The two ditches: Why both Christian extremes are wrong about Israel

By Mikale Olson, Op-ed contributor Tuesday, March 31, 2026

Right now, if you scroll long enough through conservative Christian feeds, you will see two very different tempers about Israel — two extremes; two ditches.

One says this: God told Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse.” That settles it. End of discussion. If you are a Christian, you (your country) must support the modern state of Israel in all things and give them as many resources as they want. To hesitate is to risk standing under God’s curse.

The other says this: Christ fulfilled the promises. The covenant is over. Ethnic Israel no longer carries any theological weight (they may even be a “curse” that must be “handled”). And from there, in some corners, the tone darkens into sheer, often conspiratorial resentment against Jewish people at-large (even going so far as to sanitize the likes of Hitler), convinced they are simply applying biblical covenant theology.

Both sides quote the Bible. A lot. Both sides tell a partial story. Neither tells the whole one.

So let’s tell the whole story.

It begins with one man in Ur. In the Book of Genesis 12, God calls Abram out of paganism and makes him a promise. “I will make of you a great nation … I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” That is not random favoritism. That is the launch of redemption after the wreckage of Genesis 3 and the scattering at Babel.

From that moment on, the storyline tightens. Abraham has two sons, but God says, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” Isaac has two sons, and before they are born, God declares, “The older will serve the younger.” The line narrows to Jacob. Then to Judah. Then to David. The promise is like a thread running through generations, sometimes barely visible, often hanging by a strand.

Pharaoh takes Sarah. “The Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues.” Abimelech takes her. God warns him in a dream, “You are a dead man.” Why such severity? Because if that line collapses, the promise collapses. And if the promise collapses, the world stays under the curse (the curse of sin; Genesis 3).

Centuries later, Israel is enslaved in Egypt. God tells Moses, “I have remembered my covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.” The plagues fall again. The sea parts. A nation is born. The covenant promise is still moving forward, just as God intended.

But Israel is never portrayed as morally flawless. They grumble in the wilderness. They worship golden calves. They demand a king. They split into two kingdoms. They fall into idolatry (a lot). Prophets warn them. They kill their own prophets. God judges them in their rebellion (a lot). Assyria comes. Babylon comes. Exile comes. If you read the Old Testament honestly, you see two things at once. Israel is chosen. Israel is stubborn. And yet the promise keeps advancing.

Then a Jewish child is born in Bethlehem. Matthew opens his Gospel with a genealogy that runs straight back to Abraham and David, keeping our eyes on the big picture. Paul later explains what that means in Galatians 3:16: “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring … who is Christ.” The thread finally reaches its destination. The offspring is not merely a nation. It is a person.

Now the promise explodes outward. “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” The crucified and risen Messiah sends His apostles to the nations. Gentiles are grafted in. Sinners from every tribe and tongue are justified by faith.

But that raises a painful question: “If the Messiah has come, why have so many Jews rejected Him? Has God abandoned His ancient people?”

In Romans 9–11, Paul answers with tears. “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart” for his “kinsmen according to the flesh” (Jews). He does not sneer. He grieves for them, even saying he’d forego his own salvation if it meant theirs. He lists their privileges, honoring what Matthew stated his gospel with: “The adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises.” Then he says something that reframes everything: “Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.” Ethnicity alone was never the guarantee. God’s promise has always moved through electing grace.

Still, Paul refuses the idea that God is finished with ethnic Israel. “Has God rejected his people? By no means.” There is a remnant chosen by grace. There is also “a partial hardening.” Not total. Not permanent. He warns Gentile believers, “Do not be arrogant toward the branches (ethnic Jews) … do not become proud, but fear.” And then this stunning line: “The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” He even looks ahead and says, “And in this way all Israel will be saved.”

That is the full story. A covenant that begins with Abraham, narrows through Israel, culminates in Christ, and still carries a future mercy for ethnic Jews.

Now bring that story into today.

The first ditch takes Genesis 12 and flattens it into a foreign policy command. It treats “I will bless those who bless you” as if it were written about a 21st century parliamentary system. But in its original setting, that promise guarded the messianic line. It ensured that the offspring would come. It pointed forward to Christ. To turn it into an automatic endorsement of every decision made by the modern Israeli government is to rip it out of redemptive history and drop it into cable news.

You can support Israel’s right to exist (let’s call this Zionism). You can believe a Jewish state has a legitimate claim to security and sovereignty (as I do, proudly). You can oppose terrorism and antisemitism with moral clarity (as any Christian should). You can even describe yourself politically as a Zionist in that sense (again, as I do). But you do not need to pretend that every policy, every military action, every political coalition is beyond critique. Loving a nation does not mean baptizing its every decision. Christians and Americans already know how to do this with their own countries.

The second ditch is more corrosive. It takes the truth that Christ fulfills the covenant and twists it into contempt. It says the promises are spiritual now, and ethnic Israel is irrelevant, if not problematic. And from there, some slip into resentment, as if centuries of Jewish suffering mean nothing. Christian friends, that posture cannot survive Romans 11. Full stop. Paul forbids arrogance. He calls Israel “beloved for the sake of their forefathers.” He warns gentiles that they stand by faith, not by superiority.

You can hold a covenantal framework. You can reject dispensational charts and still tremble at Paul’s warning. You can believe the land promise ultimately finds its fulfillment in the new creation and still expect a future turning of many Jews to Christ. Those positions are not mutually exclusive. What is excluded is pride and hatred towards ethnic Jews. This is not up for debate for the follower of Jesus.

So, what does practical theology look like in this moment?

It looks like remembering that the story did not start in 1948, and it did not start in Washington. It started when God made a promise to Abraham that would one day lead to a Jewish Messiah hanging on a Roman cross for the sins of the world.

It looks like saying clearly that antisemitism is wicked. It looks like preaching the Gospel “to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1). It looks like engaging modern politics with nuance, not Hitler-rehabbing insanity baptized as “Christian nationalism.” It looks like refusing to use Genesis 12 as a talisman and refusing to use covenant theology as a gas chamber.

Most of all, it looks like humility. The same God who preserved the line through Abraham, through exile, through centuries of failure, is the God who grafted gentiles in by sheer mercy. If He is not finished showing mercy to Israel, then Christians have no business hardening their hearts.

Tell the whole story, and both ditches lose their appeal. The covenant was never about tribal pride. It was about Christ. And Christ is still gathering a people, from Israel and from the nations, into one redeemed family.