DEUS VULT

Paul Edwards
OpEds

Those Latin words first appeared in the Gesta Francorum, which described the First Crusade to conquer what, for Christians, was “The Holy Land”.  That “God wills it” was the justification for the attack, in 1099, on Jerusalem, and that area was under Moslem rule.

Crusaders besieging Jerusalem

Israelite tribes, Israel and Judah, had controlled much of it from 850 BCE till defeat and exile in 586 BCE.  Maccabees in 167 BCE founded a small Jewish kingdom that became a Roman client state, Judea, under Herod.  It rebelled, Rome razed the Second Temple in 70 CE, and, in small wars, slaughtered those Jews and dispersed the survivors by 135 CE.

The Crusades—a half dozen of them—had very little, temporary success, and failed entirely to take control of the area, that once was Judea, and Rome had renamed Syria Palaestina, from Islam.

From 1099 through the 13th century, Jews had no significant presence there, and had not had any for a thousand years.

Deus Vult, an inspiring if fanciful idea, proved more effective in firing religious passion than winning victories, but having been so effective in that, it survived in essence for a thousand years.

The notion that, for reasons His favored can always cite, God has wanted them to kill whoever they want to kill, has been a virtual constant in wars.  So consistently has God willed it, that he often gives His mandate to both contending sides, as history records.

It doesn’t seem to have much to do, for Him, with a particular religion, or politics, or even a motive, if one is acknowledged.  He just seems to have been eager to make people kill other people.

Spain, Russia, England, France and America all pursued their conquests, if not with those exact words, armed with statements of righteousness that embodied them.

Spain’s conquest and mass slaughter of native peoples in the Americas was all done at God’s behest, under the cross.

Russia, from Ivan the Terrible on, evoked God’s will, subjugating the east, with Christ and a host of saints assisting them.

England’s conquests were God’s will, as Kipling said, “beneath whose awesome hand we hold dominion over palm and pine”.

France’s “mission civilisatrice” to the lesser world was all done as a “holy duty”, an obligation to God’s will regarding its duty.

And what was our “Manifest Destiny” but obedience to God’s wish to replace indigenous folk with ambitious white colonists?  Both sides in our Civil War knew they were executing God’s will, along with captives, deserters, and uppity negroes.

The First World War was a confusing situation in which not only was God endorsing both sides, He also had His loyalties divided between individual nations, but He did His earnest best for all.

World War Two was simpler, but God was as conflicted because, though he backed the “Holy Crusade” of Western Powers, the German Wehrmacht wore belt buckles that read “Gott Mit Uns”, proving they had his imprimatur, too.  The Japanese didn’t, because evidently He didn’t know them, so they had to lose.

Citing God’s Will for war has fallen out of favor of late, it being invoked only briefly, against “Godless Communism”, which God couldn’t back for obvious reasons.  Recently, war’s murder and mayhem have been done without the stated wish of God, though Allah has been enlisted sometimes similarly.

Lately, though, there has been a new instance of God’s wish for blood.  It is not really new; God’s will to destroy has existed for millennia among these people who—hated, accursed, oppressed and victimized—was long forced to keep its virulence concealed.

The Jews, secretively, timidly, worshipped for centuries a furious God who urged them to violence against enemies.  Because they had been near annihilated and lived in subjection to other faiths and nations, they couldn’t obey, and lived on their heroic myths.

Their last tragedy was the Holocaust, and the guilty pity of the West gifted them part of Palestine, where another people lived.  They took it all when Yahweh willed them to kill those natives.

Once YHVH was outed and obeyed, He willed them to continue killing them for decades, until now, intoxicated with murderous rage, He is encouraging them to kill them all and eliminate them.

Deus vult… It has been the sick, vicious, nightmare lie of the evil brute in Man forever.  Having invented the idiot idea of God, Man, in his twisted pathology, appropriated his putative divinity to justify his own rabid lust for blood and dominion, and has made the world a monstrous stage for this grand burlesque of horror.

Nazi Israel’s imbecile, infantile Judaism is no better or worse than other religions that sanctified organized murder through millennia, but it is the only one that fuels genocide today, when others have ceased to use their imaginary gods as purveyors of mass death.

For the crime of perpetuating this psychopathic barbarism, it has made itself anathema to the world, and insulted the little good conscience that yet exists in humanity.  And for this planned and intentional moral horror, it must be made to pay.

Not to atone.  It can never atone.  Its guilt must be paid in misery and ruin.  And not because Deus Vult:  because humanity wills it.