention to fight Israel, and C: this essay is not about Iran and Israel. 

This essay is to argue that the peoples of the Abrahamic faiths all salivate over a nostalgic area of land as if it is the Garden of Eden or the literal Gate to Heaven, which ownership over somehow grants them the keys to. As a Christian myself, I don’t even have to be certain of the immeasurable disappointment which God might feel about (at least towards Christians) those who commit sins with killing, especially over property. 

For sin in Catholicism, The Oxford Reference defines it as “The purposeful disobedience of a creature —to the known will of God.” “The known will” at the very least must refer to the Ten Commandments, which were biblically written on stone tablets by “the finger of God.” Thus, if someone ignores ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ (or don’t covet thy neighbor’s things) then they are purposefully disobeying –literally– the ‘known will of God’, and are sinning. In this research rabbit-hole, I also bumped into my new favorite word: ‘contrition,’ which is absolutely required in the faith to be (probably) absolved of your sin. The Christian Council of Trent described contrition as: "sorrow of soul, and a hatred of sin committed, with a firm purpose of not sinning in the future." Thus, to sin a second time means you were not contrite formerly, and thus the sinner is (likely) damming themselves to Hell.

How many Christian folk ask for forgiveness of a sin committed, but forget – or who were never informed – that contrition is absolutely required for that sin to be forgiven? A pessimist may give a different answer than an optimist, but likely it's probably too many with so many craving a bridge of the bodies of young American boys, spanned across the whole of the Red Sea via the spackle brand: rigor mortis. And, should the argument arise that "it is only a few American politicians" who believe such things, my counter is thus: 

Our politicians are voted into public office by the will of the people, and people like Senator Lindsey Graham are continually voted in. 

The land of Israel is not Eden. I would argue that the whole of the Earth is our garden, as it is the only place we humans have found in the entire universe with signs of intelligent life. (Oaooaahkay! I overstepped myself: the only place where semi-intelligent life can be found.) The famous Drake Equation says that we humans should easily see signs of intelligent alien life in outer space – but we do not. Not for the hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way or the trillions of galaxies throughout the whole of the observable universe. This little blue marble we are consigned to share for its eternity does not have magic special strips of dirt which make those places more special than any other place dubbed ‘great’ by once-influential men. 

Even if one were to argue it was true that magical-super-duper-special areas exist, the easiest counter is that, without men and women to worship them, those magical areas would fade away out of thought and memory anyway, which means that it was only people who assigned importance to those ‘sacred’ areas in the first place.

Lo! Watch out! This writer has dragged up the corpse of a Stoic philosopher yet again! 

"Live a good life." Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote, “If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live in the memories of your loved ones." - Meditations.

What he is saying to us laymen is that, regardless of the state or order of the Heavens,  being a good person is what matters most. 

Austin Petak is an aspiring novelist and freelance journalist who loves seeking stories and the quiet passions of the soul. If you are interested in reaching out to him to cover a story, you may find him at austinpetak@gmail.com.

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