On October 7, more Jews were killed than on any single day since the Holocaust, many in brutal and sadistic ways. Rapes committed, hostages taken, concertgoers gunned down, corpses desecrated, small children murdered: The attack by Hamas militants on civilians unveiled the terrible darkness of the human heart and our capacity for evil.
It is necessary to mourn. Many were buried in the days after the attack. It is also necessary to support Israel’s right of self-defense, which in the aftermath of the targeting of civilians requires a decisive response. It is fitting, too, to lament the ongoing violence. We should petition God to bring a just peace as soon as possible. But there’s another dimension to these shocking events, one we must face. The atrocities committed by Hamas create a crisis in the proper biblical sense of that term.
“Crisis” transliterates the Greek krisis, which means a separation or sundering. It requires decision: Are we for or against? In the New Testament, the word is often translated “judgment,” as in “the day of judgment,” the appointed hour when God separates the sheep from the goats. The Latin root of “decide” is de + caedere, to cut off or cut away. The notions of judgment and decision are latent in our conventional use of the term. A crisis comes when built-up pressure explodes the status quo. It marks a moment when we can’t just keep on keeping on, when we must decide to go this way—or that.
