Is it ever Christian to kill someone — or have we just blessed every war we wanted to fight and called it God's will?

• RS

  Reese S.1w ago

  I served two tours in Afghanistan. I came home and sat in a pew for six months before I could make eye contact with a pastor without wanting to walk out. The church gave me zero — zero — theological framework for what I'd done or seen. Just 'thank you for your service' and a coffee mug. If this question isn't worth wrestling with seriously, I don't know what is.

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• J

  Jamie1w ago

  Y'all are out here writing dissertations and I'm just over here thinking about how Jesus wept before He raised Lazarus. He wept. Even knowing what He was about to do. I think whatever position you land on about violence, the posture has to start there — with grief, not with certainty.

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• R

  Ravi1w ago

  I'm Mennonite. We've been consistently pacifist since 1525. We're not idealists — we've paid for it in blood. Hundreds of us were executed for refusing to bear arms for state churches and empires. The 'but what about the real world' argument ignores that the real world has killed us for this position and we held it anyway. That's not naive. That's faith.

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• IK

  Iris K.1w ago

  I think Christians need to hold this in tension rather than resolve it. Maybe faithful discipleship sometimes means dying rather than killing. Maybe faithful civic participation sometimes means a Christian soldier acting under legitimate authority. Both can be true without collapsing into easy answers. I don't know. I've been a pastor for 22 years and I still don't know. Anyone who sounds fully certain about this probably hasn't sat with it long enough.

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• T

  Taylor1w ago

  Jesus told His disciples to sell their cloaks and BUY A SWORD. Luke 22:36. That's not metaphorical, that's a direct command. I'm so tired of pacifists treating the Sermon on the Mount like it's a foreign policy manual for a fallen world.

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• M

  Maya1w ago

  Bonhoeffer also wrestled with whether his actions were sinful and felt genuine guilt and uncertainty about them. He didn't claim a clean theological justification. He thought he might be taking on sin for the sake of others. That's a very different posture than 'Romans 13 proves I can shoot people for America.'

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• MT

  Maya T.1w ago

  Romans 13 was written under Nero. NERO. If Paul meant that Christians should always support and participate in whatever the state does with violence, then that argument self-destructs immediately. Context matters.

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• J

  Jamie1w ago

  This is the most honest thing in this entire thread. Just War theory as a concept: fine. Just War theory as actually practiced by actual nations: has failed every single test it was supposed to enforce. Proportionality? Noncombatant immunity? Last resort? We violated all three in my lifetime multiple times and the church mostly cheered.

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• I

  Iris1w ago

  I grew up in a denomination that basically baptized American military culture. Veterans were given special standing, we prayed for 'our troops' but never for civilians in the countries we were bombing, pastors wore flag pins, the whole deal. It took me until my 30s to realize how much of that was nationalism and how little was actually Scripture. Not saying all of it was wrong. Just saying we need to be honest about what's driving the conclusion.

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• R9

  Reese 921w ago

  So what's your plan when someone breaks into your house at 3am and your kids are down the hall? You gonna quote Origen at them? I respect the idealism but pacifism as a personal ethic and pacifism as a response to actual violence in real time are two completely different conversations.

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• K

  Kofi1w ago

  If you disagree with Christian pacifism, I genuinely want you to explain how you're comfortable with the fact that the church spent its first three centuries refusing to kill, and then within fifty years of getting state power it was executing heretics. What changed? The Scripture didn't. The Spirit didn't. Power did.

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• K

  Kofi1w ago

  what gets me is that Jesus healed the ear Peter cut off. like he literally repaired the damage done in his defense. that's not a small detail. that's Jesus making a point so obvious it's almost embarrassing.

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• F

  Feli1w ago

  Just War theory has been used to justify literally every war western civilization has ever fought. Every single one. At some point you have to ask whether the theory is functioning as a moral guardrail or a permission slip.

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• R

  Ravi1w ago

  So the answer is... what exactly? Let Hitler win because Jesus? At some point pure non-violence becomes a moral position that kills more people than it saves. Dietrich Bonhoeffer figured that out.

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• L

  Liam1w ago

  The question isn't really 'is killing ever permissible' — most traditions allow some version of self-defense or just war. The REAL question is who decides when a particular war qualifies. And the answer in practice is always: the people who want to fight it. That's the problem. The criteria are real, the application is captured.

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• L

  Liam1w ago

  the crusades were a war crime with a cross painted on it and anyone defending them should be embarrassed

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• S

  Sam1w ago

  Free rider problem? Really? So the Mennonites who were EXECUTED for their pacifism were free riders? Read what you wrote again.

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• CT

  Casey T.1w ago

  'Maturity.' Okay. Using state violence to kill people who disagree with your theology is maturity. Got it.

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• Y

  Yuki1w ago

  The commenter above is doing the classic thing where we shift from 'should Christians go to war' to 'should you protect your family' because the second one is emotionally easier to win. Those are not the same question.

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• R

  Riley1w ago

  Exactly this ^^. Bonhoeffer is consistently misused in this debate. He was not a confident just-war theorist. He was a man in an impossible situation making a tragic choice while mourning the fact that it WAS a tragic choice. That's closer to pacifism than most people realize.

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• H

  Hana1w ago

  ok but he also said 'put the sword away' literally seconds after Peter used one. you cant cherry pick the buy a sword verse and then ignore the immediate correction. that's not hermeneutics thats just vibes.

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• F

  Feli1w ago

  my grandfather stormed the beaches at Normandy and went to church every Sunday until he was 94. good man. never talked about the war. i think some things are just between a man and God and armchair theologians on the internet need to step back sometimes.

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• KL

  Kofi L.1w ago

  The sword out of His mouth is almost universally understood as the word of God not a literal weapon. And divine eschatological judgment is categorically different from human warfare. You can't import what God does at the end of history to justify what a soldier does on Tuesday.

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• Z_

  Zara _x1w ago

  no it means you haven't reduced the complexity of reality into a bumper sticker and that's actually a sign of intellectual honesty not weakness

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• JS

  Jamie S.1w ago

  This is an important point. There's a difference between a Christian ethic of violence and an American civil religion that gets called Christian. We conflate them constantly and it muddies the whole conversation.

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• I

  Iris1w ago

  Because Jesus was talking to individuals about personal ethics, not giving foreign policy instructions to governments. That distinction matters enormously and collapsing it leads to absurdities — should nations not have police? Should we not stop genocides?

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• N

  Noah1w ago

  Hard pacifism. Full stop. The early church for the first THREE CENTURIES refused military service almost categorically. Tertullian, Origen, Lactantius — all on record. It took Constantine to normalize Christian soldiers. If you want the pre-compromise position, you don't even need a theology degree, just a church history book.

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• NS

  Noah S.1w ago

  Also worth noting: Jesus told Pilate His kingdom is 'not of this world — if it were, my servants would fight.' The disciples were NOT supposed to fight to protect Him. Whatever that means for personal self-defense, it clearly means the Kingdom of God doesn't advance by the sword. Period.

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• D

  Diego1w ago

  lol that cuts both ways bro

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• N

  Noah1w ago

  I genuinely cannot understand how you read the Sermon on the Mount and arrive at 'Jesus is fine with Christians in special operations.' He said love your enemies. Not love your enemies unless they're a real threat or unless a nation-state asks you to shoot them.

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• O

  Omar1w ago

  With respect, 'hold it in tension' is the theological equivalent of 'agree to disagree' and it means nothing when a real person is pointing a real gun at something you love. Tension is a luxury of peacetime.

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• N

  Noah1w ago

  Augustine developed Just War theory in the 5th century specifically because the church NEEDED a coherent framework after Rome adopted Christianity and had to govern a real empire. It's not a post-hoc rationalization — it's a genuine attempt to apply moral reasoning to a world that doesn't run on pure eschatological hope. Read 'City of God' before you dismiss it.

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• T

  Taylor1w ago

  Genuine respect for the Mennonite tradition. But I'd ask — is pacifism only tenable for a minority community that relies on others using force to create the society where you can practice peacefully? There's a free rider problem here that I haven't heard a good answer to.

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• DB

  Drew B.1w ago

  What I find interesting is that nobody in this thread has mentioned Revelation 19 — Jesus returning as a conquering warrior on a white horse with a sword coming out of his mouth, judging and making war. The 'gentle Jesus' picture is incomplete. There IS a wrath of God and Jesus participates in it. Whether that translates to human ethics is a separate question but let's at least be honest about the full portrait.

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• R

  Reese1w ago

  Romans 13 is right there. The governing authorities bear the sword and they are God's servants. Paul could not be clearer. The state has legitimate coercive authority and Christians can participate in that authority with a clean conscience.

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• PB

  Priya B.1w ago

  Mixing two separate things — using force to defend populations from external threats, and using force to enforce doctrinal conformity. I agree the latter is indefensible. That doesn't automatically indict the former.

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• YK

  Yuki K.1w ago

  Nobody serious is defending the Crusades as an unqualified good. But using the Crusades to argue against all Christian use of force is like using the Inquisition to argue Christianity can never have a justice system. Bad applications don't invalidate the underlying principle.

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• R

  Reese1w ago

  What changed is that Christians went from being a persecuted minority with no civic responsibility to being citizens and eventually rulers of an empire with real obligations to real populations who needed protection. The ethics of responsibility change when you have responsibility. That's not corruption, that's maturity.

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• D

  Diego1w ago

  That verse is specifically about the nature of His kingdom not being a political revolution, not a blanket prohibition on force in all circumstances. You're universalizing a very specific statement.

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• J

  Jamie1w ago

  Man I love how everyone who comes to the 'killing is sometimes ok' conclusion gets accused of not reading their sources carefully enough. Maybe some of you have just decided the conclusion and are working backwards.

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• LB

  Liam B.1w ago

  Two different time periods being conflated there. Historical persecution is not the same as contemporary existence inside a liberal democracy protected by a military you refuse to participate in. Both things can be true at once.

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