I don’t know how many more times we can play this scenario out before we just call this what it is.
Every time violence escalates, every time bombs start dropping, every time politicians and pundits start rattling off about “necessary force” or “righteous defense,” there’s always someone who finds a way to bring God into it. Someone who implies or says outright that this violence is justified.
Necessary. Sacrificial. Even holy.
Every time I hear someone talk about “holy war,” something in me breaks. Not dramatically. But just sinks a little.
Because as pundits argue on television and post hot takes on twitter, real people are dying. Not soldiers on a battlefield. Innocent civilians. Children. Families. People who were just going about their day before it all became something more.
It’s time we’re blunt about this.
There is nothing holy about killing innocent people.
The Story We Keep Telling Ourselves
Human beings have been told a story. We learn it when we’re young and, chances are, it shows up everywhere you look for the rest of your life. Movies. History books. Sunday sermons. Arguments about the latest violence abroad.
It goes like this: Violence can be used for good. If we just direct enough force at something horrible long enough, we can make things right.
I know we want this to be true. I know it feels good to believe that story. It makes us feel like we have some control. That there’s some clean way to fight against evil.
Except when we look at the actual history of the world, that story falls apart.
Violence can stop something.
Violence can change who holds power.
But it doesn’t heal brokenness.
It doesn’t return what is lost.
It doesn’t bring the dead back to life.
It just makes more orphans.
Jesus Did Not Teach This
If political leaders are going to insist that we bring religion into all this, let’s be honest about what Jesus taught.
Jesus did not say violence can save us.
Jesus did not gather people to fight for power through force.
Jesus did not instruct his followers to go out and kill the right people so that peace would reign.
Jesus actually stood up in the middle of empire and said, with his life, that he refused to become like it.
He pushed back against authority.
He exposed evil.
He broke across boundaries people were told must never be broken.
When violence came for him, he didn’t inflict more violence in return.
This isn’t comfortable. That’s not how it works in modern politics. But it’s what we learn if we pay attention.
Violence is not how love acts.
When War Gets Called “Holy”
Here is where we get into dangerous territory.
When we start calling something like war “holy,” we stop examining our actions. We start thinking that our cause is already just because God is supposedly on our side. We look at the results of our actions and convince ourselves it doesn’t matter who gets hurt. After all, they will be blessed. They are dying for a holy cause.
That is how civilian deaths get explained away.
That is how children become “collateral damage.”
That is how entire communities get reduced to statistics.
Bless it all.
If you have to have innocent people die for your theology to make sense, then your theology is sickness in need of healing.
That dog will not hunt.
The People We Are Talking About
War is easy to talk about in broad strokes. Politics do that. Diplomacy does that. Concepts like “national interest” do that. They let us talk about “strategy” and “security” without looking too closely at who pays the price.
But war is not abstract to the people it actually impacts.
War is parents searching through rubble for their children’s bodies.
War is children who will never sleep alone again.
War is families that have to learn to go on when there is nothing familiar left.
This is not collateral damage. This is the heart of the matter.
If our theology cannot bear witness to the reality of those truths, if it cannot simply say such suffering is never ok, then I want nothing to do with it.
Why We Keep Falling for It
Another reason why this illusion persists is because it lets us avoid dealing with difficult questions.
When we claim war is holy, we don’t have to ask who is actually being killed. We don’t have to deal with the complicated issue of injustice. All we have to do is believe that somehow, God is going to make it okay.
There’s nothing tidy about killing people.
Violence leaves wounds. Psychological trauma. Generations of anger that will pass for that family, but not before another generation grows up beside it.
If violence were effective the way we tell ourselves it is, warfare would have solved all of its problems a long time ago.
But it hasn’t.
And it won’t.
A Faith That Refuses to Look Away
To believe violence can be holy is to believe evil can be righteous.
To confront that belief is not the same as sitting back and letting atrocities happen. It’s not the opposite of caring about oppression.
Calling something holy does not make it beautiful. Declaring violence is the work of God does not alleviate suffering.
Standing up to empire and saying that’s not what love looks like is how we refuse to look away.
It’s how we pay attention to the deaths of the innocent. It’s how we tell powerful people they can’t co-opt religious language to justify atrocities and expect us to stay quiet.
Our job is not to remain neutral. Our job is to stay human.
What Are We Actually Defending?
At some point, we have to ask ourselves the tough questions.
If we are defending violence.
If we are supporting it.
If we are giving it theological blessing… what are we actually defending?
Because if it means killing innocents?
If it means the death of children?
If it means terrorizing people who have never done us harm?
It’s not of God.
And if it’s not of God, maybe we should stop calling it faith.
