Propaganda: Is Jesus Pro-War?

Who do you think it is in the picture? Hopefully you did not think it was Jesus, given the AK-47 in his hand.

In case you think that the question of Jesus being pro-war is entirely rhetorical, feel free to check out this article.

Or this one by the TV Evangelist Jerry Falwell.

If I may take the liberty to summarize their opinions: Although it is recognized that Jesus is for love and peace, these concepts are not incompatible with the notion of "Superior Firepower".

A couple of thousand years ago the Roman Empire tried, and failed, to stop Christianity by torture and violence. Then in desperation (or a stroke of genius), it was made it the official religion of the empire. It was not long before the message derailed itself and the Christians became the persecutors instead of the persecuted.

In my mind a key element in war propaganda is religion. Somehow, the pro-war Christian religions manage to grab the moral high ground by proclaiming their belief in Jesus, while also supporting war, torture, and tax cuts for the rich.

I do not claim to be a religious person, but I can get annoyed by illogical debating techniques. For example, using Christianity against the very people who are actually supporting Jesus's own views. It is perverse, and something has to be said. Even though I am not a biblical scholar, it is not all that difficult to piece together the message of Jesus as stated in the Bible.

The greatest obstacle to understanding Jesus's message is this. There is an argument that Jesus is son of God, and whereas God wrote the first testament, therefore through his divinity, Jesus also had a hand in the writing of the first Testament, including the ten commandments. I just want to point out that this argument is the first step on a slippery slope of watering down Jesus's message, if not subverting it entirely. Which has actually happened many times.

Let me just sum up Jesus in 25 words or less based on what he is reported as sayinging in the new testament. His message was peace, love, forgiveness, and wealth redistribution. You might say he was the precursor of human rights movement. He was crucified by people who found his message offensive, and although I am not sure why love and peace were so offensive, people do often get piqued about wealth redistribution.

Now let me try to sum up Christianity. After Jesus was killed, his earth-changing message continued to spread, and a religion formed around it called Christianity. It was a simple message, as I have already said. Complicated messages do not travel well, especially in the presence of extreme persecution. The Romans persecuted the Christians, but it was futile against the power and simplicity of the message, so the Roman Empire simply adopted the Christian message as its own and twisted it around to be a message of pro-war and pro-slavery and wealth. This was one of the earliest known uses of "idea management", and it worked a lot better than persecution. However, the message was not dead, and for the next 2000 years, re-emerged, divided, spread further. But as in the Roman times, the religion was coopted again and again by the established powers.

So it's not really surprising that today, for the tenth time at least, Christianity has been coopted again by a powerful empire wanting to use Jesus in its own propaganda. Two thousand years ago, Jesus's humanist ideas overcame the worst kind of physical persecution with people being thrown to the lions and crucified. You can believe what you will - Jesus was pro-war, anti-war, or neither, but funny how vulnerable these ideas are to clever verbal manipulation.