January 26, 2010--JN8:12--The Light of Life
Trijicon, Inc., ever hear of them, has a nearly one billion dollar contract with the Pentagon to supply it with high-tech telescopic gun sights that are in demand all over Iraq and Afghanistan. The Marines are buying more than 200,000 and the Army is in the process of purchasing 200,000. Clearly, these must be state of the art gun sights.
Actually, they are much more than state of the art. Unbeknownst to military purchasing agents, Trijicon, out of the goodness of its heart, at no extra charge, threw in a few extras.
Either to help make our troops aim more accurate, or to provide an extra layer of protection, very subtly on each and every scope they added a quote from the Bible. Actually, from just the New Testament.
Needless to say, this mashing together of military jingoism and Christian faith-based exhortation is not only upsetting some members of our own military who are not of the Christian faith but it also is enraging many in the Islamic world where these weapons are being used.
Do they need any more encouragement or evidence to claim that what we are up to in their region is a 21st century crusade? And don’t you think al Qaeda and the Taliban are using this as a made-in-heaven, sorry, unintentional recruiting opportunity?
How dumb can we get? All the Pentagon folks needed to do when investigating whether or not to order the gun sights from Trijicon, to see if they were an appropriate supplier, was to look on their Website. They would have seen that the company is not trying to hide its beliefs. Quite the contrary, they flaunt them. Trijicon unabashedly says, “We believe that America is great when its people are good. This goodness has been based on biblical standards throughout our history and we will strive to follow these morals.” (See the linked New York Times article for a fuller accounting.)
Not only is this bad history—most of our founding fathers were self-declared deists—but it should have been a tip-off to check whatever they ordered and received from Trijicon with a fine tooth comb.
If they had, they would have easily spotted the inscriptions on the sides of the gun sights. Either “JN8:12” or “2COR4:6.” Which stand for “Book of John, Chapter 8, Verse 12” and “Second Corinthians, Chapter 4, Verse 6.”
And if they then went to their New Testaments, they would have seen that in John 8:12, Jesus is quoted as saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” Crusader talk.
And then in Second Corinthians 4:6, they would have found: “For it is God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” More evangelicizing.
The belated good news—after this was pointed out to Secretary of Defense Gates he got Trijicon to give the military, free-of-charge, kits to remove the quotations.
The bad news is that they received only a total of 100 kits. With 400,000 of these gun sights out and about, some in pretty remote places, with 100 kits, if it takes say a half hour per gun sight to file off the biblical references (they are cast in the metal housing), by my calculations, and I was never very good at math, if we and our Islamic ally troops who have these telescopic sights worked at this 24 hours a day, it would take about a year to get the job done. 333 days. That is if each of the kits was in full, seamless use during all of those 333 days.
And then I wonder what Jesus himself would have thought about his words being put to this use.
Actually, they are much more than state of the art. Unbeknownst to military purchasing agents, Trijicon, out of the goodness of its heart, at no extra charge, threw in a few extras.
Either to help make our troops aim more accurate, or to provide an extra layer of protection, very subtly on each and every scope they added a quote from the Bible. Actually, from just the New Testament.
Needless to say, this mashing together of military jingoism and Christian faith-based exhortation is not only upsetting some members of our own military who are not of the Christian faith but it also is enraging many in the Islamic world where these weapons are being used.
Do they need any more encouragement or evidence to claim that what we are up to in their region is a 21st century crusade? And don’t you think al Qaeda and the Taliban are using this as a made-in-heaven, sorry, unintentional recruiting opportunity?
How dumb can we get? All the Pentagon folks needed to do when investigating whether or not to order the gun sights from Trijicon, to see if they were an appropriate supplier, was to look on their Website. They would have seen that the company is not trying to hide its beliefs. Quite the contrary, they flaunt them. Trijicon unabashedly says, “We believe that America is great when its people are good. This goodness has been based on biblical standards throughout our history and we will strive to follow these morals.” (See the linked New York Times article for a fuller accounting.)
Not only is this bad history—most of our founding fathers were self-declared deists—but it should have been a tip-off to check whatever they ordered and received from Trijicon with a fine tooth comb.
If they had, they would have easily spotted the inscriptions on the sides of the gun sights. Either “JN8:12” or “2COR4:6.” Which stand for “Book of John, Chapter 8, Verse 12” and “Second Corinthians, Chapter 4, Verse 6.”
And if they then went to their New Testaments, they would have seen that in John 8:12, Jesus is quoted as saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” Crusader talk.
And then in Second Corinthians 4:6, they would have found: “For it is God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” More evangelicizing.
The belated good news—after this was pointed out to Secretary of Defense Gates he got Trijicon to give the military, free-of-charge, kits to remove the quotations.
The bad news is that they received only a total of 100 kits. With 400,000 of these gun sights out and about, some in pretty remote places, with 100 kits, if it takes say a half hour per gun sight to file off the biblical references (they are cast in the metal housing), by my calculations, and I was never very good at math, if we and our Islamic ally troops who have these telescopic sights worked at this 24 hours a day, it would take about a year to get the job done. 333 days. That is if each of the kits was in full, seamless use during all of those 333 days.
And then I wonder what Jesus himself would have thought about his words being put to this use.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
4:27 AM
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