Jesus said to his disciples:
“You have heard that it was said,
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
The standard of an eye for an eye was designed to prevent the escalation of violence, limiting the response to be no greater than the initial provocation. The only appropriate context for pursuing this retribution was in legal proceedings. It was not acceptable to take matters into one's own hands. And perhaps this seems fairly sane to us, that the threat of equivalent retribution would be enough to keep violence in check without excess. But Jesus had a higher standard to which his followers would be called.
But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil.
This means, at an individual level, we are to avoid saying ourselves as entitled to revenge. We may need to take action to protect our families and our livelihoods but we are not called to meet force with force. The difference between revenge and self-defense may appear subtle, but the attitude is vastly different. When we respond to violence with aggression and a need to be vindicated we play into and perpetuate a broken system. We imagine that ours will finally be the act that sets things right. We do not think that perhaps the person who offended us also found a way to believe themselves entitled due to what they had first suffered. We ignore the fact that violence can only ever perpetuate violence. It can never bring about true justice, much less love.
When someone strikes you on your right cheek,
turn the other one to him as well.
If we are able to meet our aggressors with non-violence and not insist on our own rights it may be that our aggressors find that they themselves are exposed as excessive and violent. This has been the path of great men like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr in imitation of this teaching of Jesus himself. Non-violence has never been the easier path. It is nevertheless the only path likely to actually make a change in the world. Only the non-violence of the cross was able to absorb all of the world's hatred and make it possible for the very people who condemned Jesus to receive the outpouring of his love.
If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic,
hand him your cloak as well.
God may call us to give above and beyond what seems practical to us. We tend to think that we have to be the ones who maintain our boundaries lest others take advantage of us. Yet God often calls us to generosity that is goes beyond the merely rational to the domain of faith. The point is not that we set ourselves up to be abused by others so much as it is to be open to this call.
Should anyone press you into service for one mile,
go with him for two miles.
As Christians, does the world recognize us as unusually generous and giving? Does it see in us a people that does not need to insist on its own way or its own rights precisely because it is a people of men and women confident of who they are in Christ?
Give to the one who asks of you,
and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.
In different ages of the world Christians have been known for their charity. One might be afraid that we are known now mostly for our politics. Our charity, what remains of it, is often indistinguishable from the rational solutions of secular organizations. Neither are we very often making the headlines for the revenge we did not take. Yet it is supposed to be by our love that we are recognized as followers of Jesus himself.
His wife Jezebel said to him,
“A fine ruler over Israel you are indeed!
Get up.
Eat and be cheerful.
I will obtain the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite for you.”
As a beginning, we need to avoid coming to the level of confusion that drove Naboth to take innocent life simply for what take possession of something to which he felt entitled as king. The influence of Jezebel was a kind of Satanic parody of God's care for our rights and desires, as she supposedly took Naboth's concern to heart. This sort of voice does not persuade us to surrender our rights into God's hands but tells us that we can and should pursue them regardless of the consequences to others. It makes it a matter of pride that we do so. Let us be on guard against such voices.
Let us ask the Lord to heal the parts of our hearts that seek to insist on what we deserve and on our supposed rights. Rather than being forced to maintain this protective barrier ourselves we must learn to let the Lord himself maintain it, for it is to him that vengeance belongs.
Hearken to my words, O LORD,
attend to my sighing.
No comments:
Post a Comment