War in a Manger

The 14th Street Playhouse is currently staging the above production and we attended opening night last night with a few friends from our community group. The play was commissioned by an organization called Art Within who is attempting to do interesting work with script and screen writers of faith. The events of the play are taken from an actual hostage event that took place in Bethlehem in 2002 at the Church of the Nativity. While I believe the event to be riveting and cataclysmic, the play struggled to capture the intensity of the moment. Here we have Palestinian Muslim militants seeking asylum in a shrine to the birthplace of Christendom while being pursued by Jewish Israeli troops. The play attempts to raise a few questions of faith: Am I willing to sacrifice my life for what I believe? Is what I live my for worth dying for? Would the Holy Land be less ravaged by war if it weren't so holy? The play did succeed in this: I've thought about this issue much more than I ever would have on a typical Saturday morning. How can the events taking place in the Middle East become real to us in our comfortable, extravagant lives? How should we live our lives in response to the faith we profess?