“Killing in the name of,” Killing in the name or Spirit of God is for the ignorant. We as Christians ignore the critiques of our society and write them off as those who would oppose us. However, they are calling us to the standard that we hold, the beautiful message of Jesus Christ. We in the West live in an era where our voices can be used and our lives are not threatened for proclaiming a merciful and loving God. It seems that the atheist and the agnostics understand the message of Jesus much clearer than many of us who profess to follow him. These critics call us to follow the teachings of our founder, their voices call us to practice radical grace, and yet we insist upon justifying our violence, in the name of a wonderful God. Jesus took our violence upon himself to bring about his kingdom of peace, not the peace through violence, but in spite of it. “We have got the American Jesus, see him on the interstate,” says Greg Graffin from punk rock band, Bad Religion. Greg points out our hypocrisy for what it is and calls us towards a higher ground. When will we start following the wonderful teachings of Jesus? When will we stop mindlessly following our cultural Jesus and start living with in the rhythm of the prophet from Nazareth?

During the first 3 century’s A.D. Christians where a minority cult that was tragically persecuted by the Caesars of Rome. These early followers of Jesus died in order to continue following the teachings of Jesus. While the Roman Emperor, Constantine was praying before a battle, he thought he saw the sign of the cross in the sun’s rays and believed he was told by God to conquer his enemies by this sign, the sign of the cross. He then won the battle he chose to convert to the Christian faith and began going to war in the name of Jesus! This must have been an absolutely stunning turn of events that would have evoked much confusion and bitter sweet for the followers of Jesus during the 3^rd century. They must have been over joyed to be granted religious freedom on one hand, and enraged to see the teachings of Jesus greatly miss understood by the Emperor and the new multitude of followers. Killing in the name of Jesus would have made no sense at all and been an absolute irony of the worst kinds for the original flowers. This act of just war, conquest and violence where never apart of the early followers of Jesus. The early church where victims of these systemic evils, but not perpetrators of it. The only thing worse than being victims of the violence would be to do it in the name of Jesus.