Christian Militias--Enough Already

It’s Maundy Thursday. This celebrates the night Christ ate his last Seder and proclaimed himself to be the new Passover Lamb. He also instituted the Christian sacrament of the Mass (or communion) in which Christians celebrate his sacrifice by ceremonially eating his body (bread) and drinking his blood (wine).
Another Christian tradition that comes from the night of the “Last Supper” is the ceremonial washing of feet. Even the Pope is expected to kneel and wash the feet of those around him, like a servant, as Christ washed his followers’ feet.
So it’s a significant day on the Christian calendar—celebrating sacrificial blood, death, humility and obedience. It celebrates the day God tried to make it clear to men that he was coming after them, since they no longer knew how to reach out to him.
He failed. In the midst of the Seder, while he was trying to explain that his kingdom was essentially a peaceful kingdom, his followers interrupted and asked, “Is this the day that you restore the kingdom to Israel?” They meant the violent overthrow of Roman government.
They have imitators today. Last weekend the FBI arrested nine “Christian Militia” types in southern Michigan, Indiana and Ohio for plotting to violently overthrow the American government. Their scheme started with the plan to kill one, or a few, police officers.
Then, when hundreds of cops bunched up for a funeral procession, they would set off more bombs to kill those hundreds. This, the Christian Militia—calling themselves “Hutaree”—believed would set off a vast bloodbath in which they would help Christ overthrow the anti-Christ and violently establish his kingdom on earth.
This is only a two thousand year old misunderstanding. Militiamen quote Christ who told his followers to carry swords and money now that he was leaving, forgetting that when the apostles, all too eagerly, showed him they had their swords, he said, “Enough, enough already.” They had missed his point entirely, like the militiamen did.
One of his over eager followers took a miserably aimed whack at the high priest’s servant, merely cutting off his ear. Christ stopped, already under arrest, and healed the poor man. Christians go on eagerly showing him that they have swords and are ready to wield them.
Entirely too many Christians have showed the attitude throughout the centuries—“Do we restore the kingdom now?!? Whoopee, where’s my sword, my AK-47 and my M-16? Where’s the rack and iron maiden? Wheeeeee!”
No, Christians do not restore the kingdom. HE does. He says clearly he doesn’t do it with bombs and automatic rifles (or swords and lances). He does it with his WORD. The same Word that John 1:1 says created the entire cosmos.
Christian writ and doctrine clearly states that when anti-Christ finally is destroyed, it will be done with the “sword of his MOUTH”—his “word”. We’ll just be along for the ride, sans swords, guns, bombs or any other implement of violence.
But, how do we go out and evangelize after an event like this weekend? Accept Christ as your savior—and pick up your assault rifle on the way out? Nothing more negatively affects Christian evangelism that foolish people like the Hutaree Militia.
The very rafters of Hell must echo with diabolical laughter as these misguided “Christian soldiers” try to wage physical rather than spiritual warfare—and succeed only in gutting the true message of Christianity, reducing it to a malicious joke and telling the world that our God is so feeble he couldn’t possibly manage without our AK-47s..
Shakespeare—who may just possibly have edited the King James Bible—probably said it all in the words he wrote for Puck in “Midsummer Night’s Dream”: “What fools these mortals be”.