Grace & Peace!
I don’t intend to re-animate a dying thread, particularly with a post that may be off topic, but I could not help but notice this…and it alarmed me:
While I can appreciate the zeal from which such a sentiment springs, I have a hard time reconciling the sentiment with what the Resurrection definitively teaches us about the nature of God–that God is Life and Love and has no part in death and violence. I also have a hard time squaring it with the witness of the martyrs who fought for the truth by living lives of love and being willing to die, not kill, for that Truth.
It seems to me that if we believe that our religion (which we know to spring from a radical experience of Divine Love in the Resurrection) should be defended through death and violence, then we are buying into the logic of this death-infected and sinful world, the logic of Judas and the zealots who would have preferred a warrior-king, a death-dealing deliverer to the life-giving Agnus Dei. And if such is the case, how are we better or more enlightened or more loving than any mob anywhere in the world whose violence is just another articulation of the old cry of “crucify him”? How does a logic of violence and death articulate the Love of the Resurrected Lord of Life? How can we participate in or advocate for death and expect a blessing from the one who has no share in death?
I would therefore argue that if our religion is causing us to advocate for or defend war, violence and death, then our understanding of our religion is false and must be abandoned.
Under the Mercy,
Mark
All is Grace and Mercy! Deo Gratias!