Hello, fellow wayfarers … Why, for Christians, Gaza is not just a place on a map … What I learned from watching a movie I shouldn’t have watched … What Beth Moore and I learned from a deep-dive conversation on Ecclesiastes … We go back to Colorado for a Desert Island Playlist … This is this week’s Moore to the Point.
The Bible Tells Us Gaza Has More to Do with Your Life Than You Think
After two years of bloodshed since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, the war in Gaza seems to be over. The living hostages are back home, as President Donald Trump and Hamas and Israel hammered out in a cease-fire agreement. In that, all of us can rejoice, even if the peace will be fragile—and even though wounds from the loss of so many innocent lives, both Gazans and Israelis, will take decades if not centuries to heal. Christians around the world might be tempted to think this matter is now over, at least for us. Gaza, though, has more to do with our own gospel story than we might think.
It’s natural for people to pay more attention to a place when it’s somewhere they’ve lived. A missionary I know who worked in Africa for many years is especially attuned to news headlines about the continent in a way many others might miss. Even though I live in Nashville now, my ears perk up every time I hear any news from my hometown on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. For Christians, Israel and Gaza are places we have “been”—since, by union with Christ, we are part of his story and thus the story of his ancestors (1 Cor. 10:1–6).
Gaza is first referenced in the Bible as a border, the edge of Canaanite territory, the far southern boundary of what the Israelites would later call the land of promise (Gen. 10:19). Gaza comes up in the Book of Joshua, again as a kind of liminal space between the people and the world outside. It’s also the setting for the final scene of Samson’s story, in which the defeated and blinded man pulls down the pillars of a building. The account is unsettling in that it is a meeting place of deliverance and tragedy. Violence and redemption somehow cling to each other in the wreckage of a collapsing house.
By the time we get to the prophets, the word for Gaza seems, at first read, to be only judgment. Amos denounces Gaza for cruelty and injustice in selling an entire community into slavery (1:6–7). Zephaniah seems to be just as harsh, but that’s not the whole story. He also envisions a day when a place of violence is instead a place of pasture (2:4–7). Even in judgment, we see that tragedy is not the end of the story.
Reading such passages without the full context of Scripture could lead to distortion. We could start to identify present-day Gaza as the one-to-one equivalent of where the ancient Philistines lived. But that would be to ignore how judgment and mercy function in redemptive history. Judah, too, is judged—the northern kingdom as well. All of us in Christ are those who were once “far off” and have been “brought near” (Eph. 2:13, ESV throughout). In fact, the one explicit mention of Gaza in the New Testament makes this clear.
In the Book of Acts, Luke writes that God directs the disciple Philip to take the road that goes south from Jerusalem to Gaza. There he meets an official of the Ethiopian royal court, reading the Book of Isaiah (Acts 8:26–39). There on the road, the gospel crosses one of its first borders. The Gentiles are enfolded into the people of God. The once-hostile frontier becomes a pathway of grace. What was thought of as the edge of the map becomes the entry point to the kingdom.
That doesn’t give us a blueprint for what should come next geopolitically, nor does it tell us how to draw borders or maintain cease-fires. But it does remind us what kind of God we pray to for peace and justice. The Gaza on the maps at the back of our Bibles is a kind of liminal space—a threshold. But again and again, that’s where God is at work. Over and over, God redeems the very places where the world seems to have come apart.
Justice and mercy are often clearly marked out by a border in our minds. And yet the gospel we believe binds both of them together in the Cross. Justice without mercy is vengeance; mercy without justice is sentimentality. The gospel is altogether different. Since we have experienced that reality, we ought to be aware that what often seem to be the borderlands of history—the Gazas, literal and metaphorical—are not outside the reach of grace. Often, they are precisely where grace starts to make itself known.
Many of us have frequently recounted the time the Old Testament patriarch Jacob wrestled with God in the night, leaving him with a new name (Israel), a blessing, and a limp (Gen. 32:22–32). What we often forget is that Jacob was in that in-between space because he was scared of his approaching brother, Esau, who had been in many ways rightfully angered by Jacob’s deceptions. And yet when the brothers met, there was no vengeance or violence. Jacob said that seeing Esau’s face was “like seeing the face of God, and you have accepted me” (33:10).
Only the most naive would think Middle Eastern peace can be accomplished in one fell swoop. That wasn’t the case even in Scripture. The lines of Jacob and Esau continued to erupt in conflict toward one another. But their meeting foreshadowed a greater peace to come. We, like our Middle Eastern ancestors (most of us by adoption), are still in the borderlands. We can see from afar the shalom on the other side of this world of blood and death (Heb. 11:13). But we can see it, if only by faith. The road from Jerusalem to Gaza is still there. It is still desert. But on such roads the Spirit of God still bears witness to hope. In the borderlands—not just on our maps but in our lives—we might see no road out of where we are. But surely back there, on the road we cannot see, goodness and mercy are following us still. We should pray that way.
I Watched a Movie I Shouldn’t Have Watched
Maria and I had one of those rare nights when it was just the two of us at home. Our youngest went with his two older brothers (back home for fall break) to some friends’ house. Wanting to watch a movie, we finally settled on Unknown Number: The High School Catfish on Netflix. I started to type that I will give no spoilers, but I’m almost tempted to do so just so you will be dissuaded from watching it. I wish I hadn’t.
The documentary tells the story of a high school girl who starts getting bombarded with a countless barrage of harassing and threatening texts (and I mean truly vile and cruel texts) every day. The search for the cyber-stalker leads through the local sheriff’s office right up to the FBI. The reveal is a major twist that leaves the viewer yelling at the screen, “What!”
But after it was over, Maria and I looked at each other and said, “Gross.” I don’t just mean that the situation was gross, although it certainly was. I kept wondering over and over, why would these people agree to cooperate with this documentary? Why would these adolescents be allowed to make the decision to go on camera and potentially further traumatize their lives by making a permanent artifact of it with their images and voices?
More than that, it was not so much that the movie was gross but that I felt gross for having watched it. It seemed voyeuristic on someone else’s pain in a really noticeable way. I realized that I had moved into seeing this as a kind of murder mystery, with characters and a plot, and had to remind myself that these “characters” were real people. It reminded me why so much early Christian discipleship in the first-century Roman Empire had to emphasize that followers of Jesus don’t go to gladiator “games.” Before a Christian knew it, he or she could be swept up with the mob screaming for bloodshed, all for entertainment. We can do the same with this sort of thing really easily.
Beth and I Discuss the Meaning of Life
Beth Moore and I were texting one day about commentary recommendations when she mentioned she was teaching through Ecclesiastes. When I noted that my first sermon was from Ecclesiastes, she said, “That is the most Enneagram 4 thing I have ever heard.” To be fair, the sermon was on Ecclesiastes 12—“Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth” (v. 1)—but still.
She said, “I want to spend an hour just talking Ecclesiastes.” I suggested we record it so y’all could listen in, so we did in this week’s episode of the podcast. She called it “Tigger and Eeyore Read Ecclesiastes.” (I will let you guess who is who.)
I was really glad we did. We talk about the meaning of life, how to find purpose, why it sometimes seems like a waste of time to learn or to achieve, and how to have a good time when everything around us is temporary. Along the way we mention Creed Bratton, Stephen King, what happened to Beth’s vineyard, and Christmas wig-exchange parties (to which I said, “That is the most Enneagram 7 thing I have ever heard”).
I loved it (the conversation, not the idea of a wig exchange), and I think you will too.
You can listen here.
Desert island Playlist
Every other week, I share a playlist of songs one of you says you’d want to have on hand if you were stranded on a desert island. This week’s submission comes from reader Scotty Sawyer from Denver, Colorado. Readers, I know you must think I am on some sort of Colorado kick here since so many of our recent submissions have been from there. We’ve had a “Rocky Mountain High” volume. Let that motivate you wherever you are to send yours in!
Scotty writes,
So appreciate all you’re bringing to our souls. Too much to say about that here, but I’ll offer this: I heard your NPR interview a few years ago when you described, among other things, Lewis’s impact on you as a teenager, and that in any generation a future faith leader may not yet have come of age or even been born. (How does it feel to have been one of those?)
Here are ten songs from great practitioners who in various ways express Lewis’s idea that what we experience here is a reflection of the real thing.
Here’s Scotty’s playlist:
- “Grace’s Song” by Jim Lauderdale. About the play that erupts in nature when we experience—or extend—grace. (Something tells me you may know this guy.)
- “Company of Kings” by Beaver Nelson. An invitation to find wise company among those the earth calls fools, sung by a roofer and former youth leader.
- “God Said No” by Dan Bern. A young man wants to travel through history to right wrongs and intercept tragedies, and in each case God shows in plain terms how anyone’s greatest dreams can never approach his ways.
- “Deeper than Love” by Walter Hyatt. How the mundane sights and sounds that stir love’s longings somehow elevate the heart beyond the deepest human love.
- “Love Anyway” by Mike Scott of The Waterboys. An upbeat yet bracingly challenging song that declares more than asks, “Just how far does grace go?”
- “Would You Love Me?” by Chuck Prophet. The wryly humorous ex-Catholic sings soberly this time, evoking images of Golgotha as he asks the question at the core of every human heart. (He also has a hilarious song that critiques party life, “Jesus Was a Social Drinker.”)
- “Gospel” by Charlie Sexton. A hushed mini sermon on how God’s nearness is closer than any of us thinks, from Bob Dylan’s former bandleader.
- “Wind’s Dominion” by Butch Hancock. How everyone’s righteous or rationalistic screeds blow away in the face of nature, from a flatlander who knows battering winds intimately.
- “Down in the Churchyard” by Gram Parsons and The Flying Burrito Brothers. Love and compassion for damaged lives.
- “Balm of Gilead” by Chuck Johnson. The sound of gradual healing from a revered steel guitarist whose instrumental work graces the ambient-sound world.
Thank you, Scotty!
Readers, what do y’all think? If you were stranded on a desert island for the rest of your life and could have only one playlist or one bookshelf with you, what songs or books would you choose?
- For a Desert Island Playlist, send me a list between 5 and 12 songs, excluding hymns and worship songs. (We’ll cover those later.)
- For a Desert Island Bookshelf, send me a list of up to 12 books, along with a photo of all the books together.
Send your list (or both lists) to questions@russellmoore.com, and include as much or as little explanation of your choices as you would like, along with the city and state from which you’re writing.
Quote of the Moment
“We must have / the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless / furnace of this world. To make injustice the only / measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.”
—Jack Gilbert, “A Brief for the Defense”
Currently Reading (or Re-Reading)
- Tyina L. Steptoe (editor), Jim Crow: Voices from a Century of Struggle, Part 2: 1919–1976 (Library of America)
- Ted Chiang, Exhalation: Stories (Knopf)
- W. B. Yeats, Autobiographies: The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Vol. III, edited by William H. O’Donnell and Douglas N. Archibald (Scribner)
Join Us at Christianity Today
Founded by Billy Graham, Christianity Today is on a mission to lift up the sages and storytellers of the global church for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Subscribe now to get exclusive print and digital content, along with seasonal devotionals, special issues, and access to the full archives. Plus, you’ll be supporting this weekly conversation we have together. Or, you could give a membership to a friend, a pastor, a church member, someone you mentor, or a curious non-Christian neighbor. You can also make a tax-deductible gift that expands CT’s important voice and influence in the world.
Ask a Question or Say Hello
The Russell Moore Show podcast includes a section where we grapple with the questions you might have about life, the gospel, relationships, work, the church, spirituality, the future, a moral dilemma you’re facing, or whatever. You can send your questions to questions@russellmoore.com. I’ll never use your name—unless you tell me to—and will come up with a groan-inducing pun of a pseudonym for you.
And, of course, I would love to hear from you about anything. Send me an email at questions@russellmoore.com if you have any questions or comments about this newsletter, if there are other things you would like to see discussed here, or if you would just like to say hello.
If you have a friend who might like this, please forward it, and if you’ve gotten this from a friend, please subscribe!
Russell Moore
Editor in Chief, Christianity Today
P.S. You can support the continued work of Christianity Today and the Public Theology Project by subscribing to CT magazine.
Moore to the Point
Join Russell Moore in thinking through the important questions of the day, along with book and music recommendations he has found formative.
Delivered free via email to subscribers weekly. Sign up for this newsletter.
You are currently subscribed as no email found. Sign up to more newsletters like this. Manage your email preferences or unsubscribe.
Christianity Today is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
“Christianity Today” and “CT” are the registered trademarks of Christianity Today International.
Copyright ©2025 Christianity Today, PO Box 788, Wheaton, IL 60187-0788
All rights reserved.