[count-your-change]

I have a hard time imagining Christ telling his disciples to go kill the heretics and unorthodox or did I miss that in the Scriptures? Or to join the Roman army to make the world safe enough for them to preach.

[ShadowAce]

Luke 19:27

[PapaBear3625]

I have a hard time imagining Christ telling his disciples to go kill the heretics and unorthodox or did I miss that in the Scriptures? Or to join the Roman army to make the world safe enough for them to preach.

I'm talking about being unwilling to defend themselves, and relying on the police to do so, while feeling so superior in their righteousness over those who use violence to protect them.

In Jesus' time, the Roman army wasn't bothering subjects who paid their taxes and didn't oppose their rule. Thus it was viable for early Christians to be pacifists.

Then Rome fell. Bandits roamed the land, pirates roamed the seas, and anybody who could not defend himself, nor was under the protection of a warlord, faced extermination. Christian philosophy had to change for the circumstances or face extinction.

Then there's the passage of Jesus telling his apostles to have a sword or two among their gear, to defend against bandits.