His­to­ry is replete with incon­tro­vert­ible evi­dence that noth­ing is more inim­i­cal to peace than self-pro­fessed true believ­ers. So if  déjà vu isn’t  your favourite sen­sa­tion, it’s time for even athe­ists to say God spare us from them. Please.

Unless it’s sim­ply a crass mar­ket­ing ploy to sell more Bibles with his name on them, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s embrace of Chris­tian­i­ty makes rav­ing street preach­ers seem com­pos men­tis.
In bare­ly 24 hours, he went from being Jesus (or, as he put it: “I thought I was a doc­tor.”)  to hav­ing  an Amer­i­can ver­sion Jesus at his ear.
How­ev­er, on the grasp­ing-at-straws pos­i­tive side, that’s bet­ter than Defence Sec­re­tary Pete Hegseth try­ing to run the mil­i­tary on the basis of the teach­ings of his cho­sen denom­i­na­tion, the Com­mu­nion of Reformed Evan­gel­i­cal Churches.
Descend­ed from a move­ment that ques­tions the legit­i­ma­cy of democ­ra­cy, its tenets include an insis­tence that the Bible’s edicts should pre­vail over sec­u­lar law.
My for­mal Chris­t­ian edu­ca­tion and belief in the deity end­ed short­ly after I stopped attend­ing Sun­day School.
But Hegseth’s exhor­ta­tion for Pen­ta­gon offi­cials to pray for “over­whelm­ing vio­lence” against Iran, makes me think his spir­i­tu­al brethren aren’t big on the Ten Com­mand­ments and Jesus’ Ser­mon on the Mount, the text of which includes: “Blessed are the peace­mak­ers: for they shall be called the chil­dren of God” and “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inher­it the earth.”
Hegseth’s ver­sion of those is: “We are locked and loaded on your (Iran’s) crit­i­cal dual-use infra­struc­ture, on your remain­ing pow­er gen­er­a­tion and on your ener­gy industry.”
In sec­u­lar par­lance, that’s classed as a poten­tial war crime, pun­ish­able before what­ev­er divine judg­ment you believe in is rendered.

                 ON A BROADER SCALE

In defend­ing what they pro­fess is their God-promised land, the Israelis  are main­tain­ing their sta­tus as world lead­ers in ignor­ing both the spir­it and let­ter of the lit­er­al­ly “writ­ten in stone” laws they believe their Deity hand­ed to Moses.
By any inter­pre­ta­tion, they include an injunc­tion against Israel’s bad habits of wan­ton and heed­less killing of women, chil­dren, med­ical work­ers and jour­nal­ists, reduc­ing civil­ian infra­struc­ture to rub­ble and oth­er poten­tial war crimes under inter­na­tion­al law.
The lat­est trav­es­ty inflict­ed on Lebanon is for­mal­ly about smash­ing Hezbol­lah in the name of Israeli security.
The  so-called “buffer zone” being gouged out with bull­doz­ers and get-out-now orders to civil­ians in south­ern Lebanon smacks of the reli­gion-based eth­nic cleans­ing per­pe­trat­ed in the for­mer Yugoslavia.
It can also, and not unfair­ly, be seen as break­ing the Tenth Com­mand­ment, “Thou shalt not covet…”
The cov­et­ed item in ques­tion is the water of the Litani, Lebanon’s main river.
Even though there’s no men­tion of it in the Bible, , “„,some inter­pret it as a bib­li­cal bound­ary sep­a­rat­ing the Upper Galilee from Lebanon. They may also argue that it marks the north­ern bor­der of the ter­ri­to­ries of the tribes of Ash­er and Naphtali.”
Israeli forces have been occu­py­ing, pulling out and re-occu­py­ing swathes of Lebanon on a reg­u­lar basis since 1978.
That’s more akin to proof of the adage that insan­i­ty is “doing the same thing over and over again and expect­ing a dif­fer­ent result”,  than of divine guid­ance and support.
Hezbol­lah is no better.
The “Par­ty of God” was set on its path  in 1982 by Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guards, sent to Lebanon to help estab­lish  an Islam­ic move­ment for a Jihad against Israel.
To west­ern eyes, con­sid­er­ing that repeat­ed­ly tak­ing on an ene­my you can­not rea­son­ably expect to defeat is a guar­an­tee of a reward in Par­adise, bor­ders on the incomprehensible.
How­ev­er, inflict­ing the pain of sky­rock­et­ing oil prices on the world in spite of mas­sive pun­ish­ment, and con­tin­u­ing to metaphor­i­cal­ly spit at the litany of vic­to­ry claims by Trump, Iran is mak­ing it clear that as crazy and root­ed in the past the aya­tol­lahs may seem, they fear the mod­ern world a lot less than it vex­es them.

              AS FOR TAKING ON THE POPE…

In broad terms at least, even those with no adher­ence to or affin­i­ty for organ­ised reli­gion, tend to regard the fig­ure in white robes as a moral compass.
Pick­ing a fight with the most recog­nis­able reli­gious leader on Earth shows a sin­gu­lar lack of imag­i­na­tion. Just tak­ing a swing at the present title hold­er already looks down­right masochistic.
“I’m not afraid of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion ”,  Pope Leo XIV coun­ter­punched with a soft tone and a wry smile. “Too many peo­ple are suf­fer­ing today, too many inno­cent peo­ple have been killed, and I believe some­one must stand up and say that there is a bet­ter way”
The polls over­whelm­ing­ly put pub­lic opin­ion in his corner.
If you want to invoke reli­gion for your agen­da,  it’s always best to be on the side of the angels.
Amen.
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