One of the lesser “thus saith the Lord” moments in the Bible was the imposition of the well-known principle of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” I understand that an apologist might say that it only means that people should be paid restitution for losses, but in practice, governments and most evangelicals love the literal translation. I assume it also came to mean to those who know the deeper meanings of such things that it could also mean, “a leg for a leg”, “a column for a column” and “a skull for a skull”. While God claimed the exclusive right to revenge in the Old Testament (Psalms 94:1 O Lord, the God who comes, O God who comes, shine.” and in the New Testament, (Romans 12:19 “Do not take revenge , my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay,” says the Lord), the Israelites practically did the work for Him, and the Christians who evolved to make The Church of history did a great job of inflicting God’s wrath on both the believer who believed something wrong and the unbeliever who needed to be persuaded.
As a child, when I heard all this in Sunday School, I had a picture of all the people in the Old Testament running around blind and toothless and it explained why Jesus could have had so many blind people to heal in the New. However, I don’t remember Jesus restoring any teeth.
Later I began to think that revenge was a thing reserved only for God, but retaliation must be something like a more subtle human effort. You know, a way around the problem of not being able to inflict revenge per se. But then I find that Jesus rejected the idea of retaliation with his own example of his in 1 Peter 2:23. “When they insulted him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he did not promise threats. On the contrary, he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.” , where Jesus, well, the Cosmic Jesus at least, inflicts revenge, vengeance, and retaliation in a big way on the entire planet for not going along with the show. The Jesus of the Gospels might be the distant cousin of the Jesus of the Apocalypse, but I don’t think the Jesus of the Gospels could really be the Jesus of the Apocalypse, at least not without a change in his brain chemistry and personality Meyers- Briggs. Profile. Then I got to thinking that it’s not that you can’t retaliate or take revenge, but that you have to wait until you’ve tried everything else before you wipe your enemies off the face of the earth. But then I learned from President Bush and my administration that trying everything only took a few weeks tops and never worked, so you had to bombard people quickly and with awe and awe. Yes, that works and in no time at all people are apologizing for 911 and wondering what they were thinking.
I once read an interesting study by a psychologist who felt that Jesus could have written Revelation (the introduction says it is His revelation) in his later years when the delusions and schizophrenia would have been worse. They taught me that he channeled it through John and that’s how we got it. The fact that he said 2000 years ago that it was the story of things that “must happen shortly” bothers me a bit because that’s not my personal idea of ”shortly”. Maybe someone missed the signal.
But then I wonder if that’s not what’s happening to our leaders today. That would explain a lot. I wonder if they might be thinking of writing their own Apocalypse and pouring out all their own vials and plagues along with the sounding of a variety of trumpets. I’m a little worried. I have noticed that the president and his friends tend to surround themselves with those who read the Book of Revelation like a newspaper and see themselves in some of the leading roles.
In any case, let’s go back to this idea of revenge, whoever it is, retaliation and revenge. From what I can tell, it doesn’t seem to promote anything other than revenge, retaliation, and revenge, which seems counterproductive. I think when the Hatfields and the McCoys feuded for decades, all we ended up with was less of each other and one great story… all thanks to a pig, I think. Actually, I have lived in eastern Kentucky and revenge, retaliation and revenge is what you do in those hills because the reception of radio and television signals is so bad. There’s little else to do or talk about after the day is done without those modern conveniences. It’s no coincidence that the Hatfield and McCoy thing loosened up a bit right around the time you were able to put that big satellite dish on your front lawn! He often saw plates almost half as wide as the house, but damn it, there was peace in that family and in the surrounding county. Watching the Dukes of Hazard is safer than BEING the Dukes of Hazard!
I’ve been to the Middle East, where every stone on the ground has been thrown at some point, by someone, at someone for some reason, and often. The Middle East is the land of useful stones or maybe we should say the land of “Oh yeah? Yeah! Oh yeah? Yeah!” It’s all crazy. A bit like growing up in the 50s imagining the launch of one missile which led to two back which led to twenty which led to a hundred which led to hell.
I still vote for Rodney King of “Can’t we all get along?” to be the head of the UN or at least advise the next president. This one would just say “No.”
Speaking of the current powers, it’s unsettling how difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to talk to this guy when the sabers are rattling and the agendas are a formation. It seems that the conversation goes more or less like this.
The Threatened: “Can we talk?”
The Decider: “No”
The threatened “Would you like to debate it?”
The “No” Decider
The Threatened “Would you like to come look?”
The “No” Decider
The threatened “Can we have lunch?”
The “No” Decider
The threatened “Can I send you some pistachios?”
The “No” Decider
Those threatened “Would you like to kill me, my family, many children, women, men and our younger generation and take all our resources under your supervision?”
The Decider “Now you’re talking, get down on the floor!”
I don’t know where religion came from with the idea that revenge, retaliation and revenge was a great characteristic of a Deity and one that was highly advisable to follow. In fact, few actually practice their guru’s religion. They find ways around it so they can manipulate the results and take whatever shortcuts they want for personal gain, power, and prestige, and still retain a form of religion that they must appease in order to be selected or elected in the first place. Smoke and mirrors, masks and makeup…it’s what most “world leaders” and humans who profess to know and need to propel them into places of authority and power use against average humans.
No one seems to realize that when Moses is said to have come down from the mountain with the Big Ten, one of whom said, “Thou shalt not kill,” and before reading them to the troops, got angry with the people for wondering where they were. he had been, and he had “every man kill his neighbor and in that day about 3000 perished”, and then went back to explaining the wonderful new Law of God that had been given to him by Deity himself! It’s almost as bad as Cain worrying that “everyone who meets me will kill me,” when God kicked him out of the garden, but he never stopped to think that there were only four people on earth at the time and he had just killed one. of them.” Actually, it was the writer of the story who had a brain fart. But in the Bible and in the Middle East and now in America, it’s really all about revenge, retaliation and revenge. They’re not going anywhere part and accomplish nothing more than the death of a few hundred thousand doctrines.
The fact is that it doesn’t work and no one is ever satisfied that enough is enough. Who gives up his last child and says that he no longer wishes to take another man’s child to pay him back? Who then says “I’ll do it if you want”, and they will! Who loses a tooth and doesn’t want to retaliate by knocking out all of the attacker’s teeth? Who gets a poke in the eye and doesn’t want to totally blind poker? Well, we had the example of a Pope who forgave the man who shot him in a very dramatic scene in the man’s cell. But remember, the Pope is a professional pardoner! It’s not like he could demand to go in and shoot the man twice so he’d shoot him once! No one, and certainly no one in this administration, has the insight or foresight to try a new way that precludes the idea of being the bully and getting even. Of course, a purer motive and heart would also help a lot.
How different the world would be today if men had no agendas and when 9/11 came around we had an enlightened leader who was not connected like a mass of worms in a can with other plans and teachers. The buck may stop with someone, somewhere, but vengeance, retaliation and revenge seem to be what humans demand and we surpass time and time again what we see today… blood, anguish, hate, car bombs, uranium impoverished by tons, birth defects, cancers and terrorism that we never would have had if there was a genuine leader in all these countries including our own. As long as “God told me to attack Sadaam and I did” is the mentality (how scary is this?) and my YHVH can conquer your Allah is the stupidity that rules in the minds of world leaders, we will be in hell . on earth… over and over and over again, endless world trash.
I know I would feel much better if our current president consulted with the Dali Lama more often than with the Boys of the Apocalypse and those of Evangelical Zionist Christianity gone mad. But then I am afraid that this president would find it amusing and would greet him saying “Well, hello Dalí!… hehe”, and he would not understand a word, much less a concept that he tried to explain about the futility of revenge, the retaliation and revenge driven by religion out of control. I would be afraid that he would embarrass me again.
I know… I’m too idealistic and I don’t understand anything about how people end up where they are in places of power and what’s really going on. Ok, well, maybe I’m not revealing everything I know. But it is time…long past time, to replace a Deity and his chosen religio-political minions who believe that revenge, retaliation and revenge are the fruits of his Holy Spirit who will bring his idea of the Kingdom of God to we. all to regret.