Friday, November 16, 2007

The Bible and War

For the past three years I have been reading widely in scholarly literature about religion and war. I have become aware of how the language of religion and beliefs about God are used to sanction violence and war. I think that most war-making in the 21st century will be framed in religious language. A great deal of self-serving idolatry will be presented as authentic religious faith. Here is my judgment of some of the most dangerous war-supporting religious beliefs in the 21st Century.

Special Relationship
  1. God has chosen our people/nation for a special relationship and a special mission in the world. All others are outside of God’s favor.
  2. God has saved us and/or will save us from oppression and injustice, by defeating our enemies.
  3. God has given us land and has denied this land to others.

Defeat of Enemies
  1. God judges our enemies to be evil and calls on us to control, kill, and destroy those who are evil.
  2. Eventually all people and all nations will see the truth that God has given us; they will acknowledge our superiority and recognize our privileged role as messengers of God’s truth. The wealth of other nations will appropriately flow to us as a sign of our people/nation being blessed by God.
  3. Our victories in war are signs that our God is all-powerful and is blessing our righteousness.
  4. We have not always been treated justly by evil powers, and God commands that we re-establish justice even if this means going to war against our oppressors.
  5. Even if we do not appear to be victorious today, our God guarantees that at the end of the current age God will vindicate us and our enemies will be destroyed. At the end of this age God will send a righteous leader to lead God’s people to victory over the powers of evil.
  6. God will punish evil-doers, either in this world or the next world. This is a logically essential belief because God is all-powerful and demands justice.

Purity and Separation
  1. God requires that we be pure and separate from people who are evil.
  2. When we suffer temporary defeats this is God punishing us for our lack of purity and a call to redouble our purity and separation from those who are foreign and evil.
  3. When we re-establish our purity, God will save us and defeat our enemies.
  4. We must protect ourselves from the aliens who pollute our purity and threaten our identity, freedom, and security.

Material Blessings
  1. God has given us dominion over the earth and its resources, and God wants us to be wealthy and prosper.
  2. All of our wealth and prosperity is a gift from God and is God’s acknowledgement of our righteousness.

All of these beliefs can be supported by passages from the Bible. Jack Nelson-Palmeyer contends in Is Religion Killing Us? that, “Religious violence is first and foremost a problem of ‘sacred’ text, not misinterpretation of ‘sacred’ text. The violence-of-God tradition in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Christian New Testament, and the Quran must be understood and challenged if we are to have any realistic hope of building a peaceful world.” (p. 20)

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