And while many of us engaged in some regrettable fights with friends and others in the last week, one hopes that we also learned from each other and that we can work together to understand the plight of threatened Christians and other minorities in the Middle East, the problem of entanglements with bad actors, ways to support Israel’s existence, and the importance of working to correct the imprudent decisions made by each and every one of us.

By now you’ve seen or read about Sen. Ted Cruz’s speech at the In Defense of Christians summit in Washington, D.C. His focus on Israel to a room full of persecuted Christians with divergent views on the Jewish state received wildly mixed responses both among attendees and the general population.

You probably have your opinion. I have mine. I wrote “Ted Cruz Is No Hero For Insulting A Room Of Persecuted Christians.” My friend and colleague David Harsanyi wrote “Ted Cruz Was Right (And The People Who Booed Him Were Wrong).”

I could list many more articles explaining one side or the other. But what I’m worried about now is that we’re all so entrenched in our views that we’re burrowing in and starting to malign the motivations of those with whom we disagree. My email and social media were full of so much unhinged reaction that it was hard to be open-minded about the good critiques. I also saw some frightening or over-the-top pro-Cruz takes from people I generally like and respect. And then on the other side of the ledger, I saw some people on my side of things get very emotional and be jerks. And I saw extreme commentary from the hoi polloi on Cruz-defenders and, in some cases, Israel itself.

What if we just tried to see the best parts of other people’s arguments — just to understand each other a bit better?

Luther’s Small Catechism teaches about the commandment against bearing false witness: “We should fear and love God that we may not deceitfully belie, betray, slander, or defame our neighbor, but defend him, [think and] speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything.” I have it memorized because I need to be constantly reminded of it.

The best construction I have right now is that we’re all laser-focused on different things. It’s not necessarily that we all disagree with each other so much as that we’re focused on different areas of concern. And each of these areas of concern at the very least has legitimate angles. Let’s take a trip through those different things.

1) These Are Bad Guys The Christians Keep Aligning With

Reports coming out of the In Defense of Christians Summit through its first couple of days were quite positive. The media coverage wasn’t much but the group had gotten a wide variety of Christians to participate, both globally and in the United States. The first sign of trouble came on Wednesday, when the Washington Free Beacon ran a story headlined Cruz Headlines Conference Featuring Hezbollah Supporters.

Many people have criticized that story but let’s remember we’re trying to just look at the best parts of everyone’s arguments. And the best version of this argument is simply that it’s absolutely true that all sorts of Christians in the Middle East have aligned with all sorts of bad guys. It’s something everyone does, sure, (we went with Stalin in World War II, for example) but that’s not a blanket excuse for same.

Syrian Bashar al-Assad is a horrible tyrant. He may be keeping the Christians alive right now, but he’s still a bad guy. Assad has killed who knows how many of his people in recent years, even using chemical weapons and bombs. His forces rape and pillage. Even if he’s protecting Christians currently, he’s also known for killing them. Lee Smith, a prominent voice whose focus is on the bad guys, notes:

I lived in Beirut during one of Bashar al-Assad’s anti-Christian campaigns, when his spies and allies assassinated Christian politicians and journalists and bombed Christian-majority regions of Lebanon.

Other participants in the conference have connections to Hezbollah, a Shia Islamist militant group based in Lebanon and funded by Iran. The argument of groups such as the Free Beacon and Smith are that these guys are every bit as bad as ISIS, so a conference organized around that threat shouldn’t have people who are supportive of equivalent groups.

To be sure, the argument that Hezbollah is as bad as ISIS is debatable. One can acknowledge that Hezbollah is hideous and evil, but one can’t quite imagine ISIS handing out press passes to critics to cover their rallies, much less aligning with Christian groups.

And while it is also true that Assad has killed lots of Christians, so did the United States in World War II. So did Ulysses S. Grant during the Civil War. But there is a difference between killing Christians who are your enemy in war and killing Christians because they are Christians. Before we call these groups equivalent as it relates to Christian persecution, we should point to Assad saying something like, “Well, we’ve got to wipe out this specific group of infidels on the grounds that they are infidels.” A lot of what we’re talking about with regard to the persecution of Christians hinges on motivation and not just being tyrants over everyone.

Having said all that, we should not lose sight of who bad guys are. A lot of Arab Christians do exactly that, and move from making alliances with the Assad regime because it’s protecting them right now to deciding that same regime is good. That’s undoubtedly an important point to counter.

You may not like how these people made these arguments, or some of the dismissive ways that they treated the issue of Christian persecution, but hopefully you can see that these are, in fact, good points. It’s their focus.

2) Israel Is A Good Ally To Christians in the Middle East

The video indicates that a subset of the “In Defense of Christians” crowd booed when Ted Cruz said that “Christians have no greater ally than Israel.” Some people got very upset at the crowd because, they argue, Israel is a wonderful ally to Christians in the Middle East.

My colleague David Harsanyi made the case well here, in which he argues that Israel and Middle East Christians share “the same enemies, the same broader geopolitical aims and the same moral outlook.” He also notes that the Christian population in Israel is growing and is the only stable Christian population in the region. He also writes that “The Israeli government has actively attempted to better integrate Christian Arabs, who are politically dissimilar from many Muslim Israeli Arabs.”

3) Christians Should Support Israel

Many American Christian supporters backed Ted Cruz for the simple reason that Christians should love their neighbors and, they say, there should be special affinity for Jews. A large part of that support is very likely dealing with particular theological views held by millions of American evangelicals and fundamentalists. The view, called dispensationalism, is based on the writings of John Nelson Darby and spread via the popular Scofield Reference Bible. Dispensationalists believe that the nation of Israel is distinct from the Christian Church, populated by God’s people, and that God has not yet fulfilled his promises to Israel. These views are not popular at all in older Christian churches.

But whether or not Americans hold to dispensationalism, there’s wide support for Israel in general and very low support for criticism of same. It is obvious to many that there is a very fine line between criticism of Israeli policy and criticism of Jews in general. This makes it difficult to find safe spaces to critique Israel but it’s also true that anti-Semitism is a huge global problem and Christians are wise to be concerned about it.

Viewed in these ways, Ted Cruz was valiant for standing up to an ugly sentiment as well as valiant for standing up to people making stupid alliances.

4) Christians Are Dying

For people focused on this issue, the over-arching concern is the plight of Middle Eastern Christians, a shrinking and threatened minority throughout the region. It’s as simple as that. These people are dying out and need help. All people of goodwill should set aside political differences and secondary concerns and focus on saving them, which was the stated goal of the conference.

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