Time & Perspective Quote by Bill McCartney

McCartney frames reconciliation as overdue moral accounting, but he does it with the instincts of a movement-builder: name the injury, identify the culprits on both sides, and then recruit the listener into repair. “Paid a great price” doesn’t just express sympathy; it elevates Messianic Jews into the language of sacrifice and perseverance that evangelical culture already reveres. The phrasing primes a Christian audience to feel both protective and implicated.

The subtext is a careful triangulation. By calling Messianic Jews “brothers and sisters,” he insists they are not an odd theological fringe but family. Then he distributes blame strategically: “Other Jews have rejected them” acknowledges intra-Jewish conflict without dwelling on Jewish reasons for rejecting Christian claims, while “the Christian church would require they walk away” is a sharper indictment of Christian assimilationism. “Gentile culture” is the key term: it recasts mainstream Christianity not as neutral or universal but as culturally specific, even foreign, to Jewish believers. That move flatters Messianic identity and challenges churches that treat Jewish practice as decorative at best and disloyal at worst.

Contextually, this reads like late-20th-century evangelical outreach learning to speak in the grammar of identity and historical harm. “We must face these past wrongs” borrows the cadence of institutional apology, but with an agenda: to make space for Jewish tradition inside Christian community without surrendering the central Messianic claim. It’s empathy with a strategic edge, aiming to broaden the tent while keeping the doctrine.