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

by Brian Zahnd

Jesus Christ and his peaceable kingdom are the hope of the world.

Conscripting Jesus to a nationalistic agenda creates a grotesque caricature of Christ that the church must reject—now more than ever!

Easter Sunday is nothing less than the triumph of the peaceable kingdom of Christ.

Christian happiness is based in the conviction that because of the accomplishments of Christ, the future is a friend.

Without an anticipated end that justifies God’s act of creation itself, happiness is mostly a form of escapist fantasy.

They will point out that the world has seen plenty of atrocities since the advent of Christ. Indeed. But what skeptics often fail to realize is that it is precisely because of Calvary that we call these things atrocities and not normalcy. Without the life of Christ, would we call massacres and genocides atrocities, or would we call them just the way things are? Did the pagan world have the ethical resources to produce what has come to be known as “human rights”? Now I’m the one who is skeptical! In the pre-Christian pagan world, what we now call atrocities were largely seen as simply the triumph of the strong over the weak, the way of nature, the way things ought to be.

The peacemaker stands against the crowd. The peacemaker is the one who tries to create space for mercy and truth.

The Passover crowd shouted, “Hosanna!” (“Save now!”) until it realized that Jesus wouldn’t save them by killing their enemies; then it shouted, “Crucify him!”