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This piece was adapted from Russell Moore\u2019s newsletter<\/a>. Subscribe here<\/a>.<\/p>\n S<\/span>ometimes certain moments in history reveal in minutes what was concealed for decades. And sometimes those moments of revelation come with hearing oneself say the words, \u201cYes, but \u2026\u201d or \u201cBut what about \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n The aftermath of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel is not one of those times. In this case, saying who is to blame\u2014and who is not\u2014is not factually or morally difficult at all.<\/p>\n \u201cBothsidesism\u201d is an imprecise label, much like deconstruction<\/em> or evangelicalism<\/em>. There are several senses in which an appeal to \u201cboth sides\u201d of the reality here are completely right. For one, both sides\u2014all sides\u2014are human beings created in the image of God. We ought to care about the lives and deaths of Israelis and of Palestinians in the West Bank, in Gaza, or anywhere else. An Israeli life is of no more value in the eyes of God than a Palestinian life, and vice versa.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth sides\u201d also refers rightly to who is harmed by this atrocity, and the inevitable war to follow. Hamas is killing and destroying the futures of both Israelis and of Palestinians, as the inimitable Mona Charen wisely wrote<\/a>. That\u2019s one of the reasons we shouldn\u2019t think of this as a war between Israel and \u201cthe Palestinians,\u201d but, exactly as Israel defined it, a war on Hamas, in response to a vicious and unprecedented attack.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth sides\u201d is also perfectly appropriate when it comes to working for and hoping for a better future for both Israelis and for Palestinians. That rules out the unthinking acceptance of anything the modern state of Israel does (God certainly didn\u2019t accept everything even biblical Israel did!). And it rules out chanting \u201cFrom the River to the Sea\u201d in Times Square, just as it rules out any viewpoint or program that would see Israel completely eradicated. We want \u201cboth sides\u201d (here referring to Israelis and Palestinians, not to Hamas) to thrive and to co-exist.<\/p>\n All of that is far different from the kind of \u201cboth sides\u201d language that has been used in some conversations about the morality of the Hamas attack. Hamas targeted innocent civilians. Hamas butchered young people dancing at a music festival. Hamas murdered elderly people and toddlers and babies, reportedly in the most sadistic ways<\/a> imaginable. There is no \u201ccontextualization\u201d needed to condemn that, to recognize Israelis (and innocent Palestinians) as victims here, with Hamas as the evildoer. As President Biden put it<\/a>, \u201cfull stop.\u201d<\/p>\n This is one of the quickest ways to recognize if you have outsourced your conscience to some ideology or sect: If your first response to seeing obvious immorality or injustice is some version of, Well, obviously that\u2019s bad, and no one supports it, but do you know what the victims did?<\/em>\u2014then you are in a morally dangerous place. That way lies hackery.<\/p>\n How do you know if that\u2019s you?<\/p>\n I do not agree with the philosopher John Rawls on much, but one of the popular appropriations of his thought can be helpful here.<\/p>\n The \u201cveil of ignorance\u201d argument asks what sort of political order you would want to construct if you were planning it, completely unaware of where you would be in the social system. If you didn\u2019t know whether you would be desperately poor or incredibly rich, what sort of social safety net would you want? What sort of tax policy?<\/p>\n There are, of course, clear limits to this. We don\u2019t, in fact, exist as disembodied beings planning the world we\u2019ll inhabit ahead of time. And our imaginations come out of our psyches, so they are quite able to deceive us.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy for me, for example, to say in 2023 that I would have refused to fight for the Confederacy if I lived at the time of my ancestors. But I can\u2019t know how my mind and conscience would have been shaped if I had lived in 1861 Mississippi. I really hope that if I had lived in 1930s Germany, I would have stood with Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer with the Confessing Church against the morally and theologically debased \u201cGerman Christian\u201d movement. But how do I know how my heart could have bewitched me if I were there?<\/p>\n The exercise, limited as it is, can help us think through whether our choices may be shaped more by cultural assumptions or political ideologies than biblical convictions and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. In a given situation, try to imagine how you would react if you saw the same thing being done by (or to) whatever you deem to be \u201cthe other side.\u201d Take a sentence and switch the names involved. Would you respond differently? Why?<\/p>\n Again, we can trick ourselves\u2014but at least this helps us stop, if only for a moment, and interrogate our own motives.<\/p>\n We see repeatedly in Scripture the \u201ccourt prophets\u201d who testify only what a ruler wants to hear (1 Kings 22:1\u201328), without considering the moral implications. And we see what happened to the prophets who would not do so, but let their \u201cyes\u201d be \u201cyes\u201d and their \u201cno\u201d be \u201cno.\u201d It is possible, though, to be a court prophet to one\u2019s own heart. We may even find ourselves telling our own consciences to \u201cnever again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king\u2019s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom\u201d (Amos 7:13, ESV).<\/p>\n