I'm in the Lord's Army

(and other lies I learned in church)

I still remember the chant.

Tiny feet on linoleum floors, small voices rising in unison: I’m in the Lord’s army… yes, sir! It was Sunday School in the 90s and were there to learn about Jesus, but aside from parables and prayers, they gave us weapons and called it “the armor of God.”

We suited up in our minds—breastplate, helmet, shoes, sword. We marched, we sang, we laughed. And no one ever stopped to ask what it meant to teach a child to wage war in the name of faith.

For years as an evangelical I prayed like that, asking God to prepare me for battle so that I might know peace. Yet I never thought to question what kind of peace requires a weapon.

The phrase “put on the armor of God” comes from Ephesians 6, as you probably know. What many of us might not realize, though, is that this so-called “armor of God” is modeled after Roman military gear. The armor of the very soldiers who enforced the Pax Romana—Rome’s version of peace that was built not on compassion or kinship, but on silence and submission. On the groaning backs of the conquered. The Pax Romana was called a “golden age,” a time of prosperity and order, but I can’t help but wonder: what is peace if it must be stolen?

While those at the empire’s center may have enjoyed the benefits of war, life on the margins was marked by poverty and fear. The poor bore the cost burdened by crushing taxes that drained what little they had. But the Roman historian Tacitus saw through the illusion: “They create a desolation and call it peace,” he once said—a mantra as old as empire itself. Centuries earlier, the prophet Jeremiah also cried out against empire’s façade. “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.” (Jer. 8:11)

Empires always do this. They wrap domination in the language of destiny; they call conquest a divine calling. And those who speak against it aren’t just labeled ungrateful or naïve, but rebellious and troublesome. Rome did it. So did Britain. And we still see it today. In the US, we’re told this is what keeps us safe: the bases, the bombs, the borders. But militarism is not just policy, it’s theology. It shapes what we worship, what we fear, what we teach our children to sing.

I think about Dr. King’s warning, that a nation spending more on war than on people is not simply misaligned, it is dying. And I wonder how many of us are, too—our spirits eroded by a gospel that confuses might for salvation.

“Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of justice¹in place, ¹⁵ and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. ¹⁶ In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. ¹⁷ Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

Studying Ephesians 6 now, it’s wild that a subversive text like this would turn into some invitation to cosplay empire. Somehow, what was meant as resistance got absorbed into the very thing it was resisting.

You see, what were once instruments of war become metaphors for something entirely different: the belt becomes truth, the breastplate becomes justice. Even the sword—once a symbol of conquest—is no longer made of steel, but of Spirit. Thus, when Ephesians speaks of armor, it’s reimagining violence into virtue as if to say, This empire will not have the final word. Their swords are not sacred. Instead, these are our defenses: Truth. Justice. Peace.

And the true battle? It’s not against flesh and blood, but against rulers and authorities—against the very systems that exploit, marginalize, and destroy. The “devil’s schemes” mentioned here are not just abstract forces floating in some spiritual realm; they are the ideologies that uphold empire, legitimize violence, and silence dissent.

And at the center of these schemes is militarism itself—the belief that peace must be secured through domination, that strength is found in firepower, that justice can be delivered by the sword. Instead, the Roman soldier’s armor, once a symbol of brutal imperial dominance, is now transformed as a metaphor for spiritual resistance. Not to glorify war, but to subvert it.

And just like that, empire is flipped on its head.

So maybe—contrary to what our Sunday school teachers once taught us— this passage is not about pretending we’re in an actual army preparing for war, but about refusing to play by empire’s rules. About making us a people who carry peace where others carry swords. Who bear faith where others bear fear. Who refuse to bow to the gods of militarism. Because this armor? It doesn’t make us conquerors; it makes us steady, able to stand firm when the world demands our allegiance to systems that oppress, divide, and destroy.

I imagine the wound Jeremiah talked about— still open, still aching under the weight of false promises. Empire has always had prophets and priests willing to serve comfort over truth, to maintain order rather than pursue justice. But true peace does come from pretending all is well, the way Rome did, the way many of the elite still do, because the peace of Christ is not forged in firepower. Real peace is forged in the breaking of bread. In a body that is given, not taken.

This is part of the resistance we are called to: To unlearn the scripts we’ve been given. To stop dressing our children in battle songs. To believe in a kind of peace that doesn’t need a sword to survive.

Because we weren’t made for conquest, we were made for communion.

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1. A note on the use of justice instead of righteousness: The Greek word here—often translated as “righteousness”—is dikaiosunē. This word, in Greek, also means “justice.”

That’s no small detail, as our Western minds understand these as two completely different things. In much of Western Christianity, righteousness tends to evoke personal morality, a kind of inward piety. Justice, on the other hand, pushes us outward—it’s about how we live in right relationship with others, especially the marginalized.

Imagine if, in places where the context allows, we read justice instead of righteousness. Familiar passages would suddenly take on a different weight. They would no longer be confined to individual virtue but would demand something communal, even political. It’s a shift that reveals how much can be lost—or found—in translation.