One Tragic Result of the Sin of Anti-Semitism

Ambivablog cites someone who cites someone else. (Go to her site to sort it all out.) But consider this:

In a column a few months back, Dennis Prager cited perhaps the most tragic statistic that haunts the human race. Throughout history, so many Jews have been murdered for being Jews, that “While the world's population is about 30 times larger than 2,000 years ago, the Jewish population has barely doubled. Had Jews been left alone to procreate at the same rate as others, there would be about 180 million Jews in the world today.

In spite of the New Testament witness that it was the sins of the whole human race and in spite of the fact that it was a Gentile functionary of the Roman Empire who, in essence, signed Jesus' death warrant, there have been Christians over the centuries who have accused the Jews of killing Jesus and used that as an excuse to hate or kill Jews. Hatred and baseless prejudice will always find excuses for sin.

Several observations:

• People will go to untold lengths to elude responsibility for their own sin. My sin killed Jesus. How dare I try to pin that blame on somebody else? As we sing each Lenten season to our Savior, "I crucified Thee!"
  
• Jesus was a Jew. So were Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, Solomon, and Hannah in the Old Testament. So were John the Baptist, Mary, Joseph, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Mary Magdalene, Paul, and others in the Old Testament. The light of the world, Jesus, came from the Jewish people. What warrant does anyone have for hating Jews who, along with the rest of us, spurned and killed the Savior of the world? All this affirms is our common humanity, our common sin, and our common need of a Savior? Beyond all that, what warrant does anyone have for hating anyone for their religion, ethnicity, or nationality?
• As the Gospel of John makes especially plain, Jesus, God-enfleshed, died at a time of God's choosing, among a people of God's choosing. You wouldn't have Me in your hands, Jesus told Pilate, unless God had placed me there. "It is finished," Jesus exclaimed as He died, choosing the very moment of His death, surprising all who witnessed His crucifixion by the rapidity with which it came. (Crucifixion ordinarily entailed a much longer dying process.) The world did spurn Jesus and nail Him to a cross, but only because God had chosen this as the means by which the Lamb of God would take away the sins of the world. This only adds to the tragic absurdity of so-called Christians blaming Jews for the killing of Christ.

Anti-Semitism is one of many sins that result in murder. But it's sobering to consider how pervasive, destructive, and violent this particular sin is, especially among those who profess to follow Jesus Christ.