The cosmic crusader
Andrew Sullivan had a link to this video on his blog. While I admire the production value (and its obvious reference to military recruiting commercials), as a Christian myself it's quite disturbing. The verse at the beginning poses Jesus as some kind of cosmic crusader, when the context might accurately be describing the church as on the defense than the offense. The church in the first century saw the sword, but it wasn't in their hands. Yes--the Bible uses warfare as an image of God's work in the world. I've even found quite a bit of solace recently in Greg Boyd's take on the spiritual conflict that is present in the world. But the same Jesus also said that those who live by the sword will die by it, and his model of warfare was not taking up a weapon, but sacrificing himself for those he loved. Noticeably absent from this video also is any enemy--who is it that these people are all prepared to fight? With a literal sword? If this video featured Arabic speaking Muslims, how would Americans feel?