04/03/2026
The Cost We Still Don’t Count
By A Country Pastor
Today, on the day we remember the death of Jesus, people will die again. Not one. Not a few. Hundreds. Based on the current pace of this conflict, by the time this day ends, more lives will be gone, more names added to a number that most of us will never fully see, and among them will be children, mothers, and families who began this day like any other. And today, we call this day Good Friday. That is the paradox we sit in, because there was nothing good about the violence of that day when Jesus was crucified, nothing good about the crowd choosing an insurrectionist over a healer, nothing good about leaders justifying death to maintain control, nothing good about soldiers carrying out orders while others stood by and watched. What we call good is not the suffering, it is the love that refused to become it.
And if we are honest, the same forces that led to the cross are still at work today. In this current war, where the United States and the State of Israel are striking Iran, and Iran is striking back, the weight of suffering is not being carried equally. It is falling most heavily on civilians, especially women and children. Children have been killed in the hundreds, and many more have been injured, often in crowded neighborhoods where ordinary life was unfolding just moments before. These are not distant numbers but bedrooms, schools, and ordinary days that never finished. Women too have been lost in large numbers, and together the lives of women and children taken now number in the hundreds upon hundreds, continuing to rise, reaching across every age from infants to the elderly, often in places that should have been safe, homes, schools, and community spaces.
We say “collateral damage,” but Good Friday reminds us what that really means, because on that day there was also a mother standing close enough to see it all. Mary was there not as a symbol but as a parent watching her child suffer under the weight of decisions made by others, decisions justified, carried out, and even supported. Good Friday is not abstract suffering but deeply personal loss, and somewhere today a mother is standing in that same place, standing in the rubble, in a hospital hallway, in the silence where a voice used to be, holding grief that did not have to be hers.
And there is an irony we cannot ignore, because the land we now call Israel is both ancient and modern, both rooted in Scripture and shaped by recent human decisions. The modern state itself was formed in the aftermath of world war and global politics, with lines drawn and recognized through international agreements and the involvement of the United Nations. It is not simply the world of the Bible carried forward unchanged, it is a nation shaped, like all nations, by history, power, and human hands. And yet some who reject global institutions, who speak against bodies like the United Nations, still embrace this outcome without question when it aligns with their understanding of God’s plan. That tension is worth noticing, not to condemn, but to remind us how easily faith can become entangled with politics, how quickly we can confuse what is from God with what has been shaped by people.
By contrast, reported casualties in Israel and among U.S. forces are significantly lower and more concentrated among military personnel, and while no loss is small, this reality reveals something we must not ignore, that the deadliest impact of this war is not being carried by those making the decisions but by those simply living their lives. Good Friday forces us to see what we often choose not to see, that the cross was not just about one man but about what happens when power justifies violence and calls it necessary, when leaders decide, when soldiers carry it out, and when crowds react, and when silence becomes participation.
The crowd had a choice that day, and they chose an insurrectionist over Jesus, choosing the way of force over the way of love, choosing the kind of power that feels strong but leaves destruction behind, and there were officials who approved it, soldiers who carried it out, and people who stood by and even cheered. That is not just their story, it is a mirror, because it reveals how quickly any of us can be pulled into the same patterns, how easily we can justify what should never be justified, especially when it is happening to someone else, somewhere else, to people we do not know.
Jesus did not respond with more violence, Jesus did not claim power through domination, and even in the middle of suffering Jesus chose forgiveness, saying, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). And when he died, the curtain of the temple was torn from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51), not to divide but to remove the barrier, to show that God was no longer found in systems of separation and control but in love that meets us in our deepest suffering.
So the question is not just what happened on Good Friday, but whether we recognize it now, whether we can still see the image of God in children we will never meet, whether we can feel the weight of lives lost beyond our borders, whether we can refuse to let words like strategy and targets numb us to what is actually happening. Because every time a life is reduced to a number the cross is happening again, and every time we choose compassion over indifference, truth over fear, and love over power, resurrection begins to break through.
Good Friday is not the end of the story, but it is a moment that asks us to choose, not in theory but in practice, not in belief alone but in action, whether we will follow the way of Jesus by protecting life, rejecting cruelty, and refusing to let power have the final word.
