Nearly every undergraduate student on campus is required to take an Old Testament survey class almost immediately upon stepping foot on campus. Whether you take the course from Talley or Pierce, you’ll learn more about the history of the Jews, the Tabernacle and the Temple than you knew possible. Yet for a group so steeped in knowledge about the Israel’s past, it doesn’t seem pay attention to its future — even though the rest of the world is. The media has its eyes on Palestine and Israel, and as Christians and as responsible adults, it’s time we started paying attention too.

The conflict in Palestine and Israel affects us on almost every level. Beyond taking place in one of the most volatile regions in the world, in a location that would drastically hamper our access to oil, this turmoil involves the Holy Land.

As Christians, we have a responsibility to pay attention to what happens in the place where Jesus walked and talked and taught. We have a deep historical connection to the city of David, the hill of Solomon, and the site of the crucifixion of our savior. Jerusalem figures prominently in the predictions of Revelation. As end times are — as they have been — imminent, it would behoove the body of Christ outside of Canaan to keep up with the happenings in the place where they are going to resolve.

The strike in Palestine and Israel bring to light a millenia-old conflict that has a monumental effect on U.S. foreign policy, Christian and Muslim relations, ease of oil transportation, and sectarian anger that has simmered, just below boiling point, since 1946. There is no rational reason, as Christians and Americans, to ignore it.