What can be said in a moment like this? There is wisdom in saying nothing, I suppose… In refusing the rush to commentary, social media, adding to the noise of instant reactions, and the pressure to have a take before we’ve had time to grieve. Silence can be an act of reverence.
But silence can also speak, can’t it? When religious violence scars a nation in a way you don’t simply undo, saying nothing can feel like absence rather than restraint. And I don’t know how to remain silent on this one… Not because I’m an expert on these matters (I am not), nor because I think I even really know what to say (I do not) but because this one is close to home, close to community… This one doesn’t feel like “did you see the news…”
I think more clearly with a keyboard than a microphone. What follows are ten brief reflections, written with little sleep, as I try to grapple with what has happened. If they are of help to anyone else, I’ll be grateful.
(1) Tragedy does not automatically produce compassion.
I wish I could say it did. Experience tells me otherwise. We have seen this pattern before. Two days after October 7, crowds gathered outside the Sydney Opera House chanting “f**k the Jews” and “gas the Jews.” Now, as the sun set on this attack, there were firework celebrations, and already online voices eager to blame Jews for the violence done to them. This is how violence echoes outward: grief hardens into ideology, and ideology looks for someone to hate, or to applaud the hatred of others.
A mate visiting Israel as this news unfolded shared the following online: “A Christian leader told him that if Western progressives feel so strongly that Jews shouldn’t have a nation of their own, we have done a poor job of making the diaspora an attractive option. Australia’s antisemitism is a global embarrassment. And now it feels like a murderous reality.” I fear he is right.
(2) We need moral clarity, not therapeutic vagueness.
The attack was not random. It was targeted, intentional, and animated by an extremist Islamist ideology that has, time and again, singled out Jewish people for hatred and death. Naming that reality matters. Not merely “tragedy happened,” but what happened, who was targeted, what motivated it, and what celebrating it means. And this must be said plainly: To name Islamist extremism is not to condemn Muslims in general. In fact, it protects everyone – including many Muslims – from the self-defeating rule of religious extremism.
Christianity has always been able to name religious violence without demonising neighbours – even when that violence comes at the hand of the Church, herself. We can name violent ideology as dangerous and destructive without collapsing whole people groups into caricatures. We can condemn terror without baptising suspicion. We can protect our communities without forfeiting our humanity. The way of Jesus has always been harder than outrage and far more powerful.
(3) Moral equivalence is not wisdom; it is abdication.
There is a difference between explanation and excuse, between context and justification. Attempts to “balance” this violence with unrelated grievances – “but Gaza,” “but history,” “but power dynamics” – do not deepen understanding. They dissolve accountability. Celebrating murder, minimising it, or laundering it through context is not nuance. It is moral collapse. Context is not a moral disinfectant. And silence on this score is not neutrality. Silence is permission.
(4) Leadership means saying what must be said.
Leaders who say nothing at times like this, say everything with their silence. Australian leadership should condemn Islamist terror without qualifiers, footnotes, or ideological hedging. And Christian leaders should be especially capable of this – naming evil without inflaming it, speaking truth without surrendering restraint. Love does not require us to lie. Peace does not require us to pretend. Antisemitism isn’t just history repeating itself; it’s a cycle we allow to persist when silence enables escalation. Propaganda is powerful, but truth is more enduring when we choose to amplify it. The public square must not belong to intimidators.
(5) Antisemitism is the canary in the coal mine for broader human hate.
Acts of terror are designed to do more than kill bodies. They aim to fracture communities, to turn neighbours into threats, to recruit us emotionally into cycles of fear and retaliation. Hatred adapts to the times; the core remains, but its expression evolves. Antisemitism is not just a Jewish problem, it’s a human problem, as an attack on one group’s humanity is an attack on everyone’s humanity. The ultimate answer is not political or social reform, it is the transforming gospel of Jesus Christ.
(6) This moment exposes our fragility.
We Westerners tend to build our lives around predictability. Safety. Control. Yesterday – like many events in the last half decade – reminded us that none of those are guaranteed. You can do everything right. Be in the right place. On the right day. And still be caught in the blast radius of someone else’s darkness. That realisation doesn’t make us cynical. It should make us sober. It should make us kinder. It should make us less confident in the stories we tell ourselves about being in control. And it should erode any pretence to atheism, self-sufficiency, or any comfortable apathy that lives like God doesn’t matter.
(7) Lament is the right response.
Not hot takes. Not political point-scoring. Not premature theology. Lament. And the Bible gives us not only permission but even the language to grieve without fixing. “How long, O Lord?” “Why do the wicked strike?” “Where were You when this happened?” Those aren’t faithless questions. They’re biblical ones. Even Jesus Himself wept at a graveside knowing full well He was about to raise the dead. Let that sink in. He didn’t bypass grief just because resurrection was coming. He entered it.
There is a temptation, especially after acts of terror, to move too quickly. To offer explanations. To course-correct with opposite tendencies. To let fear harden into suspicion. To let grief mutate into hatred. We must resist all that. Lament is slower. Heavier. Truer. It keeps the heart human.
(8) This photo is of a Hanukkah menorah.
Jews light it every year at this time as part of an ancient tradition that goes back more than two thousand years. Hanukkah does not pretend evil isn’t real – it assumes it, remembers it, and still insists on adding light night after night. That’s what makes this moment so searing. The same hatred that once tried to extinguish Jewish life is still reaching, still interrupting, still demanding the last word – even in the attempted erasure of memory. Yet the candles continue to be lit around the world with a quiet, stubborn refusal. One flame. Then another. Not because the darkness is gone, but because the darkness does not define everything.
(9) Jesus was a Jew.
And this is where the menorah becomes, for Christians, more than an image – it becomes a signpost. That small, defiant candlelight is a yearly reminder that darkness is real…
But there is another yearly reminder called Christmas where true Light has come into the world. The child born in Israel, raised under Torah, worshipping in synagogues, was not merely a teacher who spoke about light – He stood up and said, “I am the light of the world.” And John dares to say it even more starkly: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Christianity does not begin with an explanation for suffering, it begins with a God who enters it. Christmas announces “peace on earth” not because violence has ended, but because God has chosen to dwell within a world that is still wounded. And entering in, He knows what it is to be publicly murdered and mocked as “the king of the Jews” of all things. Unlike all other would-be gods, the Judeo-Christian God knows religious violence from the inside; the death of the Son of God was justified, rationalised, and sanctified by the crowd. And that’s why His remedy is uniquely of one redemption. Not just redemption – resurrection.
Where the cross tells us God is not distant from Bondi today, the resurrection tells us Bondi is not beyond God’s future. The answer to violence is not more hatred. It is costly love, moral clarity, restraint, and mercy held together, not traded off.
(10) So what does Christian faith look like right now?
What it should always look like…
In moments like this I am reminded that Jesus repeatedly told His disciples not to be alarmed by the turmoil of the world – not because it isn’t real or grievous, but because His people are called to remain awake, sober-minded, prayerful, and anchored in Him. Whatever significance this moment may have in God’s providence, I am reminded that biblical prophecy is never given to satisfy curiosity or fuel fear. It is given to form a people marked by endurance, holiness, hope, and faithful witness in a world that is often dark and unstable… A Church that knows how to stand firm not just in culture wars, but in the ruins left behind by real bullets and dead bodies.
Hope is not naïveté. Hope is refusal. Hope is obedience. Hope is prayer with open eyes. And against all my natural instincts to do and say more, I chose right now to lean into prayer and I invite you to do the same. For the victims. For their families. For our Jewish neighbours. For our nation. For our leaders. For justice. And yes, even for our enemies… I mean, that is the true scandal of grace: while we were still enemies of God, Christ died for us. It’s moments like this that test our ability to speak the reality of our own salvation out loud.
But light does not shout, it shines. And it shines best when the darkness is real. May our presence in the days ahead be a quiet protest against the darkness – calm where others are chaotic, truthful where others are evasive, courageous where others are cowardly, compassionate where others are cruel. May the city on a hill reflect the light of the first Christmas this Christmas: not sentimental, but incarnational – Emmanuel, God with us.
Thanks David. This is excellent.