Is Jesus Just Like a U.S. Soldier?? (Or Maybe Different?)
The image below is a car window decal, which was on a SUV near Fort Bragg NC when I took the photo.
I’ve seen it posted by a peace-oriented Friend, with a question about what kind of response a Christian-oriented peace lover might offer. Here is mine:
Let me point out, Sir & Ma’am, that in fact, many other “defining forces” HAVE indeed offered to “die for me,” starting with my mother.
Yes: close to two thousand mothers in the U.S. not only “offer” to die but actually do die either giving birth or shortly afterward, every year.
Then there were numerous first responders: firefighters, police officers (more than a hundred killed per year on duty) and the like, who took many very serious risks on my behalf.
Rather, what soldiers actually offer to do is KILL for “me” — not at my personal request, but on orders from strangers in Washington.
Jesus didn’t do that. In fact, when his followers started to fight to protect him, he told them to stop. (Read Matthew 26 & John 18)
So, what if, like Jesus, I’m not interested in that offer?
How about you and the gang play baseball for “me” instead? Looks like you’re ready. I’d like that a lot better.
Guns down – Batter up!
[PS — this commentary is adapted from my new booklet,
Some Quaker FAQs, for New & Curious Friends,
available online now.
Jesus died for exposing the intimate connections between the occupying Roman military force and the religious authorities. If an American (or Canadian) soldier did that he would be killed too.
@If an American (or Canadian) soldier did that he would be killed too.
Or end up PTSD’d. Ghosts of the Medak Pocket, Carol Off.
One of the fundamental problems that moved me from Christianity was something I saw at Parris Island, SC. During some point in boot camp we were marched into the chapel and seated (in a military manner). One doesn’t get much time to look around at PI except out of his peripheral vision. I took the opportunity to look around and noticed the beautiful stained glass work there n the chapel. It was disturbing to me because I saw Bible stories being portrayed as military scenes. I’m not saying that my faith crumbled then and there, I was too busy trying to hang on to my sanity at that point to go into the trickery of theology. But, as time progressed and I assimilated more and more cultural Christianity into my maturing faith, I often resurrected those scenes as falsehoods in the portrayal of Jesus and after years of cataloging the horrors generated by the Western church, those stained glass scenes became foundational in my sense that the Christian faith is so culturally driven that Jesus himself would never recognize it.
I am now finishing “To Kill A Nation” by Michael Parenti, which can be picked up for a few dollars used online. In the American invasion of Yugoslavia a total of 12 US servicemen were killed. US bombing killed many thousands, put hundreds of thousands into flight, destroyed the infrastructure of the country on every level, led to the extinction of my personal ethnicity, the minority Serbs of Croatia, all to convert it to capitalism and force it away from the thriving socialist economy it enjoyed. What is now being done with our military people is obscene. Just obscene. No, they are not dying for our freedom. They are killing in order to make multi-national corporations richer.