as if God matters

My GPS map for the State of Israel works great. It shows every little road and side street, with pretty colors on the map, and a nice woman’s voice giving me clear directions.   But in the West Bank, in the Palestinian Territories, it shows gray roads with no names in cities that “cannot be found.”  Just a little blue car on a gray road with no indication of the name of the town, much less the names of streets or the locations of restaurants and gas stations.  While driving down bustling Manger Road past shops and cafes I typed in “B-E-T-H-L-E-H-E-M,” and I was informed that the city could not be found.  I was in the city.  But it was invisible to my GPS.

GPS invisibility and diminished name recognition – no street names, no businesses, grayed out – seems an apt symbol of the relative invisibility and diminished recognition of Palestinian evangelical Christians.   Suppressed voices of real people who live, and work, and breathe, and love in real places like Bethlehem, one of the many towns that “cannot be found.”

Palestinian evangelicals have a lot to share.  They have been living and worshiping in the West Bank for generations but their message is like a gray street without a name.  It’s there, but only for people who know where to look or who have received a map from someone else.

The GPS can also represent how Palestinian aspirations can coexist with Israeli desires.  Wanting Palestinian city names and street names to show up on a map, in full color, with voice directions does not mean that one wants the Israeli maps to become grayed out and the Israeli street names to disappear.  Palestinian evangelicals unequivocally support the existence of the State of Israel; they would just like also to have a state for themselves and their fellow Palestinians.  I support helpful maps on a GPS for all of Israel; I’d just like helpful maps on a GPS for all of Palestine as well.

When people’s stories are not listened to we often say they are disenfranchised or marginalized in contrast to those who are enfranchised and in the middle of the important conversations.  Another way to describe their experience is that they’re not even completely on the map and the roads to their stories are difficult to find.  This is literally true of Palestinians and the “Israel and Palestinian Territories” map for a Garmin GPS.  As I am here in Israel and the West Bank for the next two weeks I will be sharing stories from both Israeli and Palestinian evangelical and Pentecostal Christians.  The Israeli stories are easier to find because the GPS works really well there, but the Palestinian stories can be found too as long as there are other maps to use.  And that’s a hopeful aspect to the GPS and Palestine situation – there are at least gray roads with no names, which is better than no roads at all, and there are other maps.  As the Palestinian evangelical stories become better known perhaps we can progress toward a world where even their cities and streets, and their lives and testimonies, show up on our maps.