Dear Christian,
There’s something remarkable about the Easter story when you capture its entirety. A non-violent revolution filled with freedom and liberation for all.
What is most common, however, is compressing THE climactic event in the Christian hope to a single weekend celebration complete with Easter egg hunts and steamed hams.
Of course, that’s not what any of this is about.
I wish to to remind, gently nudge, point emphatically, scream at the top of my lungs: WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THIS WORLD RIGHT NOW IS A DIRECT RESULT OF CHRISTIANS PARTICIPATING IN THE VERY THING JESUS CONDEMNED!
The story of the Passion—the last week of Easter—is the culmination of old realities encountering new possibilities. Let me explain with a bad movie.
Do you remember ‘The Passion of the Christ’? Twenty years ago or so conservative Christians thought the second coming had arrived because finally, FINALLY, they had a Hollywood blockbuster to be proud of. Proud to take their friends, family, and ‘unbelievers’ to over and over again. The purpose? Show everyone the suffering Jesus endured for each and every one of you….
Trouble is, Western Christians tend to over emphasize individualism and twist the Christian hope to fit. They embrace a mere incantation (called “the sinner’s prayer”) as the main salvation effort for individual immaterial souls to spend eternity in the clouds.
A weird belief that has no basis in the scriptures but has a lot of connective tissue to rugged individualism. That’s important because the impact of Christianity on anybody but the self is reduced to near zero. These types of Christians do not care about anybody but themselves. But there’s more.
What the ‘The Passion of the Christ’ did was also reveal the blood-lust in conservative Christianity. The movie is shockingly violent. I suppose that’s the point, to display the savagery of Rome—The Bad Guys.
Those Bad Guys? They were up to no good. They were colonizing the known world, operating through an imperial lens using imperial tools rooted in abject violence and chaos, wiping out any opposing force through military might, all meant to expand the coffers of empire.
Many Christians today, particularly white Christians in the West, claim affinity to Jesus. It’s a little bit odd because these Christians have so little in common with him. Jesus, the ethnic minority living under foreign occupation, the constant threat of imperial violence, and the death-dealing ways of empire.
Jesus’ reality under Roman occupation is the literal opposite of today’s modern Christian. If you’re following the connection, Christians formed by Western hegemonic ideals today have more in common with imperial Rome than they do with Jesus who was opposed to empire.
Let me make it plain.
The death-dealing ways of Israel and America are the same ways of Rome. How Rome occupied territory that was not their own. How Rome used the sword to justify their imperial expansion. How Rome embraced violence (war) as a tool to advance the interests of empire.
Do not miss the connections!
It’s 2026, and Christians unashamedly embrace the death-dealing ways of empire. They sanitize and whitewash Jesus to use as a prop justifying their insatiable appetite for malformed power. A type of power that crushes the bodies of the ‘least of these’ (Matthew 25:40), from bombed out elementary schools, genocide in Gaza, and land grabs in Lebanon, (and let’s not forget Ukraine).
Some Christians are FOR obliterating violence and wanton destruction, worshiping at the altar of empire’s crushing blows. The precise malevolent forces that dragged Jesus’ broken body to the cross.
Jesus’ body was broken by the tools of empire and the empire reveled in glee that violence silenced yet another dissenting voice who dared counter death’s logic….
Dear Christian,
As we limp towards Easter 2026, may you find yourself reflecting over the ways your faith brings destruction to the least among us. Who you align with in public. How your beliefs destroy bodies on the margins. What it costs to embrace the values of empire. And where Jesus’ non-violent revolution can take you if believed.