I just got a comment on a post from back in October, but still obviously relevant today.

This person, comments about “the hard truth”; implying in his message that certain words of Jesus indicate that he may have been “practical” after all (ie. “I did not come to bring peace but a sword” and “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force” as hints that Jesus may allow for the state’s capitulatgion to violence, for the sake of “the way it is” and “the greater good”.

The poster also complains that we can’t just “incorporate” the evildoer. I reply that to conclude that Jesus endorses such is the ultimate “incorporation”; the grand accomodation. In fact, I comment that Jesus is actually condemning this accomodation ; this “capitulation to the ways of the world” in the verse about “the violent take it [the kingdom] by force”.

I find it absolutely clear that Jesus is saying “LOve your enemies” (since that is LITERALLY what he says. There IS NO alternate interpretation. There is no QUID PRO QUO. NO “contextualization”. Love is seeking the best for the other person, the other nation, the other human being or human community. PERIOD.) Dropping bombs on everything in the area, killing tens of thousands of non-combatants, most of whom are combatants ONLY becasue their country was invaded for non-existent reasons. I do NOT side with the insurgents in the use of violence. I would that they would amass non-violently and line the streets, and “sit-in”, and go to jail. We need several MLK’s, Gandhi’s, and CHRISTIANS.

This sounds just like a debate I have been having via email all this week with another seminary grad, Church person. A rush to justify and even sanction and baptize the whole action in Iraq as “the ultimate in love, since it will , in the end, save more lives, since Saddam was the tyrant that he was”. This person, as do many other in the Religious Right, think Bush is “God’s man”. This debate went quickly into the authority of Scripture, since I questioned their use (and abuse) of Scripture (of course, OLd Testament scripture, with the accounts of “God commanded them to take the city and kill all that lived there” (not exact wording, since I’m not pausing here to look it up, but you get the picture. They insist that here is “PROOF POSITIVE” CLEAR endorsement of God-ordained violence and war for the sake of righteousness. They insist that “Jesus said that NOT ONE JOT OR TITTLE SHALL PASS FROM THE LAW” means that everything in the Old Testament where it says “God said” is just that. The same God who sanctioned slavery, stoning of adulterers, and even those who did anything remotely resembling work on the Sabbath.

My take on this is that in the Scriptures, we have a History , much like “A PEOPLE’s History” that Zinn wrote, only it also includes the “Conqueror’s History”; in other words, an ENTIRE History of God’s relationship to Humanity; from the point of view of Humanity (and , in places, from God). To worshippers of the Bible; who tend to place Jesus UNDER that authority (which is authority placed in the INTERPRETER rather than the message source), to say that when the Scriptures say ANYTHING, it is law and it is non-negotiable (leaving aside the matter that WHAT they said is entirely an issue of THEIR INTERPRETATION.

I saved the entire email series from this, becasue I want to explore some of the points debated. I do not want to directly quote from the words of the other person, though, since that would feel like I was holding these points up to ridicule, knowing that much of my audience would largely side with me (there may be differences on the way we see these apparent contradictions, and the way we explain them to make sense of the Biblical narrative, but the emphasis is the smae: Jesus, and his example, and his unmistakable words. I often tell people that when the Scripture presents us with such problems, Jesus is the key to interpretation. When we have a problem with MOses telling the Israelites to stone a sabbath-breaker, we must look at the way of Jesus and either explain it in that light or simply say that Jesus , as in many other cases, simply points to a better way; the way of love; the way God has been trying to reveal to us throughout human history.

I love Scripture. I believe it to be inspired by God. But to say “inspired by God” immediately sets up a communication path: from God (not us) to Us (not God). In other words, the problem is at the receiving end. And that shows up time and time again within the Scriptures. Jesus directly challenges “An Eye for an Eye” and says it is to be like that in the Kingdom. THAT is the REAL “Hard Choice”. To depart from the “ways of the world” to a way which is narrow. To recognize what Gordon Cosby calls “An Alternate Reality”.