The Patriot Bible vs. The Word of God

Hello all,

Perusing through my friend’s profiles on Facebook, there was a post from one of my friends about the recent analysis of the new survey by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press from Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The analysis shows that their sample of white evangelicals, and those who attend a religious service at least weekly is shown as supporting the use of torture in order to gain information from terrorists.

What interested me the most aside from an interesting discussion with people on Facebook about politics, religion, “what Jesus would do?” was a post I read on Greg Boyd’s blogwhere he talks about this survey but also about the new American Patriot’s Bible, from Thomas Nelson Publishing.

It goes along with the topic of the survey very well, because that bible is filled with imagery of soldiers waving the American flag, tanks, jets, tying the Gospels with the war heroes, the wars won, etc…

Greg makes the point that Jesus Christ is not a militant war god. He is not a person that would use the sword to get His kingdom established, in fact, right before His crucifixion, when Pilate asked Him about His kingdom, He said, “My kingdom does not belong to this world; if my kingdom belonged to this world, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish authorities. No, my kingdom does not belong here!” John 18:36 GNT

If God’s kingdom is not made of fighting, war, swords or tanks, does that mean we shouldn’t have a military, earthly protection or etc…? That’s not the point, the point is whether we have a Christianity that wins by the sword or one that shows love by saying, “we believe in God and in his words about loving our enemies, doing good to those who hurt us, praying for those who persecute us, that we will trust in Him to save us from any threat.” God may very well provide all the protection we need. Who knows, we may then never need a military, but would we trust God enough for that?

That is what He wanted to do with Israel, but Israel over and over again wanted to fight, so He stooped down to their level and helped them fight. It was not always like that though, when the walls of Jericho fell down, when Gideon’s army was but 300 people against the Midianites, and many others. Like we have said in our dialogues and in this blog, God deals with us where we are, therefore sometimes He will speak in military terms, helps us form a military, even help us fight. However, believing that is the ideal is incredibly damaging to our picture of God. God is a God of peace and not war. Also, He is not a God of peace through war.

Through this bible our society can clearly see one huge example of the two contrasting sides of Christianity, “Love your enemies” vs. “blow their brains out in the name of Christ”.

What’s your picture of God? Take a read at Greg’s article and share your thoughts.