There is a prevailing myth that many have been indoctrinated with, what Walter Wink called the Myth of Redemptive Violence.
en.wikipedia.org
-CryptoLutheran
To expand on this idea a bit:
The problem with redemptive violence, from a Christian perspective, is that it gets God wrong, and it interprets the Cross wrong, it gets Atonement wrong, it gets religion wrong.
Coming from my Lutheran tradition, we talk about two over-arching "Theologies"; there is what is called Theology of Glory (Theologia Gloriae) and Theology of the Cross (Theologia Crucis). Without getting into the deep end of the pool on this, the simple way to describe this is the idea of direction: Is the primary direction of religion upward or downward? Is about us going up to God, or God coming down to us? Lutheranism emphatically, even obsessively, speaks of the downwardness of God: God comes down, we don't go up. The Theology of the Cross is about understanding God, seeing God, knowing God through God's own suffering and humility in the Crucified Jesus. The Cross is not about how man appeases an angry god through a violent action; but the total subversion and inversion of this: God comes down and enters into our suffering, because it is the suffering of God at the hands of evil men that brings redemption.
Coming back, full circle: The Myth of Redemptive Violence is a tremendous problem because it gets religion wrong, it understands God wrong, etc; because the overarching biblical narrative (from an historical and orthodox Christian perspective) is the story of the God who suffers; and thus presents us with the "myth"--the story--of redemptive suffering, not redemptive violence. The biblical protagonist is God, not human beings; and God is the victim of antagonism. This is crystalized at the moment of the Crucifixion, where God in the humanity of Jesus Christ, is put to death by the corrupt, wicked, and violent powers of the world; and redemption (and victory) is found because through the act of suffering, and being swallowed up by death, is paradoxically how death itself is undone; and the corrupt and violent and evil powers are defeated.
Jesus does not lead an army, instead Jesus is the Victim.
When early Christians speak of the mystery of the cross, they talk about Jesus being swallowed up by death, but death is ultimately powerless. St. John Chrysostom in his ancient Easter homily says "Hell took on earth, but received Heaven" and it was undone, it was defeated, it was embittered--hell is overthrown because death cannot overpower that which is Life Himself. Thus the victory of the Resurrection is the non-violent victory over the violent powers, over death and hell itself.
The Cross is where Good and Evil meet, but it isn't the old story of the good guys beating the bad guys by beating up the bad guys--it is the story of Good defeating evil because the Good is defeated, suffers, but evil--because it is less-than--cannot bear the good. Darkness cannot destroy light, because ultimately darkness is nothing at all--darkness is absence, not substance. Death is absence, not substance. Evil is absence, not substance. Nothing cannot win against Something, because nothing is--nothing at all. Shine a flashlight into a dark corner, or flip on a light switch, and the darkness retreats--because the darkness is nothing itself.
When Life itself enters into death, the light switch is turned on in the dark room. When the Good itself enters into evil, the switch is turned on in the dark room.
The cosmic bogeyman--death, is ultimately nothing at all; the devil, and every power or principality which gloats, which makes itself look all big and scary--can't win, won't win, because they are, in the end, nothing at all.
The Suffering Christ has rendered the powers impotent; Life, not death, wins. The light-switch is flipped on, and the darkness has retreated.
Jesus leads no army, nor armed rebellion, there is no violent revolution against Caesar: Because Caesar is nothing, and the terrorizing instrument of death he wields--the cross--is the very thing which God uses to destroy death and hell.
Even in the Apocalypse of St. John (aka the Book of the Revelation), the great epic scene where Jesus comes riding down from heaven on a white horse, He comes with His robe dipped in blood--His blood. He comes, not holding a sword in His hand to slaughter; but the figurative sword comes out of His mouth--it is His word. All the wicked powers fall before Him not because He comes and brings slaughter through conquest; but because He is the Lamb of God who was slaughtered, and because having been slain and slaughtered, and risen again, He holds the keys of Hades; having robbed death and hell and the devil of all their power, leaving them entirely impotent: and therefore all the violence of this present age--represented in the Apocalypse as the Beast who rises out of the sea, or the harlot who rides upon the kings of the earth as a monstrous creature, and even the great dragon himself--have all been rendered impotent before the Slaughtered Lamb who is seated on the Throne. And in the end, the heavenly city of God is united to earth, and the tree of life feeds the nations, because the living water flowing out of the city brings life to the whole world.
-CryptoLutheran
