Sandman – It is very difficult to see where the axehead fell when we have been raised in a violent society, complete with toy guns, violent cartoons, violent sports, video game violence, and even violent “cowboys and Indians” games.

Back to Genesis

Now on top of all that cultural indoctrination, we have been taught by our parents, clergy, Christian schools, and Christian literature that it is not only desirable to be a patriot, it is a Christian duty to a Christian nation. And when war breaks out, we as believers must defend this God ordained nation.

Rick, I either never had that problem, or rejected the conditioning completely while in school. I told my teachers in fact that I could tell them whatever they needed to hear or read from me to ace the class, but that it didn’t mean I was going to internalize and embrace it.

Rumsfeld’s memos to Bush that contained Bible verses meant to coincide with the Iraq war are well within mainstream evangelical thought. I suggest you take just 6 months and do an intensive study of the Scriptures concerning this question, and with a personally invasive inventory of the validity of your own perspectives. I did this for two years without reading a single book on the subject.

I admonished a pair of Mormons who came to my home against using the Bible as a book of independent verses stripped of their historical context. You can wind up with some very bad doctrine misapplying verses or daisy-chaining one verse to another.

“Eat, drink and be merry.”
“There is no God.”
“Judas hanged himself … go thou and do likewise.”

(I have no problem with the war, just some of the ways people tried to shoehorn it into the Bible.)

I openly believe that nationalism is idolatry…

Do you believe the same about having an enthusiastic admiration for, or being a fan(atic) of a certain college football team from South Bend?

I am calling a foul on you being overly poignant

I’m sorry next time I’ll beat around the bush. Pun absolutely intended.

I may have misunderstood what you were stating

You may be right, I was complaining about broad brushing. I should have been more clear. In reference to:

War which many Christians believe was of God

I’ve got a few more if I can find ‘em

I don’t see the correlation with that article and what I typed.

I may have misunderstood what you were stating. I only shared that article to show that most of the world sees a very different attitude towards are ‘just’ war.

I’m not of the mind that the U.S. always has the purest of motives when it comes to foreign policy. Nor do I think that other countries should automatically understand that Bush, in his utterances about God, is NOT implying that God is on our side. Because if I didn’t know better it sure sounds like “God loves us and hates you”. After all if Ahmadinejad had said “Allah wants to make us victorious” we would label him an extremist and call it Holy War.

Rumsfeld’s memos to Bush that contained Bible verses meant to coincide with the Iraq war

From what I read, Rumfeld’s office denied having anything to do with those memos. It came from within the ranks in the military and it was never distributed beyond the Generals and their staff within the Pentagon.

It’s amazing how things like that grow legs and with a little research one finds other answers. But as human nature is, we’d rather cling to the worse case scenario.

Maybe this article will shed some light on how the world views our holy crusade ‘just war’

I don’t see the correlation with that article and what I typed.

I don’t give much credence to Op Eds that have statements like “Those close to Bush say…..”Give me some names.