You're a soldier. You kill God's children, voluntarily. You claim to be a Christian. Explain.

God kills plenty of people in the Bible. Murder is a sin, war is not.

Jon

And nobody goes to war to kill. It's certainly a result of war, but not the purpose.

God only had one child Jesus therefore killing anyone else isnt killing Gods children.

Remember Jesus saves, but Bhudda scores from the rebound!

Why do you care? You have demonstrated an absolute hatred for religion ever since appearing here. You don't seek understanding, you simply want to slam other people's choices because they don't make sense to you.

Other people can believe what they like.

The ones that went onward were.

But you refuse to attempt understanding or acknowledge the part that religion has played in every culture on the planet over thousands of years.

Recent Andy McNabb book, Seven Troop - a Christian soldier believes he's doing God's work/will. Make of that what you will...

I will readily accept that Britain has a Christian heritage. What I object to is people using this as an excuse or a shield for their unacceptable behaviour towards people who are different to them, be that through a different religion, race or sexual preference.

Everyone human being on this planet deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.

And you're right to object to that. But people of all backgrounds use all sorts of things as excuses for poor behaviour the world over. I object to any one group being singled out. As a race we have a predilection for intolerance, selfishness and hatred. These are the problems we should all work to change.

To answer your first question, killing an enemy soldier is not considered murder by many. Maybe that makes it ok, maybe it doesn't. I train in ninjutsu and I avoid violence as far as possible, as many times not only is it unnecessary, but ill advised. Sensai would say be wary of victory, because in "winning" you create the desire for revenge in the vanquished. However, if you absolutely have no choice, then destroy your opponent as quickly as possible. Don't mess around. Unfortunately, it's the in the interest of many people to perpetuate violence.

I know members of several armed forces, some of whom are Christian and some of whom aren't. I also know (quite well) an RAF Chaplain and we've discussed this before.

God gave people free will. Some people use that free will for good, some don't. Although Christians (as a rule) are supposed to be pretty good at turning the other cheek, that really only applies to the individual and many faiths choose to use their lives to attempt to protect those who can't protect themselves. This would be a pretty good rationale for going to war, with the convictions of your country behind you, to do your part to help. If this means killing other people before they kill you then so be it.

IME sweeping closed questions like the one you're asking tend to open hornets nests of interpretation. People in war don't "voluntarily" kill people, they volunteer for the armed forces and in the course of executing their duties for their country they may be required to kill to defend or protect, not just for the fun of it.

I'm not 100% I agree with your view on that.

I do agree that people shouldn't be singled out according to race, religion, sexual preference, hair colour etc etc, but I also think that people who choose to give up their basic rights as a human being by comitting murder, rape etc etc shouldn't be accorded the same level of respect as people who don't. Civilisation has been proven time and time again to only work if there are rules and people abide by them. The plan of course is that unjust rules should be able to be challenged and changed but we don't seem to quite have that bit sorted out yet.

Edited to add: All of which has stuff all to do with religion and nothing to do with your original question.

Agreed. It greatly upsets me when people live in fear and misery because fellow human beings victimise them and treat them with contempt, which is why I get severely annoyed when self-professed "Christians" are anything but welcoming to their fellow man.

I think a soldier would go by this rationale:
You found yourself in a situation where a person was about to kill two other people. To you all three people are equal, you don't know their background. The two people about to be killed are tied and gagged. If you intervene you can only kill/seriously maim the potential murderer, if you do nothing, the two people will be killed. What do you do?

Take that to mean that you as a soldier, you are preventing potentially millions of people from being killed or suffering, but in order to save millions, you may have to kill hundreds or perhaps thousands...What do you do?
I would have thought God would praise you for getting up off your arse and doing something about it. There are countless questions though as to whether it was the right thing to do in the first place. Christianity seems to praise those who have their heart in the right place, and condemn those who willingly seek to do negative things.