Theocentric Musings

  We have a culture that is brought up on vengeance, eye for an eye, kill em all, blow them to hell, where people fight over neighborhoods, states they live in, sports teams, favorite drinks, etc. Where people support going to war and occupying a country that was innocent, where people support another country building a wall around another group and trying to commit genocide, where people celebrate a sniper that killed people that were only defending their country from an occup ying force, a culture raised on exceptionalism, self centeredness, self absorption, and celebration of self, a culture that is unwilling to help the least, that cuts funding for programs that assist the poor, a culture that closes it's borders to needy immigrants fleeing danger, and you wonder why there is a problem with violence in this country? And by the way I was just talking about and describing American Christians™, I wasn't even talking about non Christians.

  It's always amusing when people renounce the fact that Jesus was against violence by saying when He said if someone "slaps your cheek, show them the other cheek," it was just related to insult, not physical violence.   The reason it's amusing is because just before saying the words they use to come to this strange conclusion by using mental gymnastics to defend their use of violence, and discount His meaning, He set up the message, and what He was speaking of, by very clearly r eferring directly to "an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth."   And that, my friend, can in no way, shape, or, form be looked at as referring to an insult, that is obviously a very real, and very physical, act against someone if you in fact know why that issue was addressed in the OT.   He also concludes by saying to love your enemies, and to pray for those who persecute you. And, no, He wasn't speaking of the Western world's form of persecution, He was spea...