On Violence

i guess that i am a weekly blogger, at least it feels as though i am only able to do so once a week because i am so busy with life...

so, amanda and i have an old friend living with us now for a while which is always nice...oh, and this should be of interest to anyone who has known me for a while...i now officially hate cold weather...i used to hate the summer, but now i dont want to be awake for the rest of winter...bears have it pretty nicely with the whole hibernation thing...

well now, i guess to start with, i should respond to the part of my last blog that caused such opposing reactions, my stance on war and violence...for the record, i want to lament that for the most part, people that have called or just said in passing that they agree with or at least see my point of view as far as my opposition of war and violence, have been non christians...

the reason that i lament is because the idea(l)s of peace, compassion, limitless grace, and unconditional love seem to fall under the condition of human pragmatism...the problem with that is they are by their very nature not always pragmatic, then again, neither were alot of Jesus' teachings...it was never said, "bless those who curse you, unless..." , or "turn the other cheek, but..."

the thing is, the people that i have talked to that have disagreed have almost always quoted something from the old testament, which is okay, but you can't pick and choose from some obscure passage, almost looking to justify what we wish were true, and not take the rest along with it...what i mean is this...if you want your justification for war to come from the old testament, you also need to observe other old testament standards...for starters, lets get rid of all of our clothing that is woven from 2 different materials, next we should make sure that when our women are on their periods, we should send them outside of our city walls and declare them unclean, after that, let us all take our finest calf or lamb and slaughter it to atone for our sins...do you see what i mean?

it seems that so many things from the old testament are not even thought twice about by the church anymore, but all of a sudden, when we are challenged to live the very counter cultural lives that Jesus teaches us to live, we go scurrying around to try and find every reason we can to not...

dont get me wrong, this is something that i struggle with too...what is my reaction to a person who attacks me on the street? in what way do i react if someone were to harm my wife? i can tell you that my initial reaction would probably not be to turn the other cheek, and i would probably forget Jesus saying blessed are the merciful, but that does not mean that i cant strive for those ideals...i will resonate with shane claiborne when i say that i believe that another world is possible...

think of this...Jesus said "my kingdom is not the kingdom of this world", he later told his disciples that when they pray, one of the things they should pray for is "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven"...that says to me that i should be doing all that is in my power to change the current condition of violence that we all live in...in the words of Paul, "though i live in the world, i do not wage war as the world does", and to start living like i believe that "my fight is not with flesh and blood, but with principalities"...

let me assure you that sometimes when i take a look at how i am supposed to live as opposed to how i am living, it scares the crap out of me...it is not a comfortable thing to daily die to fleshly desires, it is not nice to be the last, or "the scum of the earth for the sake of the gospel"...these are not easy ideas to wrap around, however, i do not believe that because they are not easy ideas to grapple with that i should throw them out in an effort to live a more comfortable life...

it is easy for people to demonize another person or group of people and in that forget that they are human too...they have a mother, father, maybe children and siblings...when they are cut, they bleed and feel pain...to top it off, they were created, like me, and are loved, like me...just thinking about that, and remembering that there is no longer "jew nor greek, slave nor free" and remembering Jesus' words makes it difficult, no, impossible for me as a christian to support any violence of any kind to anyone for any reason...

hope that answers that...