This post by Shane Claiborne of The Simple Way on the God’s Politics blog highlights the moral bankruptcy of what all-t00-many Christians accept as “sad but true” about the “way things are”,  supposedly absolving them of the call to take Jesus seriously when he tells us to love our enemies,  and not return evil for evil.  The Church has “given away” (ala Fitch’s book The Great Giveaway)  the moral authority to the state on such matters,  which itself is a heresy

As the young exodus people are trying to discover a new way of living outside the empire, God made sure there were some boundaries, like if someone breaks your are, you cannot go back and break their arm and their leg. If someone kills hundreds of your people, you cannot kill 160,000 of theirs.

We’ve learned the eye for an eye thing all too well. A shock and awe bombing leads to a shock and awe beheading. A Pearl Harbor leads to a Hiroshima. A murder leads to an execution. A rude look leads to a cold shoulder. An eye for an eye we have indeed heard before and learned its logic all too well. But Jesus comes declaring in his State of the Union Sermon on the Mount address (Matthew 5): “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,'” but there is a another way. No wonder Jesus wept over Jerusalem because the people “did not know the things that make for peace.”

Source: God’s Politics – Shane Claiborne: Communicating Through a Noose