Why the War in the Middle East Challenges Our View of God’s Purpose in Our Struggles

A year ago today, Hamas launched the worst massacre in Israel’s history, murdering 1,195 people and taking 251 hostages. The last twelve months have been what the Economist calls “the year that shattered the Middle East.”

Despite the horrors of war and the tragic loss of life that have ensued, the past year has seen significant progress for Israel:

The Israeli people are more unified in fighting their enemies: fully 80 percent support the current offensive against Hezbollah, for example.
The IDF has largely decapitated Hezbollah and destroyed many of its missiles, significantly degrading what had been Iran’s strongest proxy in the region.
Israel’s army chief said yesterday that Israeli forces had defeated the military wing of Hamas. The terror group’s hoped-for “axis of resistance” against Israel has not come to its defense.
Iran has been largely ineffectual in its attacks on Israel, staging two missile launches that caused little damage to the Jewish state.

However, there is also cause for grave concern:

Nearly forty-two thousand people have been killed in Gaza, and around 70 percent of the area’s housing stock has been destroyed. Over half of Gaza’s population has lost a relative; some three-quarters have been displaced at least three times during the war.
Palestinians’ support for violence in the West Bank has grown from 35 percent in September 2022 to 56 percent in September this year.
The ongoing wars are significantly harming Israel’s economy: GDP is shrinking year-on-year; the prolonged absence of so many reservists is harming businesses; and railway stations have been forced to close for lack of security guards.
The threat of terrorism persists: On October 1, more Israelis were killed by two Palestinians who attacked a commuter rail station in Jaffa than were harmed by 180 Iranian missiles. Hezbollah rockets hit Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, early this morning and launched another attack on Tiberias.
Israel’s direct conflict with Iran could escalate into a regional war that eventually involves the US on its side and China, Russia, and North Korea with the Iranians. As Israeli forces degrade its proxies, Iran may turn to developing nuclear weapons in response.
The conflict could spawn terrorism in the US as well: The FBI and Department of Homeland Security are warning that a “variety of actors” could commit acts of violence here in response to today’s anniversary.

Millions of Unexploded Bombs

In light of all the challenges in the news and our daily lives, let’s ask: Does God want us to be happy or to be holy?

Today’s terrible anniversary comes as millions in the American Southeast are reeling from one of the deadliest hurricanes of the modern era, with another threatening storm on the way. The World War II bomb that recently exploded in Japan was one of millions of unexploded bombs around the world and serves as a parable for our trying times: There always seems to be another crisis waiting to erupt.

According to Peggy Noonan’s latest Wall Street Journal column, “Americans feel surrounded by crises—inflation, the Mideast, Vladimir Putin, AI’s gonna eat your brain and no one’s gonna stop it, China. You can see this in the right track/wrong track numbers, which continue underwater—the whole country fears we’re on a losing slide in a dangerous world.”

If God primarily wants us to be happy, he doesn’t seem to be doing his job very well. But there’s more to the story.

The word happiness comes from the Old Norse word hap, which means “chance, luck, fortune, or fate.” It is based on happenings and is thus transient. We are happy depending on whether our team won or lost, the current state of the stock market, and a variety of other transient factors.

Paradoxically, pursuing happiness often leads us to make compromises with our character that harm us and others, thus reducing our happiness.

By contrast, holiness (from the German heilig, meaning “whole” or “sacred”) is not transient but transforming. Pursuing holiness often leads us to make changes in our character that mature us and bless others, thus increasing our holiness.

If the World Is a “Vale of Soul-Making”

If God intends us to be holy, this world makes much more sense. As I explain in my latest website article, God and Hurricane Helene: Thinking biblically about natural disasters, this is not the world as God originally created it. Rather, we live on a broken planet where natural disasters are an inevitable consequence of the Fall (cf. Genesis 3:17–19; Romans 8:22).

However, the God who redeems all he allows uses even these disasters—not to make us happy but to help us be holy.

Paul observed: “Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Romans 5:3–4). The second-century theologian Irenaeus accordingly suggested that God uses our fallen world to grow us spiritually. And, as C. S. Lewis noted in The Problem of Pain, “If the world is indeed a ‘vale of soul-making,’ it seems on the whole to be doing its work.”

Now you and I have a choice.

Scripture calls us to “seek the Lᴏʀᴅ and his strength; seek his presence continually!” (Psalm 105:4). When we face the crises of life, God wants us to “remember the wondrous works that he has done” (v. 5) and trust our unchanging and loving Father to do the same today.

But we can also respond to crises by doubling down on self-reliance. Rather than trusting our Lord, we can seek to be our own god (Genesis 3:5), trusting our frailty and finitude over his omnipotent power and omniscient wisdom. We can exchange holiness for happiness—and forfeit both.

The famed missionary Jim Elliot noted,