In an interview with Fox News , Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church had this to say:
Last night, on Fox News, Sean Hannity insisted that United States needs to “take out” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Warren said he agreed. Hannity asked, “Am I advocating something dark, evil or something righteous?” Warren responded, “Well, actually, the Bible says that evil cannot be negotiated with. It has to just be stopped…. In fact, that is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers. Not good-doers. Evildoers.”
Just for the record, Rick Warren is not Bonhoeffer. He does not have the situation of being in Nazi-ran Germany whereby assassination could be framed as an acceptable ethical response. Indeed, as America’s Pastor, what kind of warmongering Jesus message is this?
Some accountability, please, would be refreshing in this situation.
(hat tip to Andrew Sullivan )
UPDATE: Holy carp, it’s worse than I thought. He advocates for killing people who break into your home. Faith in Public Life has the video.
Jiminy Jillikers! This is the kind of hate-filled evil that makes me hesitate sometimes to identify myself as Christian. Ugh. Didn’t some Jesus character say something about loving your enemies?
I wish I could say I’m surprised, but this is not terribly outrageous coming from Rick Warren. (…he said, plugging a blog post he wrote about Warren not a week ago.)
Over at the Wonk Room, Matt Duss has gotten confirmation from Warren’s office that he was referencing Romans 13, which doesn’t say what he says it says.
I’m becoming increasingly frustrated with the use of Paul and various Old Testament stuff being used to justify political agendas. If Jesus was the most important person to ever walk the earth, shouldn’t his words trump all else?
It’s appalling.
I have to digress a moment here and state that the Bible says we should forgive those that hurt us, but that does not mean we should allow ourselves to be killed by someone for any other reason then being a martyr and even that was something the early church pointed out was something to NOT be sought out.
Also the Bible says that there are consequences to behavior people should be afraid to break into someones home, they should be afraid they will be hurt or killed by the owners in self-defense – we live in a country where the most dangerous neighborhoods can have a cop take over 30min while the perp is breaking in. I have a friend whose father had to routinely gather them into a reinforced room in their house in the dead of night while people would try and pry the bars off the windows, is it wrong that his father would have killed them to protect his family?
It is easy to judge when you haven’t had that fear of seeing your family killed, raped, etc, while the cops take their time getting to the seen (or just cant) would you take away the right to defend your family for the “rights” of someone that is deciding to give those up the moment they are breaking into a occupied home?
Also while I don’t completely agree with killing someone who breaks in to your home, do you want to have to deal with the criminal suing you because you broke his arm to protect your daughter from him?