U.S. Air Force – “Above All”

The United States Air Force has started a new marketing, recruiting, advertising, propaganda campaign.

The United States Air Force – “Above All”.

Perhaps you’ve seen the commercials and billboards?

For Col. Michael Caldwell, deputy director of Air Force public affairs, “Above All is about what we do and how we do it. The job of the Air Force is to defend America and we do that by dominating air, space and cyberspace.” (Air Force Press Release)

For readers of the New Testament, “Above All” should sound awfully familiar.

According to the apostle Paul, Christ is “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.” (Ephesians 1:21)

Paul also says there is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.” (Ephesians 4:5-6)

Above all. Pretty exclusive language huh? In my mind, it’s simply impossible for both Christ and the U.S. Air Force to be “Above All”. Again, the language here is exclusive; there is room for only one. So from where I sit, the U.S. Air Force is trampling on language that belongs only to God.

Blasphemy?

Nonetheless, this type of thing should come as no surprise. The empire’s of men always strive to possess what belongs to the kingdom of God.

Did you know that at one point in time the Roman Empire proclaimed a “gospel”, to a “kingdom”, about a “messiah”, who was sovereign over his “church”, and had the “faith” of his people?

See Shane Claiborne & Chris Haw’s book Jesus for President, pgs. 66-70 for more.

For Christian’s, these terms probably sound completely out of context when applied to the Roman Empire, yet they were all a significant part of the imperial lexicon of Rome in the first century. The authors of the New Testament, (who all experienced the oppression of Rome), understood that political satire was a most effective means by which to communicate the radical way of Jesus. So in their texts they gave new meaning to words like “faith” and “church”, and in doing so, exposed the propaganda of Rome. However Jesus and the authors of the New Testament had no desire to climb the throne of the Roman Empire to impose their will upon the world, rather their mission was to tell all those with ears to hear that the solution was not to “dominate” thy neighbor, but to love thy neighbor – to embody a new reality, model a new way, live as a peculiar people, a set apart people, to “abandon the way of the world and cultivate an alternative society in the shell of the old, not merely to be a better version of the kingdom of this world.” (Claiborne & Haw, 71)

So let’s follow the example of Jesus and the first Christians, let’s take back what belongs to God and expose the lies of the empire. Let us remind all people with ears to hear that there is only one name that is “Above All”.