Christian Rifles and Crusaders
My list of the dumbest things I’ve heard of has gotten quite long over the years, and I’ve just made a new entry. As I was making my daily scan of the Drudge Report, I came across a headline that I couldn’t pass up. The Drudge link leads to an ABC News report, U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret ‘Jesus’ Bible Codes.
Seems that Trijicon, Inc. makes a specialized sight for military assault rifles. The problem is that on each sight they inscribe a notation for a Bible verse. It’s added to the end of the model number on the sight. The notation on one sight is “2COR4:6,” which means Second Corinthians, Chapter 4, Verse 6. It reads (KJV),
For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Trijicon makes no secret of its corporate religious orientation. One of the company’s published values is:
Morality: We believe that America is great when its people are good. This goodness has been based on biblical standards throughout our history and we will strive to follow those morals.
Military spokesmen say the military hadn’t been aware of the markings on the sights. But apparently soldiers knew about it (naturally), and our enemies now know about it if they didn’t before. The Islamist terrorists we’re fighting against, along with millions of other Muslims, have long maintained that what we’re doing is nothing less than a new crusade against Islam, and this revelation will reinforce that wacky view.
To make things worse, the Muslims we’re training and equipping in Iraq and Afghanistan with this piece of equipment now know about it, too. We might do well to look back at the Sepoy Rebellion in India in 1857, where local troops engaged in a bloody revolt against the British because they believed that the cartridges they were issued were greased with fat from cows or pigs. The former possibility offended Hindu troops, the latter Muslims. How are the Muslim police and military we’re training going to react to using “Christian rifles” against other Muslims?
I don’t know what the government is going to do about this, but it would seem logical that they’ll have to stop using this equipment, along with any other items Trijicon may have marked with Bible notations, and replace it with clean equipment. Since the company maintains, probably correctly, that there isn’t anything illegal about what they’ve done and it doesn’t violate their contracts, us taxpayers will probably have to pay. And the cost will be in the high millions.
I don’t have anything against people who choose to believe in one form of religion or another. However, I don’t want religion and government mixed together. Under present circumstances, if we were to continue using equipment marked with Christian references, we might as well just have our soldiers wear white tunics with red crusaders’ crosses on front and back.
(This article was also published at Opinion Forum.)
By the way, yes I would feel the same regarding “sex, drugs and rock n roll”, or anything else for that matter. Tolerance does not mean force upon, how would you like it if someone carved say “pedophilia rules” on your house would you put that under the same heading? There is a fairly clear line between what is and is not tolerable, ramming down peoples throats or forcing it on them is not.
As for your article, where is the tolerance? Would you feel the same if Trijicon had printed “Sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll” on those weapons?
The U.S. is not a Christian nation in a formal sense, notwithstanding the fact that most of its citizens profess to be Christians. The Founders were mostly Christian, and that was their moral framework. However, some of the leading Founders were Deists or were heavily influenced by Deist thinking, which is not Christian. These include Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Thomas Paine, John Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Ethan Allen. The nation they created is supposed to be tolerant and accepting of all religious belief, or none. It does not field armies armed with weapons that carry religious inscriptions, Christian or otherwise. To do so violates the letter and the spirit of the Constitution that our mostly Christian Founders created.
Wow, not only myself, but every single person who has even remotely studied this is wrong, that means innumerable scholars, historians, religious people up to and including many, many popes are all wrong, why, because Frank said so. In regards to freedoms, you mean what exactly, to illustrate this I say look at the differences between california(it’s not wrong to have an affair there) and lets say utah were they’ll go nuts if you support the governent(yes i’m being sarcastic). You talk about the wonderful things that have been done, blah, blah, but tell me is that how you justify for example the hunting down, torturing, mass murder, digging up and burning of the people who were of the cathar religion? you do, how noble, I suppose you also support the decision by the church to ignore the nazi atrocities in exchange for the gold bars that came from the mouths of innocent jews, gypsies, disabled, etc, not to mention of course all that lovely art they got as well. So much of todays societies improvements came about through war ironically not through the church which if it still had it’s way would still be sayingg the world is flat, the earth is the centre of the universe and wouldn’t allow you to learn to read or think for yourself, so frankly don’t talk until you actually educate yourself in regards to the religion you kiss the ring of.
You ask of my views of the meaning of life, o.k son i’ll tell you some of it, first jesus’s view(note, not that of the church) is that we should all get along(something religions will never allow), by this he mean’t that you should always try to help if you can, to treat others the way you want to be treated, to be considerate of the views and practices of others, to look out for your family, to give them what they need(which isn’t necessarily what they want), my list and views go on so i’m not going to do it all, one of the things you clearly don’t get is that a lot of it dates from centuries before you religion came into being not as you seem to think, which appears to be from the moment the bible appeared. Your probably wondering do I beleive in god, the answer is this, I believe that there is some kind of being, deity, power(call it what you will) that is above, around us(whatever), but I don’t have the arrogance that is shown by most if not all religions to presume, A, that I know what it looks like, B, to know what it wants, C, to know what it’s thinking nor do I have the absolute faintest idea whether it’s male, female other or non of them or for that matter what it’s name is(P.S. god is the anglicised word, not the one in the original arameic), I don’t even know whether i’m right or wrong, I do know that i’ll never kneel before any religion that has lied, murdered, distorted, stolen(this list goes on) which basically includes most of them, what I will do is love, protect and care for my family and friends to the best that I can, I allow my family to make their own chioce in regards to religion, when they ask questions I answer fairly, if there are 2(or even 3,4,5,etc) versions or sides I tell them, if I don’t know I tell them I don’t(although I usually find out the answer/s and tell them whatI have learned), whatever “being” created us gave us a brain to use, the blinkers are man made.
The theft of and incorporation of other, older myths and beliefs, or perhaps the mass murders, maybe the falsification of information. How about the fact that there is hardly any information about jesus that doesn’t start more than 40 years after his death, perhaps the fact that the church has suppressed all other documents from around that time citing them to be heathen, etc, yet refuse to allow anyone outside of the church to see them, would you like me to continue? or perhaps you know better because to “believe” is better than to learn.
Whilst people may have differing views on the meaning of life, it doesn’t mean that we are wrong as it doesn’t mean you are either, however to state that your view is right because it is based on a censored collection of writings is arrogant and insulting both to our intelligence and our freedom to believe and think for ourselves. Get the church to release “ALL” the writings that they have kept hidden from the light of day and allow people to decide for themselves, not just obey what the men of the church hundreds of years ago said they must obey. Simple obedience caused the inquisition, the rise of the nazis, the prevelance of what we call the taliban.
If there is a god, he gave you a brain, use it.
P.S. Have a nice day. :)
Gen. David Petraeus, Commander of Central Command, called the practice “disturbing.” He said, “This is a serious concern to me and the other commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/21/AR2010012102637.html