An act in favor of the free carrying of weapons, in July 2021 in Brasilia. Joédson Alves (EFE)
Jair Bolsonaro's paroxysm for weapons reached its peak on the eve of the last Corpus Christi holiday.
Meeting with evangelical leaders, the Brazilian president spoke at the Government Palace and said: "Jesus did not buy a gun just because they did not exist at that time."
Bolsonaro's eagerness for weapons, and that recurrent idea of wanting to "arm the people against violence", have led him to the point of blasphemy.
Lula da Silva, his competitor in the next elections who already appears as the favorite, wasted no time in answering him.
“It is impossible for someone who says such idiocy to say that he believes in God.
That person's god is not mine.
God is love, humanism, kindness, affection and respect for human beings”.
Brazil is the country with the largest Christian population in the world.
Therefore, Bolsonaro's statement cannot be taken lightly.
Bolsonaro's provocation immediately flooded social networks Among the hundreds of thousands of comments on Twitter, Hermes Fernández wrote: “Jesus carried a cross, not a weapon.
For Christ we can die, but not kill.
We cannot have the cross in one hand and a gun in the other."
Much has been discussed, especially in times of Liberation Theology, whether Jesus was a pacifist or a guerrilla.
According to the four canonical gospels, what Jesus was not is a coward.
The answer he gave to the apostles when they warned him: "Flee, because King Herod Antipas wants to kill you" is well known.
Jesus replied: "Go and tell that fox that today and tomorrow I will continue to expel demons and heal the sick" (Luke 13, 31). In rabbinic writings, fox also means a "nobody".
But if the creator of Christianity never appears as a coward, it is also true that the strength of his message was pacifism as opposed to warmongering.
This is how his saying became famous: "He who kills iron with iron dies", as well as the condemnation of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth", which recalls the Talion law of the Hammurabi code of the 17th century BC.
That Jesus was not interested in weapons and that he wanted his disciples unarmed is revealed by the episode when he was arrested and put on trial.
When Marco, one of the servants of the High Priest, had his ear cut off with the sword, Jesus healed him as Luke tells in his gospel.
Jesus reached the climax, according to the evangelist Matthew, by stating that Christians "should love their own enemies and pray for those who persecute them" and that "those who work for peace" should consider themselves happy (Matthew 5, 9).
If there is a text in the Gospels that reflects the soul of the prophet Jesus who opened the doors of Judaism to create a universal religion in which everyone should feel like brothers, that is the call of the Beatitudes, in which it is stated: "Happy the peacemakers because they will be called sons of God.”
It is a sad irony that in a deeply religious and Christian country like Brazil, its head of state, who calls himself Catholic and evangelical at the same time for a purely electoral calculation, prostitutes his own religion, trying to attract the votes of the 65 million evangelicals to whom he tries to soak with his obsession with weapons, violence, war and his thirst for revenge.
To the evangelicals gathered in the presidential palace, Bolsonaro tried to convince them that weapons are the best antidote for self-defense.
He reminded them that, for example, no one would dare to declare war on the countries that today possess the atomic bomb, another of his warmongering dreams.
Bolsonaro has been the president of the history of Brazil who has revealed his violent nature and his passion for weapons more and better by legislating that even minors can go to train in shooting clubs to become familiar with weapons.
And it is he and his three children, also politicians, who appear happy and smiling, making the sign of firing a gun with their hands.
On his first official trip to Israel, he asked, in a break, to go and show off shooting and expressed his pride in hitting the target seven times in a row, while not hiding that he would be unable to sleep if he did not have a gun next to his pillow.
The next elections are going to reveal whether Brazilians, despite the institutional violence that afflicts them, or perhaps because of it, prefer that the country continue to be governed by a president who encourages them to arm themselves to the teeth every day and would like to see with a revolver the very Jesus Christ.
Or if, on the contrary, they prefer someone who puts an end to this madness in order to open up new spaces of brotherhood and collaboration in society capable of creating a climate of peace and harmony that puts an end to the demons brought to them by Bolsonarism, which has returned to play the drums of the outdated and bloody military dictatorship.
Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS América
newsletter
and receive all the key information on current affairs in the region
50% off
Exclusive content for subscribers
read without limits
subscribe
I'm already a subscriber
