Is God Responsible for the Crusades?

Master of the Roman de Fauvel -
Published in William of Tyre's Historia, 1337

Is God responsible for things just because they happen?

That is the idea you get when listening to many people of our day. As an illustration...

Everybody at church was praying for healing for Gladys (made up name). However, she took a turn for the worse and passed away. Overheard at the next church gathering was a well-meaning word of comfort that ended, “I guess it was God’s will to take her.” 

Was it God’s will??

I have known people who expressed anger at God for ‘taking’ a loved one or for not coming through on a desired request. However...

• Was it really God’s will (fault) that you did not get the job you wanted?
• Was it really God’s will (fault) that the person you had your heart set on did not fall in love with you?
• Was it really God’s will (fault) that your grandmother died?

I do not wish to sound unkind with my questions. Yet, it is important to see where this kind of thinking leads.

Some people follow the idea that God has everything in life mapped out for everybody (especially them). So, whenever something happens, it happened because it was God’s will. Otherwise, it would not have happened.

You cannot come to that conclusion when thinking about the idolatry of God’s people in the Old Testament. What about the crusades of the 11th century, prison camps in Nazi Germany, or the lives lost on 9-11-2001?

Did you know that the crusades were carried out in the name of Jesus Christ?! They were not merely approved, but called for by a church council in 1095 under the authority of Pope Urban II. The first crusade was over possession of the “Holy Sepulchre,” a church building erected by Constantine the Great in the 4th century, and considered a holy site by many people of the Christian faith.

In light of the crusades, reflect on the words of Jesus as He answered the Roman governor Pilate just before His crucifixion, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews.” (John 18:36) How does a fight over a building and land, regardless of its purpose/use make sense?? Does God really want His people fighting over earthly possessions? I find nothing in the New Testament to justify such a thing, even if it is done by devoted Christians and even if they devoted their war to God.

Think back to the Garden of Eden. God had instructed Adam that he could eat of every tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That was God’s will. He expected Adam and Eve to comply. When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they opposed God’s instruction. No one could say, “Well, that’s too bad; it must have been God’s will.” Sin is never God’s will. Evil is not God’s will. Sin messed the world up, but it did not change God’s will.

God is “not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” 

That is God’s will. 

God sent His Son into the world to repair the broken relationship between Himself and mankind due to sin. 

That was God’s will. 

Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. 

That was God’s will.

Whenever something happens that you do not understand or you cannot explain or that disappoints you or is vastly different from your expectation...pause before you conclude that it was God’s will just because it happened. There are many things going on in this world today that are opposed to God’s will. Make sure you are not one of them.

Mark Stinnett

September 21, 2025

Senseless

We call them senseless because we search for meaning but cannot find any reasonable explanation. I am referring to the senseless violence that has occurred over the past several days, two school shootings, a woman being stabbed while riding on public transportation, and most recently the assassination of Charlie Kirk, an outspoken political and religious personality.

An outcry of sorrow, but also of anxiety, follows the school shootings. Speculation about the woman’s stabbing is fruitless, yet no one is thinking that the murderer was justified. Sadly, the reaction to Kirk’s death was immediately mixed.

Major news outlets and social media exploded with both outrage and sympathy. Yet, many who voiced sympathy also made political jabs against Kirk and his ideals. Then, there were extremists who were bold enough to applauded his death.

These senseless acts of violence seem to affect us more profoundly than tragedies overseas. They affect our kids, threaten our public safety, touch our beliefs and values. They did not happen somewhere else but in our ‘backyard.’ They each affect us differently, yet all heighten our awareness that we live in a broken world and it doesn’t seem to be getting better.

As Christians, what do we do? How do we react? What do we say?

The Scriptures provide guidance.

First, Jesus dealt with the news of senseless acts of violence in His day. The Roman governor, Pilate, had apparently ordered the death of some Jews from Galilee and mixed their blood with their sacrifices. (Luke 13:1-5) It was a hot-button issue of that day and caused outrage among some. However, Jesus’ response suggests that they were not as much angry with Pilate, but wanted Jesus to address the apparent guilt of the Galileans. In other words, they thought those Galileans must have been some really bad people for God to have allowed such a thing. They wanted Jesus’ opinion.

Jesus pulled their attention away from the headline news of the day with a statement that some might consider insensitive, “Do you think these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered this way?” Jesus was telling them that their focus was in the wrong place.

Would you like Jesus to weigh in on the violence of our day, give His divine opinion on the matter?

Jesus walked this earth as deity in the flesh. He existed before His earthly ministry. He had a perspective that we may overlook. He saw Cain kill Abel. He saw the condition of the world at the time of the flood, the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, the violent Assyrians attack Israel, His own people offering children as sacrifices, the desecration of the temple in Jerusalem by the Greeks. He had seen it all and the events of His day were nothing new.

Jesus did weigh in on the senseless matters of His day. He came to “seek and to save the lost” and “to give His life a ransom for many.” He did not think that He would end war and violence on the earth. Rather, He opened the door to God’s kingdom. He calls for you to change your thinking about the headline news and realign your focus to God and His kingdom!

Second, “The anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.” (James 1:20) So, curb your outrage. Refrain from social media outbursts and from your own senseless opinionated banter. Instead of expressing your liberty of free speech, capture God’s attention. Use your voice in the quiet of your room...on your knees...in humble prayer.

Mark Stinnett

September 14, 2025  

Why I Pray for Understanding

To emphasize the importance of discernment the preacher remarked that Christianity was a thinking religion. Dissatisfied, one woman quipped, “If they would just tell me what I need to do, I could do that.” (No thinking.)

A friend told me about his experience in the church of his youth. He had questions. He asked questions. He wanted understanding. He was shut down with answers like, “That’s just the way it is.”

A young lady visited several churches asking for help in understanding the Bible. Church folks kept telling her that she just needed to have faith.

Sometimes biblical teachings are clear and unmistakable. Yet, there are some teachings that are not so black and white. So, we need discernment.

You may remember Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron. They were priests and had received instruction about offering incense to God. They decided to change God’s instruction and “offered strange fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them.” (Leviticus 10:1) A person could reason that they did not break a command because what they did was not prohibited. And yet, they did something different than what they had been told to do. They should have applied discernment and reasoned that God’s specific instruction excluded their ‘strange’ incense mixture.

Jesus taught, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,’” a teaching from the Law of Moses regarding the strict application of justice. And yet, Jesus taught that God’s people should learn to turn the other cheek, that is, absorb an injustice. He was not updating the Law or superseding the Law but communicating the need to think about the strict application of the Law. After all, would you want to be the one to carry out the consequences of putting out someone else’s eye if your eye was accidentally put out?! The simple point is that unquestioned obedience to the Law would have Israel full of people who were crippled, one-eyed, missing teeth, etc. However, after giving thought to the outcome of strict obedience, voluntary mercy and forgiveness would prove to be a better way.

In the Parable of the Talents two of the servants were given a sum of money. They put the money to use for their master. However, another servant hid his money and later returned it to the master. He was rebuked because he should have known what to do. He should have thought more clearly!

After telling several of the parables Jesus concluded by saying, “He who has ears, let him hear.” This stood in stark contrast to the cry of the Old Testament prophets. They warned God’s people of divine judgment because the people had eyes but did not see and had ears but did not hear. Jesus was calling for ears that were attentive to His message in the parables. The people were to listen and then ponder the parables. Some of the parables have no further explanation. It appears that Jesus believed that those parables could be understood both then and now by applying discernment. At other times His listeners voiced their lack of understanding and asked Jesus to explain. To those who asked, He explained!

“Ask, and it will be given to you” applies to discernment in Bible study. It also applies to the application of Scripture in our daily lives. God did not speak to mankind and have His word recorded to keep understanding hidden. He wants us to understand! In the first psalm David wrote that he meditated on the Law day and night. He craved understanding and received it.

Wisdom tells us to study and meditate on God’s word, to strive for understanding. 

Wisdom tells us to ask. 

Remember to pray for understanding.

Mark Stinnett

September 7, 2025