Bishop-Elect Robert Barron Makes the Same Point All the Time

Like, f’rinstance here:

What is striking to me is how many postmoderns, both atheist and Christian, are Marcionites. Marcion was a second century heretic who saw the God of the Old Testament, not as the Father, but as the enemy of Jesus: a bloodthirsty killer Jesus came to deliver us from.

Many atheists take a similar approach–except that in their hatred of all things religious they seen Jesus as either failing or as sharing in the bloodlust what with his warnings of hell and such.

Meanwhile, many a Christian takes a view the gospel that seeks to subordinate its counsels of non-violence to a desire to return to Bronze Age pagan standards of warfare.  In this telling the evil god is the wimpy liberal non-violent Jesus, who is constantly shooed from the stage so that we can be constantly reminded that Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers that one time and that he also once said, “Something something a sword” at the Last Supper, thereby pronouncing a benediction on the second amendment, the NRA, and every red-blooded Christian prepared to carry out the commandment, “If somebody strikes you on the right cheek, blow his head off!  You have a right to stand your ground and protect your family and property!”

Here, for instance, is a notice from one of the countless Mars worshippers of the rightwingosphere to the ISIS bogeymen prowling the dark alleys of their imagination:

It is accompanied with this helpful explanation:

The most deadly mistake jihadists make is assuming that Obama’s weak leadership represents the resolve of Americans. 

We are heavily armed.. well trained, and when you bring the battle to our home turf, those rules that have tied the hands of our soldiers on your turf, DO NOT APPLY HERE.. 

We do not fear you.. 

We will not submit to you.

We will not peacefully stand by and allow you to succeed with civilization jihad on our soil.

Our nation.. our rules..

I AM…
WE are..
the INFIDELS.. your Imams warned you about.. 

Prescinding from the fact that just last month these same people were saying that Obama was not weak, but was in fact a diabolically powerful tyrant whose sinister Operation Jade Helm was the opening salvo in a war to take over the American Southwest, Take All the Guns, and subjugate good white men and women his his vast FEMA shariah re-education/breeder camps, what matters here is the translation:

Just war is for pansies.  We are longing for an excuse to completely lose our minds and souls to utter barbarism, go apeshit with mindless violence, and yet be able to tell ourselves we are actually heroes.

All this is trillion light years from the gospel and the customary thing to say when this is pointed out is that preachers of non-violence do not live in “the real world”.

Right. Because reality is totally to be found in the fantasy that portly suburbanites with private arsenals hunting Ayrabs on the streets of Bugtussle Oklahoma will lead to a Renaissance of American Greatness.  Jesus was just a pie-in-the-sky fantasist.  So were his gutless, unmanly apostles who went to their deaths with encouragements like:

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice in so far as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are reproached for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or a wrongdoer, or a mischief-maker; yet if one suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but under that name let him glorify God. For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God? ¶ And
“If the righteous man is scarcely saved,
where will the impious and sinner appear?”
Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will do right and entrust their souls to a faithful Creator. (1 Pe 4:12–19).

Barron and Wright are simply right.  So is Chesterton when he says, “The gospel has not been tried and found wanting.  It has been found difficult and left untried.”

I propose we try it.