Prince of Peace?

By Michael Runyan ~

Christian worshipers often praise Jesus as being the Prince of Peace, even despite what he is alleged to have said in Matthew 10:34 (‘Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword’). But putting that aside, there are other scriptures that seem to support the peace meme. However, there is one aspect of his ministry that completely annihilates this colloquial moniker, and it is best expressed by this quote from Christopher Hitchens:

The god of Moses would call for other tribes, including his favorite one, to suffer massacre and plague and even extirpation, but when the grave closed over his victims he was essentially finished with them unless he remembered to curse their succeeding progeny. Not until the advent of the Prince of Peace do we hear of the ghastly idea of further punishing and torturing the dead.

In this one statement, we can see all sorts of problems with Christianity:

A universal god who chose a favorite tribe over all others
A god who purposefully rains down death and misery
A god who unfairly punishes the descendant of transgressors
A god who punishes dead people
A god who practices torture

But the real takeaway from Hitchen’s quote is the absurd juxtaposition of Jesus as the epitome of love and peace alongside his threat of sending people to an everlasting torment. This is where Christianity fails and fails spectacularly. There is no way in hell that a divine creator could be this schizophrenic.

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