Within the Bible’s many pages are texts that sanction military violence, impose limits on its use, and imagine a world beyond it. Given the diversity of social settings—and the more than thousand years over which these texts were composed—this should hardly surprise us. The Bible’s reflections on war are every bit as complicated as our own.

The closeness of the royal palace to the Temple was (and is!) unacceptable to God. That situation can stand no longer. Idolatry, of gods and of powerful human beings, must be put away. The only way for God to reside among the people forever is by enacting “No Kings!” for the same interminable duration.

Does that sound political to you? Good, because it is. It’s God’s politics for the pious and for the polis. And that means it’s politics and religion all mashed up and intermixed and inextricable all the way down because that’s the way it is with this Lord who will brook no rivals, suffer no competitors, answer to no president or congress, and who loves righteousness and justice equally and always.

What about when I open the door for someone whose arms are full? When I stopped to smell the lilacs while walking in my neighborhood? When I didn’t respond to that mean email with another mean email? Let this offering be acceptable, O Lord.