If God always agrees with our wars, we have not found God. We have created one.
There is a trend here. A dangerous one. And it’s happening again with the war with Iran.
What we’re hearing from President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth isn’t just talking about strategy and threats of war. It’s theological. Firm. Unquestionable. When they talk about this war with Iran it’s not so much policy, it’s theology. They believe God wants us to destroy Iran’s military. Maybe even Iran itself.
That matters. Because when war is couched in those terms, it becomes something that faith communities support rather than something we resist.
When Christian leaders talk about God when justifying potential strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities or threats to Iranian infrastructure or ominous warnings about Tehran, they aren’t merely making a case. They’re trying to end the debate. When God is on our side, questioning military strikes on Iranian targets becomes blasphemous. Dissent becomes treason. Caution becomes cowardice.
God has been used like that before.
It’s not biblical. If every side in every conflict believes that God is on their side, we have no reason to believe that claim about God at all. Iran’s leaders have used similar language about standing up to American aggression and resisting sanctions.
Two countries can’t both have God on their side all the time. When they do, God becomes something else. A tool to unify one group against another.
We know how that history ends.
Every empire has convinced itself that God is on their side. The Crusades. Manifest Destiny. Every American war in which soldiers have prayed on both sides and believers on both sides have believed they were morally justified and supported by God.
Believing didn’t make them right. It made them impossible to oppose.
We’re hearing the same language again as Trump tweets about missiles flying and sanctions about to rain down on Iran.
What gets lost in all that noise? The humanity of the Iranian people.
When we talk about military strikes on Iranian infrastructure, we’re not just talking about military bases. We’re talking about the electricity that powers people’s homes. Hospitals. Water facilities. Iranian parents trying to protect their children from harm. Millions of everyday Iranians going to work. Driving their kids to school that could be bombed. Eating dinner with their families. Living their lives under a government they probably didn’t vote for and a war none of us want.
Every time one of Trump's war-threatening tweets becomes reality, they will still live their lives to try to live.
But it’s easier not to think about them if we only see evil opponents. Not neighbors. Families.
Humanity has to be part of the conversation again. Not as weakness. But as truth. Humanity reminds us that Iranians are more than debate points. Actual humans. Empathy forces us to break Iranians out of the “enemy” category so we can treat them like human beings.
The very second we dehumanize other people, violence against them becomes easier.
But there’s a deeper issue at play here.
If God is on our side in every conflict that involves American interests, then the God we serve becomes remarkably similar to us. Our fears. Our interests. Our desires to win at all costs.
At that point, we’re not talking about God. We’re just talking about ourselves wrapped up in a God complex.
Faith that cannot critique American warcraft is faith that has surrendered. It’s been co-opted and used for purposes of violence and domination. That’s not faith. It’s imperialism wearing a cross.
This is the danger of it all. Framing war as this religious mission that can never be questioned. Lobbying the church for support based not on real theological or moral reasoning but on dragging God into the discourse and making the war too sacred for anyone to question.
Imagine how powerful our faith would be if we actually did that. If we brought God into these conversations and actually questioned war because of our faith?
It starts by refusing to accept the premise.
Refusing to assume that any nation, including our own, has automatic divine backing in its actions against Iran. Refusing to confuse military strength with moral rightness. Refusing to let religious language do the work that honest moral thinking is supposed to do.
Faith that wraps itself around war without questioning it becomes another tool of violence.
If invoking God means anything, it should mean we tread more lightly. More careful with life. More cognizant of the bloody costs that our leaders are so cavalier with tweeting about. More aware of our capacity to do evil in God’s name, not less.
Life is at stake here. American and Iranian lives.
War is never helpful. But when Christians start making war sounds like a prayer request, we’ve sold our soul for a set of spiritual war paints.
God’s either with the poor. Or God isn’t God at all. Which means God isn’t with us either. No empire has ever had God on their side. We create those gods to serve our purposes and call them divine.
May we have the courage to believe something different. May we fight for the lives of Iranians as if their lives depended on it. Because they do.
