When God called Abraham, God promised to bless all the families on Earth through him. Abraham would become the father of a great people.

Fast forward to today. Why do so many Christians draw a straight line from Abraham to the modern state of Israel? Why do so many of us excuse Israel’s violence against its enemies — and civilians (an estimated 50,000 dead in Gaza)? How is the modern state of Israel blessing all the families of the Earth?

And what happened to Jesus? Why does Jesus suddenly disappear from the story?

The only way to draw a line from Abraham to modern Israel is by ignoring the 4,000 years between them. And by ignoring the contexts of both eras, Abraham’s and ours. And by cutting the New Testament out of our Bibles, except maybe the Book of Revelation.

About 50 years ago, I heard Old Testament scholar Perry Yoder say, “Any text without a context is a pretext.” That’s a catchy phrase, and it’s a good one. A pretext is an excuse, an attempt to justify something that isn’t right.

A serious student of the Bible will take a deep dive into the historical and cultural contexts of the story. What did the authors intend to say? How did the first hearers or readers understand it?

When we do that to the best of our ability, we can interpret the story and bring its meaning across the great divide to our time and place. If we don’t do this, we read our views into the text and essentially become the authors. Or we take the views of an author or a TV speaker we like and pour their ideas into the text. The goal of Bible study should be to draw out the meaning.

Understanding the context might lead us to see that God’s promise to make a great nation of Abraham and Sarah’s descendants was about a people group, not a nation-state. In fact, one of the ancient Israelites’ sins was their demand for a king to rule over a nation-state — creating geographical boundaries and limiting access to God.

When I was a college freshman, I was in the library one day preparing for a junior high Bible study at Hess­ton Inter-Mennonite Church (now Kingdom Life Ministries). Michael David, a friend and classmate, approached. When he asked what I was doing, I explained that I was teaching about the end times when Israel would be restored as God’s chosen people. I said this prophecy was being fulfilled. Already we could see the signs the prophets foretold in Daniel, Ezekiel and Revelation.

My friend replied with a simple question: “Where does that leave me? I’m a Palestinian Christian.”

I was speechless. In this paradigm, there was no room for him.

After Michael David’s question scrambled my eschatology, I learned how to read symbolic books of scripture like Daniel, Ezekiel and Revelation. I learned that each type of biblical literature requires its own rules to interpret it.

I had grown up with dispensationalist teaching, which required a set of rules that played out in the Scofield Reference Bible (with notes by Cyrus Scofield, published in 1909 and revised in 1917). Some Mennonite conferences prohibited Sunday school teachers from using the Scofield Bible. Others bought it wholesale.

I learned this way of interpreting the Bible from my preacher uncles. That’s why I was using the 1970s end-times bestseller The Late, Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey as a text for the junior high Bible study.

Before my eschatological shakeup, I had misunderstood “chosenness.” Yes, God chose Israel — not as a favorite people but as a people chosen for a mission: to be a light to the nations. I had also misunderstood “nation” as a nation-state, not a people group.

So, can we stop cheering for modern Israel’s destruction of its enemies? Can we make room in our world for Palestinians? Mike Huckabee, President Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel, has said he will cheer on Israel no matter what. He also said Palestinians are no people at all; their name was made up.

Shouldn’t we ask how Abraham’s heirs are blessing all the families of the Earth?

Shouldn’t we leave Jesus in the pic­ture?

Yes, Michael David, there is room for you.

John E. Sharp is a retired Hesston College history and Bible professor. He leads tours to Europe and Central Asia, writes, cares for grandchildren and is a househusband.