God give us all plenty of time to redeem ourselves, But when your time is up the Lord must make His final decision. We can't let violators go on violating the laws without punishment. Eventually they'll be thinking that's there God-given-rights to do what they're please to do eventhough if it hurt the other party. Reconciling to God is showing passionate concerns from the heart toward His feelings. Some of us doesn't have that passion, but if we walk a long time with Him, He'll eventually grow on us. So we must share a long life with God in order to love Him. no one can't love someone instantly. The person must shared their lives with them in order to love them.
How Do We Reconcile Old Testament Call To Commit Genocide To Call Of Jesus To Love Our Enemies?
Jesus hates his enemies.
†. Luke 19:27 . . But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them— bring them here and kill them in front of me.
†. Mtt 13:40-42 . . As the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
†. Rev 14:18-20 . . And another angel came out from the altar, who had power over fire, and he cried with a loud cry to him who had the sharp sickle, saying: Thrust in your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe. So the angel thrust his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth, and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trampled outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress, up to the horses' bridles, for one thousand six hundred furlongs.
Winepresses in those days were just tubs. Grapes were thrown in and then people inside squished the grapes with their feet. So you see, it wasn't mechanical; it was personal.
†. Rev 19:15 . . He treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.
The pronoun "he" in that verse refers to Christ: the rider on the white horse depicted in Rev 19:11-16. The number of enemies Jesus is set to kill in the winepress is considerable.
†. Rev 19:17-18 . . And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven: Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God: that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.
The Tribulation will be orchestrated by none other than the love-your-enemies Jesus (Rev 1:1). Sometime during those seven years, an earthquake, powerful enough to rattle the entire planet, will cause the collapse of every city on earth (Rev 16:18-19). Roughly three-thousand people were killed in just the two buildings of the World Trade Center. Just think of the number of men, women, and children who will be crushed to death when all of Manhattan comes down at once; along with the rest of the world's major cities. It staggers the mind.
It's an interesting paradox that a man who gave his life to save the world; is all set to destroy the world.
†. Isa 63:1-4 . .Who is this who comes from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, this one who is glorious in His apparel, Traveling in the greatness of His strength?
. . . It is I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save.
. . .Why is your apparel red, and your garments like one who treads in the winepress?
. . . I have trodden the winepress alone, and from the peoples no one was with me. For I have trodden them in my anger, and trampled them in my fury; their blood is sprinkled upon my garments, and I have stained all my robes. For the day of vengeance is in my heart.
That Christ loves his enemies there is no doubt: but that he hates them there is no doubt either.
†. Ps 2:12 . . Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way; for his wrath can flare up in a moment.
The Freedom Riders committed themselves to not use violence, their message and desire was that they would defeat violence with nonviolence, as Jesus did. They knew they faced attacks, death and incarceration for the stands they took for equal rights for all Americans. Obviously, it was up to the Authorities, local or state or national, to protect people from attacks and uphold the laws of the land. That was their legal responsibility, anyway, which they obviously largely failed in.
I see you point rather well with you example of "The Freedom Riders" and how they faced aggression with non-aggression. But where they not depending upon the authorities of the state/city to uphold thier rights against the mobs? Those same authorities are to a degree Christian as well, how would the "Freedom Riders" expect them to use any form of violence against the mobs in defense of the "Freedom Riders" themselves?
You've got a good topic, but your focal is all on this group and no attention is paid to the larger picture, like the police. We want all peoples to become Christian, but if this nears completion and all the law enforcement is removed due to a "no violence" mandate then who's to stop those hold outs who profess to use violence?
Shall we use non violence but use a non Chrisitian Police Force? Don't we want them, as well, to see Christs wondeful words and follow too? Who are we depending on to save us from those who use violence on we who don't? As the question broadens from more than one group or one instance cracks begin to form in the framework of the logic I think.
Thanks!
Whisper01,
They, the Freedom Riders, truly did not know what would happen to them, I think, in the South of those times. What they did know was their cause was just and right, and I think they knew that it was only a matter of time before the injustices of the unequal treatment of peoples had to stop. They wanted to be a part of seeing it come to an end. It was not about desiring others to use violence to protect them. In all cases, they were not protected by law enforcement. And much of that was intentional, there were even police and political leaders involved in the attacks. The DVD depicts one incident of a police detective physically attacking a Freedom Ride member, a woman who approached him for help with another severely injured passenger. Whatever response they encountered in the Freedom Rides across the South, through Alabama and Mississippi, and on to New Orleans , it furthered the cause. That was the beauty of this nonviolent resistance movement. At one point, a mob surrounds a church, desiring to burn the church with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and Reverend Abernathy inside, and 1500 others in the church. King speaks to the crowd, "God is not dead." God was so much there in and with that nonviolent movement, and no matter what was done to participants, beatings, humiliation, jail, it only kept growing and the people in it were energized and strengthened by their struggles. You see God's grace enveloping them. If we could take these nonviolent movements and expand them out into our internal and intl conflicts, we could transform the world with these same movements today.
We have to have a police force, I am not arguing against that. I think Chistians who are in that work have special challenges to deal with, their personal trials to confront and face.
As we expand these principles and movements out, we have to be creative, examples are work like that being done by Christian Peacemaker teams in Columbia, Iraq, Canada, and Palestine, boycotts to oppose global injustices, interfaith dialogue, like that engaged in the World Council of Churches recently in a program they led in Lebanon.
The Freedom Riders committed themselves to not use violence, their message and desire was that they would defeat violence with nonviolence, as Jesus did. They knew they faced attacks, death and incarceration for the stands they took for equal rights for all Americans. Obviously, it was up to the Authorities, local or state or national, to protect people from attacks and uphold the laws of the land. That was their legal responsibility, anyway, which they obviously largely failed in.
I see you point rather well with you example of "The Freedom Riders" and how they faced aggression with non-aggression. But where they not depending upon the authorities of the state/city to uphold thier rights against the mobs? Those same authorities are to a degree Christian as well, how would the "Freedom Riders" expect them to use any form of violence against the mobs in defense of the "Freedom Riders" themselves?
You've got a good topic, but your focal is all on this group and no attention is paid to the larger picture, like the police. We want all peoples to become Christian, but if this nears completion and all the law enforcement is removed due to a "no violence" mandate then who's to stop those hold outs who profess to use violence?
Shall we use non violence but use a non Chrisitian Police Force? Don't we want them, as well, to see Christs wondeful words and follow too? Who are we depending on to save us from those who use violence on we who don't? As the question broadens from more than one group or one instance cracks begin to form in the framework of the logic I think.
I just want to share a few other responses by people to the Freedom Riders and attacks upon them, that were addressed in the DVD.
In one attack in Alabama, after some explosive device was thrown on the bus the Freedom Riders were able to force the door open and came out of the bus gagging and coughing from the smoke and crying out for water. The mob started attacking them. A woman who worked or lived nearby ran out of the building she was in, and one by one, she approached the gagging Freedom Riders wiping their faces and giving them water. She thrust herself into the violent crowd, again and again, risking bodily harm to help those hurting.
In another incident, students from Nashville were being attacked, who had joined the Freedom Rides. A woman was bloody from attacks, and a Federal Offical observing the attack called her to his car to protect her from more attacks. She said, I am trained for this, step away and avoid being hurt. He did not heed her words and entered the crowd and was attacked and himself beaten and injured, as he grabbed her and pulled her into his car.
News media in the South called the Freedom Riders journey on the buses, integrated groups sitting on the fronts and backs of buses, a provocation to commit violence. They were asking for everything they got.
In an Alabama mob, women with babies in their arms joined in the attacks, hurling racial epiteths at the Freedom Riders.
The Freedom Riders committed themselves to not use violence, their message and desire was that they would defeat violence with nonviolence, as Jesus did. They knew they faced attacks, death and incarceration for the stands they took for equal rights for all Americans. Obviously, it was up to the Authorities, local or state or national, to protect people from attacks and uphold the laws of the land. That was their legal responsibility, anyway, which they obviously largely failed in.
I saw no cases of Freedom Riders using violence against those attacking them.
In Mississippi, Freedom Riders were arrested and sentenced to imprisonment at hard labor in the worst prisons in the state. Hundreds were imprisoned, men and women, as many as 8 to a cell, before the US Supreme Court found the Jim Crow laws unconstitutional. They included people from all different races and religions and ethnic backgrounds, they united together for a common cause, to take a stand for equal rights for all Americans.
I do not remember studying all of this in school growing up in the South, I was born the year this was happening, 1961, I doubt we covered it in school, where I live you cannot even today find books about Martin Luther King, Jr. in local bookstores.
Everything happens for a reason, we simply cannot see the big picture. Amen, we don't and that makes it rather hard to decide to go one way or the opposite.
I see incidents like the hypothetical largely as tests for us. I do not know the full story, but if I personally was to see one person hurting another, I am most definitely not called upon to ignore what is happening, especially if it is an adult hurting a child. I am to act, but I do not think I am being called upon to use violence against another. If I could grab a child fom the arms of the one hurting them, and flee, I would. And you would be arrested, the child given back. Not that I disagree with your method, but there are some harsh consequences for doing the right thing.
If I could call for help, I would. To what end? If the person(s) responding where good Christians like yourself they would also be struck with the same delima, what to do?
I would not pick up another axe and use it. I would not pick up a weapon, and use it. That is what I think my actions would be, anyway, I do not think anyone can say for sure what we would do in such circumstances, we often act out of instinct, out of emotions that carry us along, without thinking. Axe? Weapon? In the circumstances you describe, certanly not! But the circumstances you describe are somewhat "light-weight", there are others that are more on the heavy side. How about a pimp beating his whore to death? How about a drugged out addict coming at your wife with a knife to gain her purse but God only knows what he will really do with that knife? How about several out-of-neighborhood men stopping to pick a fight with your neighbor because he called to them to not speed in his neighborhood due to small children about? What-cha gonna do? It's a hard call is it not? Gonna ask that pimp to please stop? Gonna get out of the way of the drugged aggressor and pray that he does not stabb your wife? Gonna watch some men rip into your neighbor and go call 911?
What I'm getting at is that it's a bit more complex than a person beating a child in public, sometimes is much much more complex and you are not afforeded the luxury of time, it's either act or dont. Defend your wife or see what happens. Jump to your neighbors defence or waste critical time calling 911. Do you see my point? Christ tells you personally "no violence", but your wife (I know, your a woman and don't have one but work with me here) is seconds away from a really bad encounter with someone who's beyond reason. Watcha-gonna-do?
Responding to violence with violence is not the example Jesus set for us. I am sure about that, just not so sure how I, or anyone else, would respond to such situations. And the outcome of all of it could be good or bad, regardless of how we respond and whether it is the right way in the eyes of God.
I see that you "see" the problem. Should be respond always with "over-action" or respond very little with "under-action". It's a slippery slope no doubt about it. But for me, I can not see Christ, my Lord, standing next to me and helping me, with hands on my shoulders, out of the way of the mad man with a knife so my wife can deal with it. My take is that if the man walks away, I don't act, if he advances I act. Maybe he's just to stupid or to drugged to know what he's getting into, maybe he wants help and doesn't know that the knife is still in his hands. But them's the breaks, I'm not going to deliberate when the time to act is brought upon me. I act. What would you do?
I was watching a DVD earlier, about the Freedom Riders in the Civil Rights Movement. They boarded buses to travel through the South, whites and blacks traveling together, sitting at the fronts and backs of buses, to challenge Segregation practices. They were attacked and beaten by mobs and incarcerated in the hundreds in prisons in Mississippi. They just kept coming, until Segregation ended. One Christian man speaks about his thoughts before being attacked by a mob. He said, I prayed for strength to not respond to violence with violence. I prayed for God to forgive them. And he said, he was then attacked with a bat and rendered unconsciece. That is a man and a people following Jesus directions in Matthew 5:38-39. Many of the Feedom Riders were not even Christians. Another interesting piece of information to take in, Martin Luther King, Jr, refused to ride the buses, angering many.
Yep, thats rough. What to do? Defend your fellow protestor against the bat wielding racist or continue to be passive? If you strike the man then your in the same position as the man you so loathed in the first place, but your friend does not potentially die. If you don't then your morally correct and your friend is possibly dead or seriously hurt for life. What to do? In that instance I would have to side with position #2 even though it would more than likely start a real fight amoungst many instead of amoungst simply 2. But that's the way I'm built, can't stand back and do the "wrong" thing to avert even more pain. Right is right and wrong is wrong. It's wrong it attempt to kill/mangle my friend when he's not attmepting to malign anyone. What should I do? Call for help? What would the help do? stand there with the same delima?
When you say "call for help" are you hoping that someone like me will show up suddenly and do what you refuse to do? To act with violence? Why call help if everyone thinks the same as you and no one will use violence? Grab a child and run? What if they are faster? What would you do after you got away anyway, you just kid-knapped a persons son or daughter. Go to the police then? What if they thought like you did and they would not use violence to stop people either? Then what? You see, it gets progressively worse the farther you take the example.
My solution, never start a fight, but always be ready to finish one. If everyone acted such then there would be no fights, and if everyone does not act that way there are plenty of people around who will help finish it. :-)
This is a call for genocide, and comes out of The Old Testament, a call for genocide from the lips of Moses:
The tradition that Moses seamlessly wrote the Torah originated in ancient Judaism, and was adopted into early Christianity, but a close reading of the text itself strongly suggests that what we have today is not, or at least not all, Moses's own work. How, for example, could Moses have written Deuteronomy 34? Likewise, why are there so many repetitions and variations of the same principles and commandments? Textual scholars since the 19th century speculate about details but have generally accepted the premise that the text is a conglomerate product of the Jewish community, drawing upon several disparate textual sources and traditions, which did not reach a final, stable form until some time after the return from the Babylonian Exile.
This view of the text gives additional credence to the premise that later scriptures portraying a more benevolent God reflect not necessarily a perplexingly contrasting facet of an immutable God, but the more mature understanding of the religious community at a later time in its evolution.
"Truth did not come into the world naked, but it came in types and images. The world will not receive truth in any other way." Gospel of Philip, Logion 72
"Christ will regenerate all things; through Him all things will be purged, and return into eternal life. And when the Son shall deliver up the kingdom to the Father, all things will be God; that is, all things will still exist, but God will exist in them, and they will be full of Him." Fabius Manus Victorinus, c. 350 AD
So had a passerby in Graham Washington heard the horrified social worker screaming & come running as Josh Powell was in the process of axing and burning to death the 2 young boys, no violent action should be taken by the Christian to save them ?
"just embrace the non-violence" ?
Really?
Please describe what you believe Jesus would have a Christian confronted with the butchering of these two boys to do?
Sherri, he's go a really good point here. What do we do when naked brutality, horror and lust of violence come knocking at your door? Turn the other cheek and watch the horror engulf ones children, wife, friends, family, country... I've worked hard for many a year to simply stand aside and watch such malignance engulf that which I've, in trust of Christs love, created with hard work and toil. I've labored hard in Christs service and helped to create a loving and good place for many to grow in both in family and community, to let down my guard and allow the ill to infest it would be pointless, fruitless, a dis-honor on all i've worked hard to help create.
I can't help but think that Christ would smile down upon my actions to defend it, stand up to the woe' and ill's of this world and defend the "good".
The OT was a time of trial of ancient man, it was brutal - God attempts to teach within that time and man writes it down in a brutal way.
The NT was a time of trial of ancient man, it was less brutal - God attempts to teach within that time and man writes it down in a loving way.
2 times, 2 seasons, 2 different cultures... 2 visions of mans times. Both exist in all times, we are a mix of the two. Lean toward one - love - I agree. But keep a strong arm ready to ward the good from the bad. For would it not be a sin to allow such ill amngst our families when we are able to ward it off?
Whisper01,
Everything happens for a reason, we simply cannot see the big picture. I see incidents like the hypothetical largely as tests for us. I do not know the full story, but if I personally was to see one person hurting another, I am most definitely not called upon to ignore what is happening, especially if it is an adult hurting a child. I am to act, but I do not think I am being called upon to use violence against another. If I could grab a child fom the arms of the one hurting them, and flee, I would. If I could call for help, I would. I would not pick up another axe and use it. I would not pick up a weapon, and use it. That is what I think my actions would be, anyway, I do not think anyone can say for sure what we would do in such circumstances, we often act out of instinct, out of emotions that carry us along, without thinking.
Responding to violence with violence is not the example Jesus set for us. I am sure about that, just not so sure how I, or anyone else, would respond to such situations. And the outcome of all of it could be good or bad, regardless of how we respond and whether it is the right way in the eyes of God.
I was watching a DVD earlier, about the Freedom Riders in the Civil Rights Movement. They boarded buses to travel through the South, whites and blacks traveling together, sitting at the fronts and backs of buses, to challenge Segregation practices. They were attacked and beaten by mobs and incarcerated in the hundreds in prisons in Mississippi. They just kept coming, until Segregation ended. One Christian man speaks about his thoughts before being attacked by a mob. He said, I prayed for strength to not respond to violence with violence. I prayed for God to forgive them. And he said, he was then attacked with a bat and rendered unconsciece. That is a man and a people following Jesus directions in Matthew 5:38-39. Many of the Feedom Riders were not even Christians. Another interesting piece of information to take in, Martin Luther King, Jr, refused to ride the buses, angering many.
So had a passerby in Graham Washington heard the horrified social worker screaming & come running as Josh Powell was in the process of axing and burning to death the 2 young boys, no violent action should be taken by the Christian to save them?
"just embrace the non-violence" ?
Really?
Please describe what you believe Jesus would have a Christian confronted with the butchering of these two boys to do?
Sherri, he's go a really good point here. What do we do when naked brutality, horror and lust of violence come knocking at your door? Turn the other cheek and watch the horror engulf ones children, wife, friends, family, country... I've worked hard for many a year to simply stand aside and watch such malignance engulf that which I've, in trust of Christs love, created with hard work and toil. I've labored hard in Christs service and helped to create a loving and good place for many to grow in both in family and community, to let down my guard and allow the ill to infest it would be pointless, fruitless, a dis-honor on all i've worked hard to help create.
I can't help but think that Christ would smile down upon my actions to defend it, stand up to the woe' and ill's of this world and defend the "good".
The OT was a time of trial of ancient man, it was brutal - God attempts to teach within that time and man writes it down in a brutal way.
The NT was a time of trial of ancient man, it was less brutal - God attempts to teach within that time and man writes it down in a loving way.
2 times, 2 seasons, 2 different cultures... 2 visions of mans times. Both exist in all times, we are a mix of the two. Lean toward one - love - I agree. But keep a strong arm ready to ward the good from the bad. For would it not be a sin to allow such ill amngst our families when we are able to ward it off?
