Is Christianity a Pacifistic Religion?

[SteveII]

[vorlon13]

[vorlon13]

Ejaculating into a child's rectum doesn't seem very pacifistic to me either.

[Minimalist]

Now Dripshit is pretending that his ridiculous godboy was a lawyer.

[Angrboda]

[Drich]

Christianity isn't about judging action but the reason for the actions. it does you shall not murder, but it does not say you shall not kill. The action in both murder and killing as it pertains to the law is the taking of human life. But to murder is to take a life on your own accord having your own reasons.. Killing is the taking of a human's life within the social frame work of a given society. So it is ok to take a life so long as the reason jives with the social law.

So, for all your huffing and puffing about "pop morality", God -- the source of all moral good and the giver of divine commands regarding how we ought to live -- prohibits murder (which is a moral truism, since it contains within itself the concept of wrongdoing) but gives a pass to killing that is in accordance with "social law" -- i.e., pop morality.

Lol, ok.

now take it one more step back (which pulls us one step away from pop morality) is we can find atonement even if we commit murder, that our righteousness is not based on the law.

The law... that is for you guys who are unsaved to push you towards atonement, where the law ceases to be a measure of any kind.

What replaces the law? Agape'/love. Love for God love for your neighbor.

[SteveII]

[Neo-Scholastic]

For everything there is a season.  A time for war, and a time for peace.

I don’t think that this passage, is saying, that you have to be a pacifist in every situation. But that temperance is a virtue. I think that perhaps a more biblical outlook, might be, not to seek revenge, rather than total pacifism.

Okay. Fine. But what about someone who sees pacifism as one of the ways they obey Christ? Would you say they have the wrong idea? Or would you see a commitment to pacifism as something that is perfectly in line with Christ's teachings?

My ancestors were Quakers and as such were pacifists. They left England because they refused to fight in the English civil wall and persecuted for that stance. They didn't participate in the revolutionary war and cared for the wounded of both sides without prejudice. As abolitionists living in the South Carolina, they avoided participating in the American Civil War by moving to Illinois. I try not to judge the difficult decisions of people in the distant past, particularly decisions on a scale I've never had to face. Nevertheless, letting evil persist and spread seems like shirking an important duty. So personally, despite their noble convictions, I think they got this one wrong. IMO the verses about "turning the other cheek" speak more about actively reaching out and confronting those who are against you with generosity (giving them your second coat, etc) rather than letting yourself be victimized and walking away.

[Angrboda]

[vulcanlogician]

My point to Vulcan was that while he implied that Christians have this long history of connection to war, that is really not the case. Religions might be a factor, but hardly any war EVER, especially in Europe was about religion in any primary way. It is always about way more than that. There are very good pragmatic reasons to put a religious face on a war that the leaders know is about something else (popular support, whipping up the troops, financing etc.). It's not hard to figure out the real reasons. See my original post with the links.  I think my post said like 7% had religion as a primary reason and half of them were Islamic wars. Seems to me it is only echo chamber atheist propaganda that Christianity is responsible for so many wars.

But you missed my point which was not to say that Christianity caused wars. I made a claim right out of the gate- Christianity is not pacifist in practice. What evidence do I have that supports this claim? Religious wars. Boom. Claim supported.

The only other part of my post where I brought up war-mongering again was just in case any Christians agreed that Christianity is supposed to be pacifist. None of you do, so moot point.

I can understand why you might have hopped to the defense you did because I have on multiple occasions railed against religion for its propensity to cause divisions between people that can (and do) lead to war.

But this time, it was a mere case-and-point to the claim that Christianity is not pacifistic in practice. It's a rather uncontroversial claim.

Thanks for responding to the question and, I will respond in more detail to your earlier post soon.