Consider the hypocrisy of Christians using the Bible to justify war. How is our current occupation and war in Iraq so different from ancient Christians using the Bible to justify bloody crusades?
Take this case in point from history. In his work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon relates (A.D. 508-518) an account of a bloody rebellion involving a man by the name of Vitalian who declared himself the champion of the Catholic faith and with an army of Huns and Bulgarians (for the most part “idolaters”), “depopulated Thrace, besieged Constantinople, exterminated sixty-five thousand of his fellow Christians, till he obtained the recall of the bishops, the sanctification of the pope, and the establishment of the council of Chalcedon”.
With a hint of justifiable sarcasm, Gibbon concludes with “And such was the event of the first of the religious wars, which have been waged in the name, and by the disciples of the God of peace.” (Vol 6, Ch 47, p 34)
Ted Kennedy of Spokane Bible Church in Washington gives an apt treatment of how it is that many Christians have used the Bible to justify supporting U.S. involvement in killing infidels on the other side of the world in his “Doctrine of God and War”.
As I read thru Kennedy’s presentation I can’t help pose some questions:
- It’s not a sin of any kind to kill in war? War makes killing OK? If killing an enemy in war is not a sin, then Iraqis who kill American soldiers are not sinning either.
- If military service is an honorable profession, then was serving as an SS officer an “honorable profession”? What about serving as a guard at Auschwitz?
- If God “commends those who wage war against aggressors,” then shouldn’t he be pouring out blessings on Iraq since to them it is the United States that is clearly the aggressor? Does this mean that Iraqis are justified in killing U.S. soldiers?
- Why are Christians, who of all people should be promoters of the gospel of peace, so eager to embrace a war where we are creating terrorists faster than we can kill them?