Jesus the War-God

how did the prince of peace become a mascot for death?

Greg Laurie, a mega church pastor who was recently embroiled in a sex abuse cover-up, just appeared on TBN to reassure viewers that our violent assault on Iran would be used in God’s greater purposes.

The host cued up Laurie, saying, “We are living in bible times no doubt.”

Laurie responded, “Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if that could break out…if we could have a spiritual revolution in that nation and that we would see millions of Iranians turning to Christ. We’re already seeing it start.”

It is unclear to me how bombing a nation to smithereens and slaughtering hundreds of little girls in school could bring about a spiritual revival, but the host simply replied, “Amazing. As you said pastor Greg, it’s all coming full circle right now…”

The logic that Pastor Laurie is working with is the myth of redemptive violence. That patriarchal strength, dominant Western power, American aggression, military force, and the death of our enemies will somehow bring about the peace of God.

This logic no longer makes sense to me.

War does not bring awakening. It brings a languishing spiral of death and destruction that only leads to more hate, more violence. We are currently creating a future generation of people who (rightly) hate American imperialism—a generation of children Americans will one day call terrorists.

Yet the myth of redemptive violence fuels much of evangelical Christianity. I grew up being taught Reagan’s doctrine of “peace through strength,” and that it was God’s will for America to be a global superpower.

The sad reality is that for all of our warmongering over the centuries, American evangelicals have not opposed a single one. They haven’t even stood idly by. No, they have cheered them on from the front lines. In fact, without evangelical support, many of our wars would have been impossible. White evangelicals were the only religious group to offer majority support to the Vietnam war, and the primary driver for the war in Iraq as well. They’ve yet to meet an American war they didn’t like.

How did the prince of peace become a figurehead for a death cult?

It seems clear to me that the Jesus worshipped by many white American evangelicals has little resemblance to the Jesus of the gospels. He is a God of war, designed to justify our need to dominate.

I can say this confidently, because I grew up worshiping this violent, patriarchal Jesus.

I have a confession.

There was a time when I liked Mark Driscoll.

Okay, I loved him.

I was introduced to Driscoll when I was 19, a student at Bob Jones University, one of the most conservative colleges in the country. Since the Christianity Today podcast series The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, Driscoll has been rightly vilified as an abusive manipulator, but in the early 2000’s he was perceived by many young evangelicals as the future of our movement: he boldly stood for orthodox doctrine without sacrificing cultural savvy.

early 2000s Pastor Mark—the bad boy of evangelicalism

It’s hard to express without deep embarrassment how cool many of us thought Mark was.

For me, surrounded as I was by hopelessly backwards fundamentalists who didn’t know anything about pop culture, music, or movies, Driscoll was a breath of fresh air. Every speaker at Bob Jones wore a full suit, but Driscoll preached in jeans and a T-shirt. At Bob Jones, I could get expelled for having a single sip of alcohol, but Driscoll frequently talked about drinking beer. He even said an occasional cuss word.

But despite his ‘regular guy’ aesthetic, he (seemingly) knew his Bible better than most fundamentalists, and his preaching did not hold back. Many of his sermons were over an hour long, and contained many references to sin, wrath, hell, and the blood of Jesus.

Driscoll showed a generation of young Christians that we could be “faithful” to God’s inerrant word without looking like total dweebs, and we loved him for it.

Above all, Driscoll was unapologetically faithful to the patriarchal, violent God of white American Christianity.

Mark talked a lot about Jesus, and yet it is clear to me now that he didn’t really like the Jesus of the gospels at all. He had a version of Jesus he loved, that he talked about a lot—the apocalyptic Jesus of Revelation 19.

Jesus the war God.

This extreme, hyper-stylized “war Christ” is the Jesus Mark would turn to most frequently:

I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. 12 His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. 13 He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. 14 The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. 15 Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.” He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:

KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.

- Revelation 19:11-18

Here’s how Driscoll described his favorite version of Jesus, with what can only be described as homoerotic glee:

“In Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.”

Unlike the Jesus of the gospels, who enters Jerusalem humbly, riding on a donkey, proclaiming peace, this Jesus rides in on a white warhorse to slaughter his enemies.

Never mind the fact that most scholars believe the sword “coming out of his mouth” is a symbol that Jesus does not conquer by physical power, coercion, dominance, and violence, but rather with his word—which was always a word of love, grace, and mercy. Jesus unthrones empire through bold truth telling, dismantling lies, and reimagining the world with a new story rooted in compassion, not domination.

In fact, all of this imagery is metaphorical.

It is significant that Jesus is wearing a bloody robe before the symbolic battle of Armageddon begins—Jesus is not drenched in the blood of his enemies, but in his own blood. The blood is symbolic of his sacrificial love for all—a love stronger than death, that refuses hate or dehumanizing anybody. Throughout the rest of the book of Revelation, the primary image for Jesus is not of a warlord, but of a slain lamb.

This twist that Mark hyper-fixates on—this “prize-fighter Jesus”—is exceptional precisely because it reveals something deeper: that Jesus’ seeming weakness is true strength.

Revelation is using violent imagery to heighten the irony and surprise. The might of empire—Rome, Babylon, and any oppressive system that tramples vulnerable people—will ultimately fall, not merely to the strength of a bigger army, but to the power of sacrificial love itself. In the end, it is the lamb who will reign as king—the servant of all will be Lord of all. The message is not that Jesus will embrace the powers of death, but that love was always stronger than the powers of death. To say that he will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God is to say that the destroyers of this world will meet their end, and that love will have the final say.

The world will be judged by its failure to love, and the meek truly will inherit the earth. These images do not depict the triumph of redemptive violence, but the triumph of sacrificial love.

This is how Jesus wins—how he always wins—not by killing, but by loving unto death.

To miss this, you have to ignore Jesus’ entire life, ministry, and ethical teaching, where he pointed us to this truth over and over.

Matthew 20:28: “...just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

John 15:13: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

As the Roman soldiers were nailing him to the cross, Jesus did not warn them that he was going to come back to make them bleed, instead he prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

Jesus reveals a God who would rather die for their enemies than kill them—any interpretation of the Revelation 19 Jesus on his white horse has to fit with the Jesus actually revealed in the Gospels.

Unfortunately, this violent vision of Jesus is still popular in some of the most influential evangelical churches.

For example, pastor Phillip Anthony Mitchell, pastor of 2819 church, currently attracts lines around the block that form hours before the service even starts as congregants rush in for the best view of pastor Mitchell’s brand of aggressive, violent, fear-based preaching.

Just like pastor Mark, pastor Mitchell prefers the bloody God of Revelation to the meek and lowly Jesus of history. Here’s what he said in a recent sermon:

“You’ve got to answer what you’re going to do with [Jesus]. You’ll either meet him now as a loving savior, or you’ll meet him later as a wrathful judge. Revelation says he’s coming back to make war. Ain’t no more baby in a manger. No, the next time he comes, his eyes are like a blazing fire, he’s gonna tread out the wrath of god against all ungodliness and unrighteousness. What will you do with Jesus?

…You’ve gotta answer that question, or your death will answer that question.”

For Driscoll and Mitchell, the blood-soaked Jesus of Revelation represents a departure from the gentle Jesus of the gospels—“ain’t no more baby in a manger!”

And this version of Jesus, despite appearing in just one or two obviously metaphorical passages, becomes the controlling image of Jesus for many Christians.

It’s a God-and-country Jesus who blesses our wars.

But in context, even this violent imagery is telling a very different story. It tells us that in a world obsessed with domination—power over others—those dominators will never be able to sustain their grip.

I’m reminded of this quote from Andor, the anti-fascist Star Wars TV show:

“The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle.”

Love will win. It is stronger than death. That’s the message of Revelation, and the message of the resurrection of Jesus.

Right now, pastors like Laurie, Driscoll, and Mitchell are unlikely to prophetically stand against the American empire as we bomb civilians in an unjust war. They are too busy drooling over the possibility of the end times, the death of their enemies, and the spread of their supremacist gospel.

A gospel that endorses war is not the gospel of Jesus. It’s a gospel used to underwrite death and uphold the hierarchies of domination. The reality is that the American war machine is not represented by Jesus in the book of Revelation, but by the beast. The beast of Revelation has a false prophet to give its bloodshed with a divine stamp of approval—the church of America sadly seems content to play this role.

Because the Jesus who rode into Jerusalem on a donkey—the Jesus who forgave his executioners and laid down his life for his enemies—did not come to baptize our wars, he came to end them.

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If you appreciated this essay, you will love my book, Hell Bent: How the Fear of Hell Holds Christians Back from a Spirituality of Love.

It’s about reclaiming the Spirituality of Jesus, which was a way of love for the sake of this world, not escaping to the next. The Gospel is so much better than many of us were taught.