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| And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet... Matthew 24 |
For a man supposedly intent on winning a Nobel Peace Prize, Donald Trump spends an extraordinary amount of time and American taxpayer money waging war, threatening to wage war, and being a faithful servant of his fellow Casino Billionaire Miriam Adelson, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, and the Military Industrial Complex.
The Brookings Institution’s infamous 2009 report “Which Path to Persia?: Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran” examines U.S. and Israeli policy options for dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, The options are grouped into four categories:
- Diplomacy: Persuasion, combining incentives and sanctions; pure Engagement
- Military: full out invasion, U.S. airstrikes on nuclear sites, or allowing/encouraging Israeli Airstrikes
- Regime change: supporting a popular uprising, backing ethnic insurgencies, or aiding a military coup
- Containment accepting a nuclear Iran while deterring its use and limiting its influence
Notwithstanding Trump's dubious claims about having ended “seven wars,” Trump, now in his second term as President of the United States has continued to squander the American people’s resources and international moral standing by feeding the military-industrial complex’s insatiable appetite for war—preemptively stealth bombing nuclear facilities in Iran, blowing up alleged "Drug Boats" in off Venezuela's Caribbean coastal or international waters, and flexing military muscle at every opportunity.
Even the Trump administration’s version of “peace through strength” must be filtered through a prism of violence, intimidation and strongman bully tactics.
Trump's version of Pax Americana, worships the god of forces; this is the gospel of the global projection of power, not benevolent peace—a perversion of both Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as well as the U.S. Constitution.
Thus we find ourselves at our current perplexing crossroads: a president hailed by his multitude of Fox News followers as an “imperfect vessel” chosen by God to "save the church" and restore Christianity—while they turn a blind eye to photos of "The Donald" in the presence of Jeffrey Epstein with blotted out facial images of young girls, not to mention his well documented record of adultery, deceit, greed, cruelty, and an almost religious devotion to vengeance and violence. Never mind the Holy Scriptures instructions of:
"To me belongeth vengeance, and recompense...For the LORD shall judge his people"
Deuteronomy 32:35-36 &
"Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay saith the LORD."
Romans 12:19
If anything captures Trump’s grandiose, yet petty worldview, it is the AI-generated video he shared on social media: a grotesque fantasy of himself wearing a golden crown, flying a military fighter jet, and bombing a crowd of protesters with brown liquid feces.
This is the man who claims to be “saving God”?
Dismissed by his devoted base as harmless humor—a cheeky response to the millions nationwide who took part in the “No Kings” protests on Oct. 18—Trump’s crude fantasy of assaulting critics with fecal bombs nevertheless begs the question:
Who would Jesus our "Sar Shalom, or Prince of Peace" bomb, beyond sharing his eternal "Truth Bombs?"
That question, of course, is meant less literally than spiritually.To answer it, we must first understand who Messiah Yeshua, aka Jesus Christ of Nazareth truly is: a profound teacher of the Torah, a prophet and eternally faithful lamb, and son of God—who was born into a remote outpost of the Roman Empire, not unlike the growing internal and international menace of America’s own "Donroe Doctrine" global military superpower, and emerging police state; in what has long been the country with the highest percentage of incarceration worldwide, with increasingly for profit corporate "correctional" prison facilities.
When he came of age, Jesus had powerful, profound things to say about justice, power and how we are to relate to one another. “Blessed are the merciful,” “Blessed are the peacemakers,” “Love your enemies.”
A revolutionary in both spirit and action, Jesus not only died challenging the dominant military power of his day—the Roman Empire—but left behind for countless generations a blueprint for resisting tyranny that has guided countless reformers, non-violent libertarians and freedom fighters ever since.
Far from being the sanitized, domesticated figure presented in modern Christian churches, Jesus was a profoundly wise, and spiritually powerful nonconformist who never lacked the courage to challenge authority, be it governmental, or especially religious at every turn. He spoke truth to power, defied political and religious hierarchies, and exposed the hypocrisy that flourished two thousand years ago.
Jesus rejected politics as a means to salvation. For Him, faith was not about seizing power but serving others—helping the poor, showing mercy even to enemies, and embodying peace, not war. He did not seek political favor or influence; He actively undermined it.
That is not to say He was passive. Jesus knew righteous anger. He turned over the tables of the money changers in the Temple because they had turned faith into profit and worship into spectacle.
Yet even in anger, He refused to wield violence as a tool of redemption. When His own arrest approached, He rebuked His followers: “Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.”
The Beatitudes summarize His message: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.” And when asked to name the greatest commandment, He answered simply: to love God with all one’s being and to love one’s neighbor as oneself.
In other words, we love God by loving our fellow human beings.Jesus—the “Prince of Peace”—came not to destroy life but to restore it.Which brings us to Donald Trump, the latest political “savior” anointed by Christian nationalists for whom the pursuit of a Christian theocracy now appears to outweigh allegiance to our constitutional democracy.
Seduced by political power to such an extent that the true message of Jesus has been taken hostage by partisan agendas, much of today’s evangelical movement has become indistinguishable from right-wing politics—defined by anti-immigrant and anti-homosexual rhetoric, material excess, sprawling megachurches, and a spirit of judgment rather than mercy.
Meanwhile, the wall of separation—between church and state, between moral authority and political coercion—is being torn down from both sides.The result is a marriage of convenience that corrupts them both.This is what happens when you wrap your faith in the national flag.
What is worse—far worse—than the Christian right selling its spiritual birthright for a political seat at Trump’s table is the blasphemy that has followed: the Gospel of Jesus replaced by the Gospel of the Military-Industrial Complex.
Within the White House, faith leaders gather to lay hands on Trump as he sits at the Resolute Desk, praising him for defending “religious freedom” for Christians—seemingly unconcerned that from that same desk he has signed death warrants for nearly every other freedom.
In the Pentagon, Trump’s Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, presides over prayer services where the name of Christ is invoked almost in the same breath as he boasts of preemptive strikes, righteous killings, and “peace through strength.”
Kristi Noem, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, prays in front of the cameras all the while boosting spending on military weapons for ICE by 700%, with significant purchases of chemical weapons and “guided missile warheads and explosive components.”
This is not Jesus’ Christianity—it is Christian nationalism: Christianity draped in the flag and wielding the weapons of war.When leaders presume to act in God’s name, every drone strike becomes a crusade, every critic a heretic, every raid a holy war.
This is how war becomes a form of worship in the American empire.What was once the Gospel of Peace has been replaced by a national creed that equates killing with courage, dominance with divine favor, and obedience with faith.
It is a blasphemous marriage of church and state—one that desecrates both Christ’s command to love one’s enemies and the Constitution’s mandate to keep religion free from the corruption of power.
Under Trump’s rule, this weaponized faith has found expression not only in rhetoric but in action.
It is there in the bombing of Venezuelan fishing boats—no declaration of war, no congressional authorization, no due process—men in small vessels labeled “enemy combatants” by fiat. It is there in the militarized ICE raids that tear families apart under cover of darkness. It is there in the persecution of journalists and dissidents accused of being anti-American. It is there in every detail of how, as one state senator warned, “the President is building an army to attack his own country.”
Each act is justified as righteous violence, sanctioned by a president who sees himself as both protector of the faithful and punisher of the wicked.Yet beneath the veneer of divine mission lies the same old tyranny the Framers warned against: a ruler who mistakes executive power for divine right and turns the machinery of government into an instrument of holy war.Both Jesus and the framers of the Constitution understood the same truth: faith and freedom cannot be imposed by force.
That is why the First Amendment forbids the government from establishing religion. The moment religion aligns itself with political power, it ceases to be faith and becomes ideology. The moment a president claims divine sanction for war, the republic ceases to be a democracy and becomes a theocracy of fear.
Driven by those concerns, the framers built a system designed to restrain ambition, limit vengeance, and guard against tyranny.That constitutional system is being bulldozed before our eyes—just as surely as Trump is bulldozing his way through the White House, leaving wreckage in his wake.
Trump's domestic policies have systematically eroded free speech and fundamental human rights, often under the guise of national security or "America First" priorities. His administration has cracked down on protests, particularly those supporting Palestinian rights, labeling them as "domestic terrorism" and using executive orders to investigate and prosecute groups deemed to promote "political violence." This includes designating "Antifa" as a terrorist organization and broadening definitions of rebellion to silence dissent, chilling free expression through threats of investigations, sanctions, and arrests.
Domestically, Trump has undermined press freedom by targeting journalists, suing media outlets, and abusing regulatory powers, while immigration policies involve mass deportations, family separations, and enforced disappearances that violate international law. Foreign policy echoes this authoritarianism, with withdrawals from UN human rights bodies, sanctions on the International Criminal Court for investigating abuses, and support for regimes that suppress dissent, all while redefining human rights to align with ideological goals like opposing DEI policies abroad.
In stark contrast yet with troubling parallels, Benjamin Netanyahu's Israeli government has waged what he calls the "Eighth Front"—a global battle against perceived misinformation and criticism of Israel, increasingly targeting free speech internationally, including among U.S. citizens. Netanyahu has demonized American protesters against Israel's actions in Gaza as "Iran's useful idiots," accusing them of being funded by foreign adversaries to disrupt democracy, and has pushed for measures that could criminalize "hate speech" against Israel, even threatening jail time for Americans. This "front" extends Israel's domestic suppression of Palestinian voices to a transnational effort, lobbying U.S. institutions to equate criticism of Israeli policies with antisemitism, stifling campus protests, and enabling laws that restrict advocacy for Palestinian rights.
While Trump's violations are rooted in domestic authoritarianism and isolationist foreign policy, Netanyahu's are framed as a defensive "war for truth" against global delegitimization, but both converge in suppressing speech related to human rights abuses, particularly in the context of Israel's occupation and Trump's unwavering support for it. Trump's administration has even aligned with this by targeting pro-Palestine activism as "organized political violence," creating a chilling effect on U.S. free speech that mirrors Netanyahu's international campaign.
And so we return to the question that started it all: Who would Jesus bomb?The answer, of course, is no one.
Jesus would not rain destruction from the skies or bless the machinery of death. He would not mistake vengeance for virtue or domination for deliverance.
Jesus would heal the sick, welcome the stranger, and lift up the poor. He would drive the money changers from the temple, not sanctify the merchants of war.
Yet here we are.
Under Trump’s broadened definitions of “rebellion” and “domestic terrorism,” Jesus would be labeled a subversive, his name placed on a watchlist, his followers rounded up for “reeducation.” He preached compassion for enemies, defied authority, and stirred the crowds without a permit.
Were Jesus—a Palestinian refugee, a radical, and a revolutionary—to show his face in Trump’s American police state, he would fare no better than any of the undocumented immigrants being snatched up in the dead of night, stripped of any real due process, made to disappear into inhumane detention centers, and left to be tortured or die.
This is what happens when nations lose their moral compass: due process becomes a slogan, justice a privilege, and compassion a crime.
When even mercy is outlawed and truth branded subversion, the darkness is no longer metaphorical—it is moral.
It is midnight in America, a phrase evocative of Martin Luther King Jr.’s warning of a “midnight in the moral order.”
This is the time, King cautioned, when absolute standards pass away, replaced by a “dangerous ethical relativism.” Morality becomes a mere “Gallup poll of the majority opinion.” Right and wrong are reduced to the philosophy of “getting by,” and the highest law becomes the “eleventh commandment: thou shall not get caught.”
In this deep darkness, King said, there is a “knock of the world on the door of the church.”
That knock is a reminder, he warned, that the church “is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”
That knock still sounds today—steady, insistent, and largely unanswered.It reverberates through religious institutions that mistake nationalism for faith and pulpits that confuse politics with piety. It calls us to rediscover the moral courage that resists tyranny rather than blesses it—to be, once more, the conscience of the state before the darkness becomes complete.
This moral failing extends beyond America's borders, where Trump's unconditional support for Netanyahu's policies has enabled Israel's violations of basic human rights in the IDF's war on Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. These include:
- Genocide and Mass Killings: Israel committed genocide in Gaza through deliberate infliction of conditions leading to physical destruction, including mass forced displacement, obstruction of aid, and destruction of infrastructure, resulting in unprecedented death tolls among children, journalists, and humanitarian workers.
- War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity: Attacks on educational, religious, and cultural sites amounting to extermination; starvation as a method of warfare; murder, forcible transfer, sexual violence, torture, arbitrary detention, and outrages upon personal dignity.
- Extrajudicial Killings and Enforced Disappearances: At least 43 Palestinians died in Israeli custody; significant increase in killings by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank, including unlawful lethal force during raids.
- Forced Displacement and Ethnic Cleansing: Emptying of refugee camps in the West Bank as a crime against humanity; obliteration of communities through demolitions, evictions, and settler violence, displacing thousands.
- Settler Violence and Impunity: State-backed settlers perpetrating killings, property destruction, and land grabs with impunity, functioning as vigilante militias within IDF units.
- Torture and Inhumane Treatment: Thousands subjected to arbitrary detention, ill-treatment amounting to torture, including sexual violence against detainees in Gaza and the West Bank.
- Restrictions on Movement and Rights: Blockade and apartheid-like policies denying freedom of movement, assembly, and expression; systemic discrimination and collective punishment.
The time for silence has passed; the hour we now find ourselves in demands we maintain a clear conscience, and take peaceful, righteous, and non-violent action.
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