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Killing in God’s Name: A Lenten Reckoning 

In the reflective hush of Lent, Christians are called to examine themselves with uncommon honesty.

It is a season that strips away pretence, confronts us with the cost of discipleship, and insists that we reckon with the distance between what we profess and how we act. Yet, as this Lenten season unfolds in 2026, an unsettling contradiction presses itself upon the conscience of the faithful: the persistent invocation of God to justify the killing of others, including Iranians and other peoples across West Asia.

This contradiction is neither subtle nor new. It is, however, particularly jarring when framed against the central affirmations of the Christian faith. The God revealed in the Gospel is not one who delights in destruction, nor one who authorises violence for convenience. Scripture reminds us that He “is not willing that any should perish,” and the life of Christ embodies a radically different paradigm—one in which power is relinquished, suffering is embraced, and redemption is offered even to those who inflict harm.

How, then, do we reconcile this with the spectacle of self-identified Christian leaders and societies invoking divine sanction while supporting or prosecuting actions that result in extrajudicial death?

The answer, uncomfortable though it may be, lies in the long-standing human tendency to conscript religion into the service of power. The language of faith, with its moral authority and emotional resonance, becomes a convenient instrument through which policies driven by strategic, economic, or political interests can be presented as righteous necessity. In such moments, God is not worshipped; He is deployed—and mocked with a knowing wink.

This deployment is rarely acknowledged as such. Instead, it is cloaked in the familiar vocabulary of security, stability, and moral duty. Threats are emphasised, fears are amplified, and complex realities are simplified into Manichaean narratives of good and evil. Within this framework, the invocation of God functions less as a genuine act of faith and more as a rhetorical device—one that lends an aura of inevitability and virtue to decisions that might otherwise provoke deeper moral scrutiny.

The consequences are profound.

When the name of a loving God is attached to acts that result in the loss of innocent life, a distortion occurs not only in public policy but in the moral imagination of societies. The faithful are invited, subtly but persistently, to accept that such contradictions are either unavoidable or justified. Over time, the dissonance dulls. What should provoke outrage becomes normalised; what should be interrogated is instead repeated.

This is the covert erosion of moral clarity.

For small states such as Jamaica, the stakes are not merely abstract. Our own history is marked by reliance on genuine acts of international solidarity—partnerships grounded not in coercion or expediency, but in mutual respect and shared humanity. We understand, perhaps more keenly than many, the difference between assistance offered in good faith and influence exerted for advantage.

It is therefore incumbent upon us to resist the uncritical adoption of narratives that originate in centres of power but do not withstand ethical examination. This does not require naivety about the realities of international relations, nor does it deny the existence of legitimate security concerns. Rather, it demands that we maintain a disciplined distinction between necessity and justification, between explanation and endorsement.

To say that conflicts are complex is true; to use that complexity as a shield against moral evaluation is not.

The present moment, particularly as it relates to tensions involving Iran and the wider Middle East, illustrates this tension starkly. Assertions of threat and counter-threat are advanced with increasing urgency, and the language of pre-emption and deterrence is deployed with familiar confidence. Yet, when such actions are accompanied by overt or implicit appeals to divine sanction, the line between political decision and theological claim is crossed.

At that point, scrutiny must intensify, not diminish.

For the Christian, the standard against which such claims must be measured is not found in the shifting calculations of geopolitics, but in the fixed witness of the Gospel. A Saviour who instructs His followers to love their enemies, who rebukes the use of the sword, and who submits to death rather than inflicts it, cannot be easily reconciled with narratives that celebrate or justify the taking of life in His name.

This does not yield simple policy prescriptions. It does, however, establish clear moral boundaries.

One such boundary is this: the name of God must not be used to sanctify actions that contradict the character attributed to Him. When it is, the responsibility of the faithful is not to rationalise the contradiction, but to expose it. This exposure need not be strident, but it must be unambiguous.

Another boundary concerns our own posture. It is tempting, in identifying hypocrisy elsewhere, to adopt a tone of moral superiority. Yet Lent cautions against such reflexes. The same human capacity for self-justification that we critique in others resides within us. The call, therefore, is to a dual enterprise: outward, in the naming of injustice, and inward, in the examination of our own complicity—whether through silence, indifference, or selective outrage.

Easter, which lies just beyond Lent, offers both judgment and hope. It judges the pretensions of power by revealing their ultimate impotence in the face of sacrificial love. At the same time, it offers the possibility of renewal—a reorientation of priorities, a recovery of integrity, and a recommitment to truth.

The question that confronts us, then, is not merely whether the invocation of God in the context of war is appropriate. It is whether we are willing to confront, with honesty and courage, the ways in which that invocation has been distorted.

When the language of salvation is used to justify destruction, something has gone profoundly wrong.

To name that wrong is not an act of disloyalty. It is, in fact, an act of faith.