Why Do Christians Want to Protect Israel?

A friend posted an interesting clip of Bill Maher on a message board that got me thinking:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPWIibPNAAI

A lot of talk has come out of the Republican camp (especially Sarah Palin) about protecting Israel. Bill's comments are interesting - are Christians not really noticing that they want to protect Israel but that the Jews will still go to hell if they don't become Christians?

Bill makes a point, but the others did as well. I alwasy felt a love for the Jews when in the church, but there was a "cognitive dissonance" in this area for me when I was in conservative Christianity. Part of that is that there are at least two predominant "camps" in protestant Christianity regarding Israel and the Jews.

One is based in "replacement theology." In this belief, Christians have basically replaced the Jews as God's chosen people, based on the fact that the Jews rejected Jesus as Messiah, and Christians accepted him. To these people, Israel is as was described on the youtube clip by Bill Maher. Israel, to them, is where the last battle will be, so Israel is to be protected, and any Jew that accepts Jesus as Messiah will become part of the chosen again, but any Jew who doesn't - well, they're going to burn with the rest of the heathens.

The other basic theology is that the Jews are still God's chosen, and have a large place in the end days. The predominant belief here is that the bible says "God changes not," so the Jews could not have been replaced, as God chose them initially. Chistians are basically "piggybacking" on the Jews' already "chosen" status. The predominant belief here is that the 144,000 male virgins of the end days that go around preaching during the Tribulation period will be Jews, from the 12 tribes of Israel. These men will have a profound impact on the rest of the Jewish nation, thereby winning them all to Christ.

Now, I have oversimplified these explantions of the two camps, but there is the general breakdown. In both camps, though, Israel plays a predominant role. In the first, Jews are somehow "lesser" than Christians, but many will come to believe in Jesus during the tribulation, and therefore they will be okay. But the ones who don't will fry like everyone else. In the second, Jews are almost elevated to near-godlike status themselves, and Christians must protect them at all costs.

Neither of these, though, answers the question to the Christian of where all the Jews who have died before the tribulation go. This was one of the things that got me thinking about what kind of God I was serving. Think about it (I did, and it bothered me greatly for years before I left the faith). A Jew, who has faithfully served God from birth, keeping pure, praying, etc., but not knowing Jesus as savior...is captured by Nazis and sent to a death camp - he or she lives through torture, hell, etc., and then dies in a death camp, never having turned back on God, but not having accepted Jesus...fries in hell for all eternity??? What a sadistic and selfish god that is! How very childish of a god to be that big a baby, to say, "If you don't accept my son, it doesn't matter how much you pray, how much you love others, how morally you live your life, you're going to fry for eternity in hell."

Blech.

If Christians would just pay attention to those views on Jews, and start doing some critical thinking of their own, they might begin to feel that cognitive dissonance as well. But critical thinking skills aren't exactly the norm in conservative Christianity.