A friend sent this to me. You don’t have to be religious to grasp the core of the message. There’s little doubt that when the Iran and Trump debacle are over, we will be a different country.
Let’s hope we can reclaim the sense of humanity and purpose the founders believed they had enshrined in the Constitution. What we have learned, perhaps the hard way, is that fidelity to the Constitution is only as strong as the people we elect to uphold it. Who we elect, and what they stand for, makes the difference .
VOTE
RESIST!!! & EDUCATE!!!
A Theology of War for This Moment
A Meditation by Rev. Cameron Trimble
MAR 03, 2026
“Those who live by the sword will perish by the sword.” — Matthew 26:52
We are at war with Iran.
That sentence should not pass lightly. War is not a headline. It is not a pstrategy memo. It is not a cable-news debate. War means human bodies torn open. It means children who will not grow up. It means young service members whose mothers will receive folded flags.
If theology cannot speak here, it has nothing to say anywhere.
The first thing we must understand is this: war does not create moral disorder. War reveals it.
War unveils what was already operative beneath the surface. It exposes the money that has been circulating, the ambitions that have been consolidating, the willingness to bypass restraint that has been growing for years. It reveals how accustomed we have become to executive power expanding while Congress retreats. It reveals how easily contradiction survives without consequence. It reveals how often spectacle substitutes for deliberation.
The New Testament word for apocalypse means unveiling. War is apocalyptic in that sense. It does not invent darkness. It makes visible what we refused to see.
The second truth is harder.
When war is initiated not from sober necessity but from personal impulse, from intoxication with dominance, from the thrill of being “on a roll,” then we are no longer in the realm of tragic statecraft. We are in the realm of idolatry.
Idolatry is not primitive religion. It is the elevation of the self to ultimate authority. It is what happens when a leader’s pleasure outweighs covenantal process. It is what happens when force becomes a demonstration of will rather than a last resort.
The First Commandment is not about private spirituality alone. It is about political order. When the self becomes god, others become sacrifice. The dead are no longer tragedies. They become offerings to the maintenance of power. If we cannot name that, we are complicit.
There is also covenant to consider.
The United States Constitution deliberately places the power to declare war in the hands of Congress. That was not an accident. The founders understood that executives are tempted toward expansion, especially in moments of fear or opportunity. War was meant to require deliberation precisely because it concentrates power.
When Congress abdicates that role, it is covenant betrayal. The body designed to distribute authority allows it to pool in one man’s hands. Covenants are sacred documents. They bind a people to mutual restraint. When they are ignored, something holy is broken.
Then there is the matter of truth.
We are told that nuclear capabilities were destroyed and that they must now be re-destroyed. We are told that this is strength and that it is necessity. Contradictions accumulate. Nothing collapses. Words no longer carry weight.
This is not simple dishonesty. It is the Lie as atmosphere. It is what Paul called the powers and principalities, forces that exceed individual deceit and settle into structures. When contradiction carries no cost, falsehood becomes self-sustaining.
You cannot argue with that as if it were a policy dispute. You must expose it as a spiritual disorder.
And beneath all of this lie the bodies.
One hundred eighteen girls killed in a school. Six service members described as patriots. Civilians in cities who did not design any of this. Protesters months ago who were urged toward resistance and then abandoned to death.
When a leader shrugs and says, “That’s the way it is,” theology must refuse the shrug.
Every one of those human beings bears the Image of God. Not metaphorically. Ontologically. They are subjects before God, not objects within strategy. To speak of them as acceptable loss is not realism. It is sacrilege.
Lament is the only honest language here.
The Psalms teach us to cry, “How long?” The prophets teach us to say, “Woe.” Grief is not weakness. Grief is proper theological speech when the Image has been trampled.
There is also false prophecy to name.
When bombing is followed immediately by promises of peace, we are hearing revelation without revelation’s source. Peace proclaimed through destruction is not peace. It is theater.
True prophecy does not predict outcomes. It sees the present as it stands before the sacred. It names what is happening without ornament or panic.
And then there is the Earth.
War is never abstract. Missiles are minerals pulled from the ground. Fuel is ancient sunlight burned into the sky. Paper constitutions, oil markets, bodies, smoke, grief—this is all metabolism. Everything is nature. Period.
To speak of war as strategy without speaking of its material cost is another form of idolatry. The Earth absorbs every demonstration of power. The land keeps the record even when nations do not.
Finally, we must speak of resurrection, but carefully.
I will not promise that democracy will rise again. I will not say that this will all work out. Resurrection is not a return to normal. Resurrection is new creation after something real has died.
And something has died.
Trust has died. Restraint has died. Being the “good guys” has died. Perhaps even our illusion that we were immune to this has died.
We must bury what has died before we can speak of new life. We must sit in the tomb long enough to understand what has been taken.
War has revealed us to ourselves. The question is whether we will look.
We are in this together,
Cameron
THE AMERICAN POSEIDON ADVENTURE 
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