Spirituality Pages

Peace Vigil Photo So there I am. Standing at your friendly, local peace vigil along with my dog and a handfull of neighbors. The organizers give me a sign to hold that says, "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" I think about that and the first thing that comes to mind is that the sign should say "Whom..." rather than "Who...." But I decide that is not particularly important. Later on, one of my house mates tells me it has more clout with "Who...."

I am standing there, minding my business when a car driving down the road slows down. A young man rolls down his window and shouts at us, "Who would Jesus Bomb? I'll tell you. He would bomb YOU GUYS!" That gets me thinking along a track more appropriate to the occasion.

I start trying to envision Jesus bombing anyone. Yes, it's true, he threw a hissy fit and drove the money lenders out of the temple. He also issued the famous, and basically uninterpretable, statement, "I came not to bring peace, but a sword". But I find it unfathomable that the fundamental precepts of the Gospels can be summarized by those two things. My impression of Jesus as presented in the Bible is that he would under no circumstances condone the killing of other people. I doubt that he would even condone killing in self defence, but envisioning Jesus with his eye on the radar screen and his thumb on the switch that opens the bombay is beyond my capabilities.


14March 2003

p.s. I found a much more amusing article [a href="http://freedom.orlingrabbe.com/lfetimes/jesus_bomb.htm"] [/a] on the above topic on the internet. The guy who wrote it seems to be a libertarian, which means we wouldn't see eye to eye on much, but in this case, I liked what he had to say. I disabled the link because it no longer works.


© 2003–2006 by Lawrence G. Piper
e-mail me: larry@lgpiper.net
Or use my contact form

Last update: Wednesday, July 11, 2007