Posts
Martin
Luther King Jr’s claim to have “seen the Promised Land” was an ironic
reference for a black pacifist given that the original Promised Land was
inhabited by presumably lesser peoples that the Israelites set about enslaving
or exterminating—by God’s command no less. Nearly three millennia later, we
newly arrived Americans used the Biblical account to justify our own partial
extermination of Native Americans and our enslavement of Africans. We called
our belief that we, as white American Protestants, had replaced the Jews as
God’s chosen, Manifest Destiny, and it allowed us to see others as
either obstacles to our progress or tools for our use.
I
once took a Sunday School class in which we studied these accounts in which God
ordered the Jews to attack cities and kill every person and every animal
(except for the young female virgins whom they sometimes got to keep for the
victory party). It was a liberal church, and the liberal response to anything
vicious, contradictory, or simply stupid about the Bible is: Oh, THAT part
isn’t God’s word because it makes God look bad, but THIS part, the warm and
fuzzy part about how Jesus loves us, and we’re all going to heaven (all we
Christians that is), THAT’S most definitely God’s word. Not so for one old
man, who sat there looking for all the world like Santa Claus in a three-piece
suit, for he said, “I can only conclude that all those people and animals that
God ordered to be killed must have somehow deserved it.”
The
stores are already selling Christmas decorations in preparation for the one
season of the year during which America talks about “Peace on Earth,” and I will admit that it’s good to have a respite
from what the baby Jesus grew up to represent (“I came not to bring peace but a
sword”). Jesus’ position on violence certainly reflects America’s approach to
problem solving, and we take great pride in the fact that we’re the most Christian
nation on earth, which I’m sure we are inasmuch as we are willing to forego
necessities in order to buy Hellfire Missiles (“…he that
hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one”). Our
love for Jesus is so great that we even paid him homage when we named our
favorite weapon, which we quite naturally use to kill those who don’t love him
the way we do. Of course, some of them deserve it, I’m sure, but I can’t help
but think that we deserve it too. After all, the biggest difference between us
is that they kill for one god and we kill for another. Maybe whoever is left
alive might finally have Peace on Earth.
