THE REVOLUTIONARY NATURE OF THE GOSPELS PART 1

It saddens me how many of my friends and family that claim to follow Jesus are so quick to say the American military should bomb a country that doesn't like us or has threatened us. I would like to state, as I have elsewhere, that you cannot be a "pro war Christian". You cannot like it, you cannot condone it, you cannot endorse it, for any reason or at any time. I have many friend's in the military, many friends and family who have shot and killed America's enemies under strict orders to do so. It is not easy for me to tow an uncompromising line here, but my studies of the scriptures and our own Christian history leave me no choice, no wiggle room, and no way to avoid it. It is one thing for me to be a peace loving hippy, but it is far more difficult to tell you that as a follower of Christ you must also become a peace loving hippy. This is a bitter pill to swallow, but I tell you the truth, violence never heals, it always fractures, destroys, and escalates into more violence. One only needs to look at Iraq or Afghanistan to see that what I am saying is true.

First a prophesy...

"He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore."

-Isaiah 2:4

"He shall judge between many peoples, and shall decide for strong nations far away; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore;"

-Micah 4:3

“Christians have changed their swords and their lances into instruments of peace, and they know not now how to fight.”

-Irenaeus, approx. 180 A.D.

Irenaeus, in case you weren't aware, is kinda a big deal. Irenaeus was the Bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul and many of his writings have survived and translated for the masses. As one of the leaders of the Church Irenaeus had a great deal of influence in early Christianity.

There were many different perspectives as to who the "Messiah" would be in the time of Jesus. The one I would like to focus on was likely the majority view within Galilee who had just suffered a bloody revolt less than a generation before the birth of Jesus. In this view that the Messiah would lead the the people of Israel in a bloody but victorious revolt against the Roman Empire, establishing the Hebrew people in their land unto all generations. More or less to some degree this is what Jesus' neighbors expected when they heard talk of a Messiah. This is probably why two (or more) of Jesus' disciples were Zealots, a group of militant revolutionaries against Roman occupation. Even John the Baptist questions if Jesus was the Messiah who was to come, as he sits in prison awaiting an execution order from the Roman puppet dictator Herod. In John's mind he cannot understand why Jesus isn't trying to free him. Some of Jesus' closest disciples walked with a newly, raised from the dead, incognito Jesus on the road to Emmaus and stated "But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel..." Even after His death, they didn't understand that Jesus was redefining what it meant to be The Messiah.

If anyone in all of history was going to be pushed and pressured into military action it was he or she who dared claim to be the Hebrew Messiah in the first century BCE/CE, but Jesus didn't show up that way did He?

At His birth, Angels sang "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, good will toward men." (Luke 2:14)

When Jesus was selecting disciples, He recruited Matthew, who was a tax collector, and Simon who was a Zealot. (In case you haven't read my other post, you can learn a bit more about Zealots here ) The Zealots fought Rome and any Jewish collaborators. The tax collectors worked for Rome. I love that Jesus took two opposing political factions under his wing and called them both to something higher.

In the garden of Gethsemane Jesus stopped Peter in his tracks saying "Those who live by the sword, die by the sword".

There are dozens of other verses that collaborate with the understanding that Jesus was teaching the world something it desperately needed. Peace.

There are a few passages that you may attempt to throw back at me "I have not come to bring peace, but the sword..." etc... However these must be interpreted into the whole context of the Gospels, and those interpretations I must save for another post.

Now you may ask, "What do we do if terrorists want to kill Americans? What do we do if China, North Korea, Iran and Russia form an axis of evil against America and her allies?!?!?! What then?"

Love.

"But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you..." -Jesus (Matthew 5:44)

Love your enemies, whoever they are, even when they are nailing you, your sons, and your daughters to a cross, love them. Love that defies all logic, this is the call of the Christ follower. It is an undermining of God's justice when we take up the sword in violence. A tank is a display of our lack of faith that God is faithful. An AK-47 is a rejection of the belief that God is in control.

I am not a pacifist, I am a spokesperson for the non-violent revolution that started with Jesus and continues today.

It is a radical act of faith to believe that the world could live in peace.

Plato said "It is only the dead who have seen the end of war".

Irenaeus replies “Christians have changed their swords and their lances into instruments of peace, and they know not now how to fight.”

Irenaeus obviously didn't live to see Christianity in the time of the crusades, or modern American pro war evangelicals, but he had faith that the time the prophets had spoken of had now come. This leads me right up to my next post on the Messianic Age and the Early Church, which I will post another day.

Here are several other fascinating anti war quotes from early church fathers.

“The devil is the author of all war.” “We, who used to kill one another, do not make war on our enemies. We refuse to tell lies or deceive our inquisitors; we prefer to die acknowledging Christ.”

-Justin Martyr, approx. 138 A.D.

“But now inquiry is being made concerning these issues. First, can any believer enlist in the military? Second, can any soldier, even those of the rank and file or lesser grades who neither engage in pagan sacrifices nor capital punishment, be admitted into the church? No on both counts—for there is no agreement between the divine sacrament and the human sacrament, the standard of Christ and the standard of the devil, the camp of light and the camp of darkness. One soul cannot serve two masters—God and Caesar…But how will a Christian engage in war—indeed, how will a Christian even engage in military service during peacetime—without the sword, which the Lord has taken away? For although soldiers had approached John to receive instructions and a centurion believed, this does not change the fact that afterward, the Lord, by disarming Peter, disarmed every soldier.”

“Under no circumstances should a true Christian draw the sword.”

-Tertullian, 155-230 A.D.

“We have come in accordance with the counsel of Jesus to cut down our arrogant swords of argument into plowshares, and we convert into sickles the spears we formerly used in fighting. For we no longer take swords against a nation, nor do we learn anymore to make war, having become sons of peace for the sake of Jesus, who is our Lord.”

-Origen of Alexandria, 185-254 A.D.

“A soldier, being inferior in rank to God, must not kill anyone. If ordered to, he must not carry out the order, nor may he take an oath (sacramentum) to do so. If he does not accept this, let him be dismissed from the church. Anyone bearing the power of the sword, or any city magistrate, who wears purple, let him cease from wearing it at once or be dismissed from the church. Any catechumen or believer who wishes to become a soldier must be dismissed from the church because they have despised God.”

“A person who has accepted the power of killing, or a soldier, may never be received [into the church] at all.”

-Hippolytus, 170-236 A.D.

As you can see, deep within our roots there is a revolution of peace brewing. If the church rose up and began teaching as Jesus and the early leaders of the church did, we would once again be those that "turned the world upside down."

Protest war my friends, proclaim peace, and of course, love your enemies.