I can't remember a time when I did not know the lyrics to the song above. There were even motions to it. But what and who exactly is the Lord's Army?

Chris Hedges wrote a book that I read several months ago entitled "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America". Overall, I thought it was a great book, although he is a little radical with the "fascist" part. However, it very accurately described my childhood and youth in the fundamentalist Southern Baptist church. So many times throughout the book Hedges would describe an experience he had witnessed while doing research for the book and I would scream, "YES! I have seen this! I have heard this!"

One particular passage that was very familiar to me was on p. 165. Hedges recites the words of a sermon that Rod Parsley preached. He is the leader of World Harvest Church.  The words go like this, towards the end of the sermon:

 "So my admonishment to you this morning is this. Sound the alarm. A spiritual invasion is taking place. The secular media never likes it when I say this, so let me say it twice. Man your battle stations! Ready your weapons! They say this rhetoric is so inciting. I came to incite a riot. I came to effect a divine disturbance in the heart and soul of the church. Man your battle stations. Ready your weapons. Lock and load...”

I read that quote from Parsley's sermon and I got chill bumps. Lock and Load, huh? How many times had I heard almost those exact same words, and really, thought nothing of it at the time? An epiphany. I had been indoctrinated into a culture of violence. You start with innocent little songs like "The Lord's Army" above, move on to the basics of "spiritual warfare", and then one day you read this passage, from Psalms:

"O daughter of Babylon, you devastated one, How blessed will be the one who repays you with the recompense with which you have repaid us, How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones against the rocks." -Psalm 137: 7-9

What?!?! Blessed is the one who bashes infants heads against the rocks? Sick. And this is from the mouth of someone who was supposedly "a man after God's own heart".  The same man who wrote, "Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, For His lovingkindness is everlasting."

And then I look at what's happening in the Middle East right now and it all makes sense. It's okay to kill people so long as they are on the other side. It's okay to bash infants heads against rocks so long as they are the infants of the enemy. It really is just all so clear now. "Thou shalt not murder anyone of thine own religion", right? Isn't that what it says? Now to go explain that to my three year old.