Is Christianity a Religion of Peace? Looking at the claim of the UK Embassy that it isn’t so it can reject an Iranian Asylum Seeker


On March 21, 2019, the UK Immigration Department rejected an asylum seeker, citing verses from Leviticus, Exodus, and Revelation to state that Christianity was not a peaceful religion. What I want to do today is to take a look at the Immigration Department’s claim about Christianity and see if what they have quoted is just cherry picked.
So in a sweeping statement, Exodus and Leviticus were written as part of the Old Testament, and a little over 1000 years before Christianity came about, as part of the Old Covenant, which was fulfilled through Christ. The Old Covenant is also tied to the land that God wanted for the nation of Israel. It did involve God commanding Israel to drive out nations before them, but it was also God’s judgment on those other nations for their wicked deeds, such as child sacrifice. If anything these verses show a temporary command of violence for Judaism, but it was just that, temporary. Even here we digress, because we are talking about the “violence” of Christianity. Christians live under the New Covenant, which does not involve Christians claiming land or driving out people from their land. Revelation is a prophetic book, speaking about what will happen in the end times, and does not contain commandments for Christian conduct, so quoting from these books to claim that Christianity is violent is misguided at best.
What the Immigration Office seems to have missed are the other books of the New Testament that do have commandments for Christian conduct, such as loving your neighbor as yourself, leaving vengeance to the Lord, feeding and praying for your enemy. These and many, many others that are ordained in the New Testament should be more than enough to show that Christians are commanded to be peaceful. Unlike Muslims, who are commanded to “fight hard against the unbeliever, and let them find only hardness in you.”
This was a bit of a shorter post, but one I wanted to get around to based on an interaction I had with a college friend of mine. Let me know if this has helped you, or if you want to have a discussion on the “violence” of Christianity. God bless and have a good rest of your day.
References
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/world/europe/britain-asylum-seeker-christianity.html?fbclid=IwAR3qOLF0sArFvO3HMlOBQ75tnhLiol1WJpRSnhMIzabwwMHDxIOpD5wXtpk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZGLoNvRt54&t=30s

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