A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

by Brian Zahnd

In my long and winding journey, I’ve come to understand that to live gently in a violent world is part of the counterculture of following Christ.

If my views on violence have changed—and they have—the blame falls squarely on Jesus!

It’s not enough to believe in Jesus; we also have to believe in the Jesus way! (For that matter, I’m not quite sure what it means to “believe in Jesus” without believing in the Jesus way.) If we don’t believe in the Jesus way, we won’t know the things that make for peace.

To even suggest that Jesus doesn’t necessarily endorse every aspect of Jeffersonian democracy and laissez-faire capitalism is enough to get you burned at the stake (hopefully only in a metaphorical sense).

What if Jesus has no interest in endorsing some other political agenda because he has his own?!

If Jesus is relegated to the hyperspiritualized role of personal Savior, then we are free to pledge our political allegiance to the latest incarnation of empire. This is why Christians from the days of Constantine onward have been so pliable in the hands of beasts. We should think deeply upon the fact that the Nazi blitzkriegs were waged by baptized soldiers. Had the church held to pre-Constantine convictions, Hitler would never have gotten off the ground. Before we appeal to Hitler as the ultimate argument against Christian nonviolence, we first have to ask how Hitler was able to amass a following of Christians in the first place. After all, it wasn’t atheists and pagans who formed the German Christian movement that lent support to Hitler in the 1930s.

Conniving politicians may say, “It’s the economy, stupid,” but Jesus says, “No. It’s how you care for the indigent and infirm; it’s how you treat the immigrant and imprisoned.”

Babylon is still among us, but Babylon is always falling. The new gravity of grace will not allow modern Babylons to stand for long. Winning the game, being a superpower, having the biggest army or the most robust economy is not what matters. Not anymore. What matters now is love and mercy, especially for the weak, the disadvantaged, and the marginalized.

In the end all empires have an expiration date. God decrees their demise lest they “rise to possess the earth or cover the face of the earth with cities.” Babylon and New Jerusalem seek the same thing, but they go about it in completely different ways—one is beastly, the other is lamblike.

So politically I call for my nation to prioritize caring for the poor, the sick, the immigrant, and the imprisoned, and to renounce an ambition to dominate the world economically or militarily. I do this in the name of Jesus. I pledge no allegiance to elephants or donkeys, only to the Lamb. These are my politics for the simple reason that they are clearly the politics of Jesus. Jesus says so! Are you good with that? Or do your partisan political allegiances make it hard for you to accept the politics of Jesus? If so, you have some thinking to do.

Who worships Mars anymore? Today, Roman statues of Mars are found only in museums. I’ve never heard anyone invoke the name of Mars in prayer. So Mars is a has-been god, right? Hardly. Mars is still very much with us (though living under an assumed name). Wherever war is given sanctity in the name of God, Mars is there. Wherever military might is wedded with religious rhetoric, Mars is there. Wherever the symbols of faith morph into the emblems of war, Mars is there. Mars is not dead. Mars lives on. Mars is alive and well in our day. I’ve even been to a modern temple of Mars.

Inside there were stained-glass windows, wooden pews, a communion table, a pulpit, Bibles, and hymnals. It was obviously intended as a Christian house of worship. But what arrested my attention the moment I entered was the nearly fifty-foot “cross” that hung above the altar. I put the word in quotes because though it hung where a cross would be expected and it was no doubt intended to remind the worshipper of a cross, it wasn’t a cross. It was a sword. This enormous aluminum “cross” had a propeller for a hilt and a metal blade with a central ridge and a tapered point. It was not a cross. It was a sword! I was stunned. Angry even. The cross of Christ had been replaced by a sword of war. This is no insignificant thing.

The cross was also the place where Jesus would refound the world. Instead of being arranged around an axis of power enforced by violence, at the cross Jesus rearranged the world around an axis of love expressed in forgiveness. Jesus would not torture and kill his enemies; he would be tortured and killed … and forgive his enemies. Jesus subverted the cross. The Roman Empire used the cross to communicate how ruthlessly it would eliminate its enemies. Jesus used the cross to communicate that there was no one to be eliminated. Forgiveness, not elimination, is the message of the Christian cross.

Why are followers of Christ called to carry their own cross? So we can bring about righteousness by torturing and killing our enemies? No! Jesus has transformed the cross. Christians carry the cross because we are willing, at any moment, to imitate our Lord by dying at the hands of our enemies rather than perpetuating the cycle of fear and violence. This was how Jesus subverted a Roman military implement and turned it into the definitive symbol of the Christian faith. Because of Christ and his resurrection, the Roman cross no longer represents torture and death. It now represents love and forgiveness. Jesus used an implement of violence and war to offer the world an alternative to violence and war.

The question “What are you willing to die for?” is not the same question as “What are you willing to kill for?” Jesus was willing to die for that which he was unwilling to kill for. Jesus won his kingdom by dying, not killing. Ruling the world by killing was buried with Christ. When Christ was raised on the third day, he did not resurrect war. With his resurrection the world is given a new trajectory, an eschatology toward peace.

War is a thing of the past. War is anachronistic. War is regression. War is a pledge of fealty to a bloody past. War is a sacrament offered to Mars. War is a repudiation of the lordship of Christ. The followers of Christ must lead the way in imagining something better than war.

The fall of communism had more to do with prayer meetings in Poland than bombs dropped on Cambodia. War is, among other things, impatience.

With the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, the kingdom of God has come—and it is a peaceable kingdom. It’s time for the lion to lay down with the lamb. War belongs to the previous age governed by the satan. The age to come, inaugurated in Christ’s resurrection, is an age where war is abolished, peace reigns, and spears are set aside for pruning hooks.

Peri and I were walking through the Denver airport when I noticed a mural. It was Leo Tanguma’s “The Children of the World Dream of Peace.” I had walked past that mural dozens of times and somehow never noticed it. The mural is an artistic celebration of Isaiah’s hopeful dream that some day peace will prevail, that the plow really can replace the sword, that children can inherit a world without war. In the colorful mural, children dressed in native folk costume and paired with their historic national enemies are bringing swords to the center of the mural where they are being beaten into plowshares. Pakistanis and Indians. Iraqis and Iranians. Chinese and Tibetans. Americans and Russians. Israelis and Palestinians. The children have wrapped swords in their national flags, and together, they carry the swords to where they will be transformed into plowshares. At the bottom of the mural lies a broken statue of a grotesque figure of war clutching a broken gun. Next to the fallen statue is a cracked tombstone bearing the inscription: “War. Violence. Hate.” Curling across the top of the mural is a banner that has the word peace in twelve languages. This was Isaiah’s dream. The dream Christians claim is coming true in Christ.