Love Your Enemies (attributed to Jesus)
[from The Gospel According to Matthew, chapter 5, verses 38 through 44, KJV]
Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you....
- * * * -
eye was beaten up twice almost to death
both times eye refused to fight
both times eye was hurt so bad eye suffer from it still and yet it seems eye did it right eye can still and ever say JESUS ???
sometimes it hurts to follow him but how can we compare this life to heaven???
http://myfaithsite.com/cgi-bin/index.pl?poemnumber=741422&sitename=charlaxandroidone7&poemoffset=0&displaypoem=t&item=poetry
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This sounds like what Mother Teresa did... She lived this philosophy everyday. It's not just unconditional love but deliberate love.
Unfortunately it doesn't sound like something the Christian right professes it doesn't sound remotely Republican.
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i have NEVER been able to get my mind around this. if somebody slaps me, they're getting slapped back. eveil has to be taught it's evil, has to be stopped. turning cheeks don't do it.
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I have mixed feelings about this too. It sounds cool as an ideal, but doesn't always seem practical. For Nazi-era Jews, turning the other cheek could be seen as a surrender to extinction. I'd get a lot more satisfaction from seeing a shofar shoved up Hitler's ass.
This is kinda in response to Elena's comment, too. I happened to post this selection on International Peace Day because I was thinking about how fucked up it is that the religious fundamentalists who seem to thirst most for perpetual war are the ones so insistently (supposedly) follow Jesus. Look at Bush, Palin, John Hagee, Jerry Falwell, et al. WTF?
This post was more for them than the peace lovers.
That said, I still tend to agree with Gandhi that "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." How to resolve this paradox?... I suspect Gawd only knows.
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I think that some peple misundertand what it means to turn the other cheek. No one deserves to be abused, and certainly every person has the right to defend himself. But, it is very hard to carry on a feud with someone who refuses to participate. We are not going to love or even like every peron in this world tht we encounter. but it takes two people to fight and only one person to ralise that there are mouch more worth pursuits than to be hateful anc cruel. I do not have time in my life to harbor anger, butterness and hostility. That is not to say that I neve get angry. But I do not allow the offending party the satisfacton of kowing that he has the power to inspire bitter, angry emotions in me. Rather I surround myself ith people that I aspire to be like. People who are loving kind and inclusive of ohter peple. I refuse to allow an angry bitter person to take away a momoent of my peace and happiness.
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I would like to know why this was something you decided to include on your literary selections this morning. I guess it must be a certain frame of mind. Why not post Ecclesiates? That's more pertinent for the first day of fall. This business of turning the other cheek is probably mistranslation anyway. Which cheek are they talking about, the butt? Well that would really be kickass. lol
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Why must everything turn into a political debate? Love your enemy as you love yourself. That works for the right and left. Christ taught of freedom and love and forgivness but His very name often emotes hate from people who somehow equate His teaching with loss of personal freedom. Whenever I feel that way I have to realize that the loss is only my selfishness. It hurts to give to others, it takes away my discreationary time, my money for new toys or games. True love is a choice, give vs get, help vs sit, effort vs inaction, concious selflessness vs self pity. The oppoisit choices are made every moment of every day by right and left.
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You make some good points, Michael. My comment was made back during the heat of the presidential contest - and I forget what Gov. Palin said in one of her speeches before I made my comment, but she'd brought the Bible into it and twisted it so outrageously that even my Southern Baptist preacher dad (who is as Republican as they come) was appalled. And I was up in arms over whatever that was. Of course you're right -- neither she nor the right have any monopoly on using the Bible or the word God to further their political agendas. And I admire that Jesus was able to keep practicing such love as he preached, even in the face of death. We (myself included) could use a whole lot more of that these days.
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My ancestors were Mennonites (some people claim they were Jews who got mixed up at an intersection in Poland and started walking along side another group of weirdly dressed bearded individuals) who tried living by Jesus' pacifist teachings. This seemed to work while they were in Germany, Poland, Russia and Ukraine, but then they came to America and within a generation several of them were fighting during WW2, then Korea, Viet Nam, and Iraq.
I grew up wondering what it is about living in the US, with its supposed emphasis on religious freedom, caused my pacifist family to become non-pacifist fundamentalists. The little bit of research I conducted way back in my twenties is that the Baptists in America saw the recent Mennonite immigrants as a mission field. They strongly emphasized their common belief in adult baptism and over-hyped the discrimination they'd received from Roman Catholics. Actually, the most peaceful period in Mennonite history was when they lived surrounded by Polish Catholics for about two hundred years. It was when Poland began to be swallowed up by Prussian expansionism that they once again started being heavily persecuted at the hands of German Lutherans.
What this leads me to believe is that the Baptists and other fundamentalist Christians have been engaged in a rewriting of religious history for at least the past one hundred years. Perhaps this is part of the reason for the strong anti-Christian backlash by some in America today. If people stop using religion as a vehicle for lies, maybe a bit more tolerance from all sides will flourish.
But I might not know anything about this situation at all. I'm just saying...
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Why did my comment disappear?
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