Way to cave in America! :(

[Brian]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,583566,00.html?test=latestnews

"A Michigan defense contractor will voluntarily stop stamping references to Bible verses on combat rifle sights made for the U.S. military, a major buyer of the company's gear.

In a statement released Thursday, Trijicon of Wixom, Mich., says it is also providing to the armed forces free of charge modification kits to remove the Scripture citations from the telescoping sights already in use. Through multimillion dollar contracts, the Marine Corps and Army have more than 300,000 Trijicon sights.

The references to Bible passages raised concerns that the citations break a government rule that bars proselytizing by American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, which are predominantly Muslim countries."

[Russell Roberts]

Yea, it would be a real shame if we couldn't blow peoples brains out 'in the name of Jesus'.

[Brian]

Yea, it would be a real shame if we couldn't blow peoples brains out 'in the name of Jesus'.

Russell I am quite sure you know that isn't exactly what I suggest. If not, I don't.

Incorporating prayer before wartime is something I am quite sure a great many people do. If I was being shot at and shooting back at my enemy I am 100% positive that before my endeavor I would spend a good deal of time in prayer for guidance and protection from the Lord. I would ask Him to be with me during my fight and to protect me and to aid in my victory.
I don't see a conflict there at all. Should I not ask the Lord to go with me into battle? I certainly wouldn't want to think I was alone out there, possibly at the end of my life, Godless. I think not. I would seek His hand of protect to be with me. How is that any different than the inscription on the rifle sights?

[Pastor Gary]

Yea, it would be a real shame if we couldn't blow peoples brains out 'in the name of Jesus'.

So you don't believe God ever desires people to smite their enemies and leave nothing standing?

[Phil Hoover]

we find a "love your enemies" command...and I'm still trying to reconcile that with the "smite your enemies and leave nothing standing" from the Old Testament.

[Shellie]

we find a "love your enemies" command...and I'm still trying to reconcile that with the "smite your enemies and leave nothing standing" from the Old Testament.

It would seem that in all of these scriptural application situations with which we wrestle, the idea that the Old Testament is trumped or done away with by the New always seems to arise. Why?

Am I the only one that believes that the Old and New work together in perfect harmony? That they provide a balance of the real truth instead of a portrayal of our understanding of the truth?

[Russell Roberts]

I was being a bit flippant.

Is there a time for war? I think there is, unfortunately.

But it should be a lot more rare than it is today. Maybe we should be focused on building schools and hospitals and helping them learn to develop self-sufficient economies instead of dropping bombs on them. I'm no pacifist but I'm not numb to the fact that innocent babies (like my own SON) are having their bodies mutilated by dumb bombs that can't distinguish between the innocent and the guilty.

[Shellie]

Russell wrote:

bombs that can't distinguish between the innocent and the guilty.

I guess then the real question is what is the definition of innocent?

Because we, as an American whole, are conditioned from birth to respect and do the right thing, we have a hard time thinking every culture of people believe the same way we do.

Are there "innocent" people in every culture...sure. There are way less in some cultures than there are in others.

Exclusive mindsets that bring death to others and breed extremism in its people is not one of innocence.

[Russell Roberts]

Shellie,

I am thinking in particular about the children but a lot of innocent adults have died too. By calling them 'collateral damage' we have become desensitized to the inhumanity of taking the life of someone who is innocent. Not innocent of sin, but innocent of planning us harm. It is easy to talk about 'us' and 'them' and to paint 'them' with a dark brush.

"Hey, those guys are evil."

Unfortunately, life isn't that easy. It ignores the thread of evil that runs through all of us. These kinds of deaths understandably generate anti-American sentiment.

The Jews were guilty of racial pride believing that God's promises made them superior to the surrounding nations whom they considered nothing more than beasts to be ruled over (note the imagery of Daniel 7 which depicts the pagan empires as four 'beasts' coming out of the sea). Our loyalty to Jesus must transcend our own patriotic tendencies lest we repeat the mistakes of the Jews who rejected the way of peace offered by Jesus in favor of military revolt against Rome. Look where that got them.

I'm not sure if you are a mother Shellie but try to imagine for one moment how you might feel if the body of your own innocent child was destroyed by a Muslim bomb. Kinda brings things home. It does for me anyhow.

[TW]

Russel,
While I can understand and sympathize with the desire for peace as opposed to war, need I remind you that Islam was and is spread with the sword. Don't buy into that Islam is a religion of peace crap. It isn't, and it never was. With Islam it's "convert or die!" That kind of takes the "innocent" out of the equation, doesn't it?


TW

[Russell Roberts]

TW,

There have been times in the past and there are still places throughout the world where Muslims live in peace with their neighbors. Our Christian brothers and sisters lived in relative peace under Sadaam. It has only been since we went in there bombing that they have come under persecution and most of them have fled the country.

The same weird thing holds true for Palestinians. We have more Palestinian brothers and sisters than Jewish brothers and sisters in the Middle East. Yet, based on our misunderstanding of eschatology and Paul's argument in Romans, we continue to support ethnic Israel over OUR OWN BROTHERS. How dadgum freaky and insane is that?

[Pastor Gary]

Sounds like Russell has been reading Shane Claiborne...

[Russell Roberts]

Nope.

Is he a good author Pastor Gary?

BTW, would my new article in the doctrinal forum be considered a doctrinal thread? If not I would like to post it in the main forum.

[Pastor Gary]

Nope.

Is he a good author Pastor Gary?

BTW, would my new article in the doctrinal forum be considered a doctrinal thread? If not I would like to post it in the main forum.

He is pretty radical, but very, very thought provoking.

"We do need to be born again, since Jesus said that to a guy named Nicodemus. But if you tell me I have to be born again to enter the Kingdom of God, I can tell you that you have to sell everything you have and give it to the poor, because Jesus said that to one guy, too. But I guess that's why God invented highlighers, so we can highlight the parts we like and ignore the rest."
— Shane Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical)

"How ironic is it to see a bumper sticker that says 'Jesus is the answer' next to a bumper sticker supporting the war in Iraq, as if to says 'Jesus is the answer - but not in the real world.'"
— Shane Claiborne

"I asked participants who claimed to be "strong followers of Jesus" whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Nearly 80 percent said yes. Later in the survey, I sneaked in another question, I asked this same group of strong followers whether they spent time with the poor, and less than 2 percent said they did. I learned a powerful lesson: We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy of the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor."
— Shane Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical)

"Only Jesus would be crazy enough to suggest that if you want to become the greatest, you should become the least. Only Jesus would declare God's blessing on the po0r rather than on the rich and would insist that it's not enough to just love your friends. I just began to wonder if anybody still believed Jesus meant those things he said."
— Shane Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical)

"I saw a banner hanging next to city hall in downtown Philadelphia that read, "Kill them all, and let God sort them out." A bumper sticker read, "God will judge evildoers; we just have to get them to him." I saw a T-shirt on a soldier that said, "US Air Force... we don't die; we just go to hell to regroup." Others were less dramatic- red, white, and blue billboards saying, "God bless our troops." "God Bless America" became a marketing strategy. One store hung an ad in their window that said, "God bless America--$1 burgers." Patriotism was everywhere, including in our altars and church buildings. In the aftermath of September 11th, most Christian bookstores had a section with books on the event, calendars, devotionals, buttons, all decorated in the colors of America, draped in stars and stripes, and sprinkled with golden eagles.

This burst of nationalism reveals the deep longing we all have for community, a natural thirst for intimacy... September 11th shattered the self-sufficient, autonomous individual, and we saw a country of broken fragile people who longed for community- for people to cry with, be angry with, to suffer with. People did not want to be alone in their sorrow, rage, and fear.

But what happened after September 11th broke my heart. Conservative Christians rallies around the drums of war. Liberal Christian took to the streets. The cross was smothered by the flag and trampled under the feet of angry protesters. The church community was lost, so the many hungry seekers found community in the civic religion of American patriotism. People were hurting and crying out for healing, for salvation in the best sense of the word, as in the salve with which you dress a wound. A people longing for a savior placed their faith in the fragile hands of human logic and military strength, which have always let us down. They have always fallen short of the glory of God.

...The tragedy of the church's reaction to September 11th is not that we rallied around the families in New York and D.C. but that our love simply reflected the borders and allegiances of the world. We mourned the deaths of each soldier, as we should, but we did not feel the same anger and pain for each Iraqi death, or for the folks abused in the Abu Ghraib prison incident. We got farther and farther from Jesus' vision, which extends beyond our rational love and the boundaries we have established. There is no doubt that we must mourn those lives on September 11th. We must mourn the lives of the soldiers. But with the same passion and outrage, we must mourn the lives of every Iraqi who is lost. They are just as precious, no more, no less. In our rebirth, every life lost in Iraq is just as tragic as a life lost in New York or D.C. And the lives of the thirty thousand children who die of starvation each day is like six September 11ths every single day, a silent tsunami that happens every week."
— Shane Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHmqfPd9RxQ

[Russell Roberts]

Man, that stuff is powerful.

After September 11th I bought an American flag and hung it outside my office. Had I had an Israeli flag, I would have hung that one too.