Today’s Scripture Reading (September
21, 2017): Matthew 5
As social media
has brought images from the Hurricane ravaged the Southern States across my computer screen, I have to admit that I
am more than a little uncomfortable with the signs announcing that “looters
will be shot on sight.” Several
variations on the theme seem to exist. No, I don’t think that any sane person would
follow through with such the threat, but even the threat seems over the top, and ultimately it sends a message that we
value things more than human life. Prosecute looters, take their pictures as
evidence, but shooting them? What about the family scrounging for food to stay
alive? Are they on equal footing with the person who is stealing your
flat-screen television? And, really, as much of an evil and disrespectful thing
it might be to take your television, is that thing that you paid a few hundred dollars for at Costco really worth a human life. I just don’t get it.
As
Christians, the stakes for us are even higher. If we are really following Christ, the idea that “looters
will be shot on sight” (and, yes, I have
heard Bible believing Christians make the
comment) seems to be at odds with direct commands of Jesus – “Do not
resist an evil person.” Jesus’s instruction is definitely
hard advice to live out, but it is also supposed to be a part of an essential character
change that exists within us.
The major
criticism of Jesus’s “turn the other cheek policy” is that actions like that
will never modify the world. But at the
same time, matching wrong with wrong has not gotten us very far either. Maybe
it is time that we tried to respond to
hate with love and evil with good. May it
is time that we tried to walk a mile in the shoes of the one who is taking from us
so that we can discover another way around the problem.
At the very
least, turning the other cheek keeps the lines of right and wrong straight.
Instead of our falling to the level of
the evil person who is oppressing us, we maintain our rightness before God. And
in the end, it is God’s praise that I want to receive, not humankind’s. Anger
is a lure that pulls us into evil, and we are much better off if we can learn
to live without it.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Matthew
6
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