There’s distasteful. There’s absolutely vile and disgusting. And then there’s this.

Blasphemy!

Apparently, the Pentagon is no longer satisfied with recruiting soldiers on behalf of the United States government and is now recruiting them on behalf of God.

At least, that’s the ploy.

Sean Parnell, the Assistant to the Secretary of War and Chief Spokesman for the Pentagon, has published not one, but several social media posts twisting Isaiah 6:8—the Lord’s summons to the prophet Isaiah to service—as though it was a call for Christians to submit themselves to serve, and possibly die, in military service.

Simply calling this twisting of Scripture “out of context” is far too mild. This is outright blasphemy. This is attributing intentions to God that He never intended and isn’t present anywhere in the text. Presenting military service, especially to fight foreign wars that do little if anything to serve the interests of your own nation, as answering God’s call is usurping God’s authority.

The question isn’t whether military service can be honorable—it can be. The question is whether the government can claim God’s voice to serve that end and pressure citizens to enlist.

The passage Parnell twists is where God commissioned the prophet Isaiah to go spread the warning of God’s imminent judgment to the cities. Isaiah sees the Lord sitting on the throne in terrifying majesty as the seraphim sing “Holy Holy Holy is the Lord of Hosts.” Isaiah doesn’t respond with patriotic fervor. He basically collapses under the knowledge of his own sin. Once his guilt is removed from Him, the Lord commissions him to this service.

“Here I am, send me” doesn’t have anything to do with military service. What the phrase means is:

“Lord, send me to proclaim your Word to the people, even though they will not hear or obey it.”

What Parnell’s and the U.S. Department of War’s propaganda does to the text is turn God’s prophetic messenger into an American soldier, God’s commission into a call for military service, the prophetic office into government employment, and God’s purposes into the Pentagon’s objectives.

Not only does this violate the third commandment not to take the Lord’s name in vain, but the Scriptures condemn those who speak on behalf of God when God has not commissioned them (Ezekiel 13). Jeremiah 23 also condemns the false prophets who claim God’s authority in their own words, and Deuteronomy 4:2 forbids adding to the Words God has spoken.

The American civil religion masquerades as a form of Christianity, or Christian patriotism, but in reality, has nothing to do with God. American politicians, both Democrat and Republican, routinely invoke Scripture because they know that God’s authority is higher than their own. But they don’t invoke it for God’s purposes, they invoke it for their own.

Whether a Democrat invokes “loving your neighbor” to mean we should support untested vaccines, abortion, or sodomy, or a Republican invokes “send me” to mean we should send our sons to die in foreign wars, either way, it’s evil.