"They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. 'Peace, peace,' they say, when there is no peace." - Jeremiah 6:14 "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn 'a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — a man's enemies will be the members of his own household.'" - Jesus, Matthew 10:34-36 "I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed! Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three." - Jesus, Luke 12:49-52 Jesus went straight to the Temple and threw out everyone who had set up shop, buying and selling. He kicked over the tables of loan sharks and the stalls of dove merchants. He quoted this text:
'My house was designated a house of prayer;
You have made it a hangout for thieves.' Now there was room for the blind and crippled to get in. They came to Jesus and he healed them. When the religious leaders saw the outrageous things he was doing, and heard all the children running and shouting through the Temple, 'Hosanna to David's Son!' they were up in arms and took him to task. 'Do you hear what these children are saying?' Jesus said, "Yes, I hear them. And haven't you read in God's Word, 'From the mouths of children and babies I'll furnish a place of praise'?" Fed up, Jesus turned on his heel and left the city for Bethany, where he spent the night. - Jesus, Matthew 21:12-17 Jesus Christ was not a pacifist. His own words as cited above are conclusive proof of His mission and intent. Modern Hebrew has about a dozen different applications for the word "peace" (shalom - שָׁלוֹם). Some scholars believe there may have been as many as 50 different applications during the time of Christ. When I say the English word "rock", I could be referring to a piece of earth that has geologically formed into a single, cohesive unit: rock. Or I could be commanding someone to sway or move in a rhythm while maintaining a stationary location: rock. Or I could be referring to a genre of music made popular in Western culture during the late 20th through early 21st centuries: rock. Yet we think that whenever we see the word "peace" appear in the Bible - and especially in proximity to Jesus - we assign it the modern Western ideal of absence of conflict. Worse, we ascribe this condition to Jesus and make it a permanent element of His character, conveniently discarding His humanity and the biblical record that we know doesn't mesh with our preconceptions. Jesus was often loud. There were times he needed to be. Jesus was often confrontational. There were times he needed to be. Jesus was not a man of peace. His time did not require it. And His ending as King of the Jews was anything but peaceful. But He will be the Prince of Peace. There is a very dangerous school of thought that has oozed into Western culture, both the Christian Western culture and the secular Western cultures. This poisonous doctrine has largely come to us from Eastern theologies, but it also had roots in the earliest sects of the Protestant Reformation. I am referring to pacifism. Pacifism is the idea that the absence of physical violence is the ultimate moral value. It is the elevation of a lie to a place of worship in the place of God. Pacifism says the absence of physical violence is of greater value than life itself. In fact, says the pacifist, only pacifists are moral enough to shed their own blood for their cause; the rest of us are sinful imposters, pretenders to their throne of morality and usurpers of true ethics. Recently, several people I am close to have bought into this lie. It’s especially hard to witness because at least one of them was once at least nominally a Christian. Since this person has fallen under the New Age influence of pacifistic nirvana they have become unprincipled and anti-American. Peace – that is the absence of violence – is now a goal that can be used to rationalize any number of sins. The United States, this person believes, is a force for evil and its government has not been freely elected for over a hundred years. Truth, of course, cannot be used to bring deceived people such as this back to reality because they have created their own truth and a separate “reality”. The modern pacifist movement is so insular, it has truly become cultic. When attempting to explain the necessity for American military action (in particular in Iraq and Afghanistan), I have often spoken the words of John Stuart Mill. His brilliant refutation of pacifism stands as the most eloquent and succinct critique of this cowardly - and ultimately spiritually destructive - philosophy. "But war, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice – a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice – is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.” - John Stuart Mill, “The Contest in America”, 1862 | 
Great Post!