The Harmless Holy War of Jesus Christ

 Taking of Jerusalem by the Crusaders by Emile Signol

So, what's wrong with this picture? Well! It's certainly not the technique. The technique is stunning: look at the masterfully blended visual fields and the wealth of realistic detail. But what else do we see? The thing that sort of jumps out at you is the smoking buildings in the background and the dead bodies everywhere.

Wow! Is this a Holy War or what! But actually, there is nothing holy about it, and a true Holy War has nothing to do with painting the town red at all, let alone doing so literally. This is more what a Holy War looks like, but more collective in its scope: 

Proverbs 16:32 - King James Version (KJV)

<32> He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.

Let me just share a few extracts from a several decades later account of the Jerusalem massacre: 

"No mercy was shown to anyone, and the whole place was flooded with the blood of the victims"... 

"It was impossible to look upon the vast number of the slain without horror; everywhere lay fragments of human bodies, and the very ground was covered with the blood of the slain. It was not alone the spectacle of headless bodies and mutilated limbs strewn in all directions that roused horror in all who gazed upon them. Still more dreadful was it to gaze upon the victors themselves, dripping with blood from head to foot, an ominous sight which brought terror to all who met them"...

These extracts come from the pen of William of Tyre, a scribe whom one encountered in Norman Cantor's Middle Ages text anthology -- a highly satisfying compilation, by the way -- and they essentially burned themselves into my retinas.

How could someone be so brutishly cruel and stupid as to imagine that Christ wanted them to paint Jerusalem red with the blood of its inhabitants and then steal their houses and everything they had? How could someone so completely miss the point and extinguish their conscience to such an extent that they literally slaughtered people in the name of the Prince of Peace! But this is what they did, these endarkened murderers, in the name of our Lord. True Holy War is the opposite of what those brutish and utterly uncompassionate people known as "Crusaders" did; just as it is the opposite of their like in another guise who drowned and burned people alive in the name of Jesus; which is to practice human sacrifice and the utter inversion of love of God and the neighbor, aka Hell on earth! 

But as to real Holy War, that is "wise as serpents and harmless as doves."

And that:

"I will not cease from mental fight, 

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, 

Till we have built Jerusalem 

In England’s green and pleasant land" (William Blake, from <<Milton>>). 

And that: 

1 John 4:18 - King James Version (KJV)

<18> There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

Does that mean that believers cannot act in a concerted way to improve the world and to put pressure on the powers of darkness in everyday life and at every level of society? It does not mean that believers cannot act; and firmly and surely act at that. It does mean that their action should not soak the world in blood and burn it with fire literally. Their action should involve every variety of active love in a knowing "war" against all evil in every guise and across society. Their action should cast out every Project Fear -- there are many of these! -- that it finds, and it should liberate every captive that is willing. True Holy War is not weak and it is not literally violent; it is something that the world desperately needs as the love dies in the hearts of humankind and as the light dies in their eyes. It is more important than people mostly begin to understand that there be a fresh infusion of love and order into human relations and civilization generally! 

Without love and order to replace the dying love and light of the previous dispensation, the world would unravel as to its will and understanding and descend into barbarism and darkness. Society after society would go mad, and cruelly mad at that, and rip apart everything decent and true and beautiful and good in its stampede for the very bottom and the depths of bestiality in human form.

We need a new order, and a new love underlying it; and that new order and new love are the same as Jesus ever was and ever will be. But one dispensation ceases to bring forth the desired fruit, and another nation must in its stead begin to do so; or all is not just figuratively but literally lost for this species amid its terrible crisis and spiritual plight. Nation by nation, people by people, society will unravel if it does not turn to a sufficient degree to Love and Order in person, Jesus Christ. 

Matthew 21:43 - King James Version (KJV)

<43> Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.

We live in a perilous and a deceitful time, a time in which the spiritual and natural stakes are very high; a time in which we can arrive at a society worth living in or crash and burn completely. We must take all of the Testaments seriously, because the Testaments connect our Father and His Heaven to earth and our species and mankind; and if we do not hear and do His Word we will have deprived all civilization of the one thing it needs above all else: the cornerstone which the Builders rejected, the Divine Human. 

Who is the Divine Human? The Divine Human is the Word with a sharp sword coming out of His mouth. And why were we given the Word? 

"From all this it is evident that when a person reads the Word heaven has the enjoyment of the wisdom it derives from the Word, and that at the same time the person is joined to heaven. This is the end for which such a Word has been given to mankind. From this it follows that if this means of joining together did not exist in the world the connection with heaven would perish, and with it all the good present in a person's will and all the truth in his understanding, and with these that essential human quality which enables one person to live in a community with another. Consequently evil and falsity would take possession of everything, as a result of which one community after another would be destroyed. For the situation would be like that when a person moves about in thick darkness and stumbles wherever he goes. It would be like that when the head is deranged and the body consequently behaves in a foolish and insane manner that leads to self-destruction. Or it would be like that when the heart is weak and internal organs and members consequently cease performing their functions until the whole is dead" (AC10452). 

I don't know about you, but the part which leaps out at me is the "one community after another would be destroyed" bit. I do not like the sound of this "destroyed". I like love and order to take the form of civilization on the outside; and the form of conjunction of charity and faith and with God and Heaven on the inside. Therefore, given the evident unraveling of civilization around us I urge people to fight in the harmless Holy War with the sword of the Word that comes out His mouth both within themselves and without, both singly and together, that we may severally avert a general descent into cruelty and madness on a planetary scale and with the extinction of our species as its result. 

(God forbid!) 

But it has happened before, on other worlds than our own. And it is His magnanimous and enlightened nobility expressing itself at every level of society, not just in some 'elite class' but among every class at every level, that will pluck us from that precipice and establish good order among us again. 

Let us not turn our eyes away from the natural and spiritual crisis upon us, neither let us shrink from the urgency of opposing all hate and darkness in ourselves and others. For they who are not with Him scatter abroad; and the times call for His nobility to well up in all races and nations and peoples and classes, or we will drown in darkness and blood, hate and selfishness, unravelling at the seams. 

In the words of the poet Dylan Thomas, let us:

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light!"

Let us 'rage' too against the dying of the heat. 

Let us turn to Him, and He will order everything aright both for us individually and for our entire species.

Matthew 6:25 - King James Version (KJV)

<25> Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

But when we turn to the meat that comes from above and is the eating of His will, the making of love a part of ourselves, and when we turn to the wine that comes from above and is the drinking of His understanding, then do we have a chance in Hell of coming out of this planetary crisis and into a new, civilized normal patterned after the love and light of God. May it even be so, and may God help us at this tumultuous time. Pray for our planet! Pray for our species! Pray for us all. 

Amen.

Appendix: ""It is indeed possible that the human race on one earth may perish, which comes to pass when they separate themselves entirely from the Divine, for then man no longer has spiritual life, but only natural, like that of beasts; and when man is such no society can be formed, and held bound by laws, since without the influx of heaven, and thus without the Divine government, man would become insane, and rush unchecked into every wickedness, one against another.... It was said to me from heaven, that the human race on this earth would have perished, so that not one man would have existed on it at this day, if the Lord had not come into the world, and on this earth assumed the Human, and made it Divine; and also, unless the Lord had given here such a Word as might serve for a basis to the angelic heaven, and for its conjunction" (Last Judgment 10)."