This just in....the Iraq War Was a Holy War....According to the Pentagon!!
Posted: Friday, May 22, 2009
by Aaron Taylor
Aaron Taylor
Despite the repeated attempts of former President George W. Bush to renege on his usage of the word "crusade" to describe the Iraq War, there are some in the evangelical community who suspected all along that for Bush and his top aides, the Iraq War was indeed a holy war. At the time, the majority of evangelicals--including myself--cheered as the President and his top aides cast the Iraq war in moralistic terms, invoking the name of God to bless the bombs dropped by U.S. planes in the initial "shock and awe" campaign.
Earlier this week GQ magazine released a set of memos from none other than the former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. In a set of memos placed on Bush's desk every morning over a period of several months (titled the World Wide Intelligence Update), Rumsfeld quoted numerous passages from the Bible and superimposd them against a backdrop of soldiers, tanks, and fighter planes.
If the leader of a Muslim country were to invoke passages from the Koran to call on Allah to bless their troops as they attacked their American enemy, we would have with absolute certainty called that fanatacism--and we would have ridiculed anyone who thought otherwise. But because it was our leaders and they were calling on the name of our God and reading from our Bible--even though anyone with an elementary Bible knowledge knew that they were twisting the Scriptures by divorcing them from their original contexts--we called them pious.
To my fellow evangelicals that love Jesus and want to see His purposes fulfilled in our world, here are a few examples of how the Holy Scriptures were twisted by the Pentagon to sanctify a holy war.
1. In the first picture, there are three soldiers sitting in prayer with their machine guns pointed heavenward. The Scripture reference is Isaiah 6:8 which says, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" I can remember as a young boy going to church and seeing these words on a banner hanging over the center stage of the sanctuary. These words have inspired thousands of Christians to go into all the world and devote themselves as Christ's ambassadors to humanity. Now apparently we're supposed to believe that God had the U.S. military in mind when He inspired Isaiah to write these words.
2. In another frame we see a tank gliding across the Iraqi desert as the sun is setting. The Scripture for the day? Ephesians 6:13 which says, "Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand." I guess I was absent that day in Sunday School when the teacher said the Apostle Paul had America's War on Terror in mind when he wrote these words. Somehow I always thought this verse was talking about prayer against demonic powers seeking to overthrow believers in their faith. Who would have known?
3. Perhaps the most bizarre frame is the one using Psalms 33:16. Although the verse says explicitly, "The King is not saved by a mighty army," the verse is plastered across an American tank, a missile, and a U.S. soldier showing that victory does come through a mighty army. Talk about missing the point!
There's only one word for such a blatant misuse of Scriptures to sanctify a political agenda--idolatry! The American Church let this happen. I let this happen. May God be merciful to us and move upon our hearts to repent.
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Aaron D. Taylor is the author of "Alone with a Jihadist: A Biblical Response to Holy War." To learn more about Aaron and his ministry around the world, go to http://www.aarondtaylor.com
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Top-level comments on this article: (6 total)Add heresy to the list. This is absolutely pitiful. I wonder who is worse: Rumsfeld, for manipulating God's Word for his own ends, or President Bush for blindly accepting Rumsfeld's interpretation without checking it for veracity?
There has been nothing but problems of every kind when people, organizations and even churches take scripture out of context. That's how most of the modern cults started. The Bible is a set of books, not a collection of random verses.Thanks for a great article.
I believe those who use the bible to justify their means are cowards who have no real faith.
A fine article Aaron.Here's a verse from Blake, one of my favorite modern Gnostic poets:"The Awakener is come outstretch'd over Europe: the Vision of God is fulfilled:The Ancient Man upon the Rock of Albion Awakes,He listens to the sounds of War astonish'd & ashamed..."Rumsfeld is an evil sorcerer who would torment the scriptures as his personal genie to inflict more evil upon the world. I saw the pictures you referred to namely the one with the soldiers kneeling in prayer holding their guns. It gave the immediate impression of Crusade--Holy War. Troubling.
A very thought provoking article. Thank you Aaron.
Aaron, you are correct. Many do not intepret and or discern the word of God in its proper context. As an African American, I began to understand that as a child when my Grandmother taught me how the slavemaster had used the term: "Obey your masters." Barnum and bailey's "A fool is born every second" haunts us greatly. "Born into sin and shaped in iniquity" and "we walk with the power of the air (satan)," keeps a lot of us from seeing a lot of right that is right. A new generation is coming up without truth because the parents are not pushing the truth with the Bibles. Many of them do not understand the Bible is man himself. It is an instructional guide. God in man working through man to get to man. Thank you again for your article in truth. With that in man, "The war is an unholy war." People in masses will refuse right because of their nature, sinful. Look how they turn on President Obama when he is only trying to bring nations together. Seems Godly to me. Or maybe I am too old to know the difference.
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