Posted on by Abe Austin

Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 15:1

1 Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.

We now return to the account of the Israelites, after they had finally rid themselves of the oppression of Egypt. After the miraculous escape through the Red Sea, it would appear that the Israelites understood that the Egyptian tyranny was permanently behind them, and so they wrote a song to commemorate the occasion.

Of course, the songs in the Old Testament lose much of their artistic merit in translation. They read awkwardly in their English counterpart, devoid of meter and tune. Instead it is the themes and ideas of the song that have been prioritized, and so those are the qualities that I will focus this study on.

This song was clearly meant to be a song of praise, focused on extolling the power and salvation of the Lord in freeing captive Israel. More specifically, it is focused on the event of God overthrowing the Egyptians in the sea. The song summons that particular image in its very first sentence, and will return to it again and again. The song is firmly tied to that event, and seems to have been written while the thrill of it was still fresh in the mind.

And this is the great power that rests in music. The thrill and rapture of an isolated moment can be imprinted into the notes and lyrics, like a mold, and then those emotions can be cast and recast into the hearts of future generations. I believe this was the purpose of this song, to transport all future believers to that singular moment of God’s power made manifest upon the waters of the Red Sea, though we never stood upon the shores ourselves.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Outnumbered Against Evil

We are each of us outnumbered in our own person during our struggles to do what is right. On the one side we have but our conscience, while on the other side we have both our selfishness and our ignorance. We must compete with both our desire to do evil, even when we know it is evil, and our tendency to choose wrong, even when our intentions are pure.

None of us can hope to prevail in this struggle of two-against-one. We may put up a respectable fight, but each of us will be overrun by our baser instincts and shortsighted mistakes sooner or later. If we hope to ever have any chance of success, we have got to get help. We need more than ourselves. We have to stop doing this alone and let God in. Then the scales can finally tip in our favor.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Turn the Other Cheek

I spoke yesterday about two sides to God’s Justice, one that condemns the wicked and one that exalts the pure in heart. One of the scriptures I quoted was Jesus teaching his followers to “turn the other cheek.” I wanted to explore that sentiment even more, but my comments were becoming large enough that I decided pulled them out into this separate post. To help us get into it, let’s pull up the relevant verses:

Matthew 5:39-40:

39 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.

40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

Imagine if Christ has said “whosoever shall smite thee on they right cheek, do not strike him back,” or if he had said, “if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, just let him have it.” If those were the things that he had said, then this would already be advocating for an unexpected, unnatural behavior, one that is much more mild than we are accustomed to. What Christ would be asking of us in this case would be a sort of passive pacifism, a call to inaction.

But those are not the things that Christ actually said. He took it a step further and said “turn to him the other [cheek] also” and “let him have they cloak also.” This is not passive inaction at all, but active action. We are actually being told to do something. Specifically, something that deliberately causes greater harm to our own self!

I don’t think it wise to assume that Jesus was just exaggerating when he said these things, to suppose that he just really wanted to hammer home the point of non-retaliation. The more I’ve thought about, the more I think he really meant that when someone does you harm you, should actively double up on it!

Christ is not calling for non-retaliation, but rather a sort of reflected retaliation. When one cheek is struck, justice requires that another cheek be struck in return. Christ’s advice does not dissolve that justice, but rather states that we should have that recompense be met upon our own person. He is calling us to take the retribution of justice and absorb within our self! We are taking the punishment for their own crimes, and that terminates the cycle of harm right there.

And this, of course, is the very thing that Christ did for all the world. In his atonement he was unjustly condemned, which to be balanced out would require his persecutors to be justly condemned by God. But Christ accounted for both the initial offense and the recompense in his sacrifice. In submitting himself to his condemnation, Christ took not only the direct pain of what they were doing to him in the moment, but also the pain of what the Father would do to them in return, paying the price for their sins that they might go free. They were both condemned and redeemed in the single act of Jesus’s death.

Christ is the end of the back-and-forth nature of justice. He takes the never-ending cycle of harm and self-closes the loop in his own person. And in his injunction to “turn the other cheek,” he is asking to us to do the same thing in our own small way. We can be the cul-de-sac where the road of affliction turns back on itself and dissolves.

Of course, as with Christ’s atonement, it is still up to the offender to accept the grace that is offered. You have done your part to preserve peace in the world, but the world still has the choice whether to take that peace or not. And if the world rejects that opportunity, then it is doubly condemned for having struck the innocent twice!

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Two Halves of Justice

Some time ago I did a study on the qualities of Justice and Mercy. One key takeaway was how justice is both a law for punishment and reward. If we harm another who doesn’t deserve it, justice demands that now we be harmed. Conversely, if we do good to another who doesn’t deserve it, justice demands that now we receive good, too. Justice can be either the vehicle for our damnation or our ascension, depending on which way we choose to engage with it.

Recently, I thought some more about this dual nature of justice, and I wanted to point out two more observations that I had.

Two Teachings of Justice)

I’ve realized that the complete picture of justice is only seen by combining two Biblical laws that were given by two different men at two very different times. The first treatise on justice comes from Moses, when he famously pronounced “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” This mandate was given while describing the rules for punishment that would befall those who broke Hebrew law and wronged their neighbor. It was, therefore, a representation of only the negative half of justice. To this day, no one uses the term “an eye for an eye” to mean paying a good deed forward, only for retaliation against the wrong that has been done by another.

The second treatise on justice was given over multiple discourses by Christ. His famous injunction to “do unto others what you would have them do to you” is, at its core, a call for justice. “Doing unto others” is giving the just reaction to a yet unreceived action.

Jesus also invoked the image of justice when he stated, “with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.” That is you being recompensed equally for how you treat another, which is another way of saying ‘justice.’ Undeserved kindness that you show to others must be returned by undeserved kindness from God because the scales of justice require it.

Moses gave the half of justice that condemned the guilty, but Christ gave the half that exonerated the innocent. Christ did not contradict the law of justice given by Moses, he completed it, and both halves have been in full force forever after.

Judicial Justice and Personal Justice)

It also stood out to me that Moses’s half of justice, that of punishment and redress, is the correct form of justice for a people. The chief purpose of a judicial system is to provide protection for the innocent, and to right those that have been wronged. In the western world our sense of national justice still mirrors that of Moses’s. Our court systems are in essence an eye-for-an-eye, intended to allow the victim to be restored to whole by taking from the perpetrator.

Meanwhile, Christ’s half of justice, that of forgiveness and reward, is the correct form of justice for the individual. We do not compel a person in our laws to forgive another who has wronged them, or to turn the other cheek, but we do applaud them when they choose for themselves to take that higher road.

And this is how it should be. There should be a default protection for the weak and innocent, and there should also be an option for the individual to waive the offense if they so choose. We are properly incensed at a judge who decides to withhold justice, while we are properly in awe of those who, without compulsion, show their offender mercy.

One law, two halves, each aligned with the righteous and blessed order of God.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Creating Our Own Monsters

People play a dangerous game when they insist on casting entire demographics as villains. I have seen several examples in society of everyday people that wish to “just get along” being accused of actually being the enemy. Ironically, those that take the route of disingenuous accusation tend to summon the very evil that they fabricated. They are crushed by their own myth.

Different cultures will call certain races inherently evil. Sexes are encouraged to see their interaction as inherently adversarial. Members of a caste are despised simply for being of that caste. In all of these examples, the accused are told that their lack of personal transgression does not absolve them, they are covered in sin or blood no matter what they do, fundamentally evil since the day they were born. We are told that some groups are just against other groups, always have been and always will be, and that’s all there is to it.

Division in the West is growing rapidly, and we are becoming a more race- and gender- and class-obsessed people. In earlier times we were been more willing to look past what another person is to see who another person is. I’ve recognized in myself how when speaking with others I tend to wonder what they are wondering about me, whereas before I would just speak as though we were one and the same.

Ideally we would be able to reject the false accusations out of hand. We would refuse to adopt propositions about ourselves or others that we do not believe in. We would continue to live good and wholesome lives, treating all as equals, letting the inaccurate labels just slide off our backs. But the more society pushes certain demographics to hate other demographics, the more the hated are going to accept that the haters are their true enemy. And when enough people accept these opposing side, horrible things will follow.

We may have to grapple with terrible monsters then, but it will be monsters entirely of our own devising.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Loving Your Enemy vs Renouncing Evil- Summary

I’ve tried to focus this study on the words and example of Christ, using his behavior and attitudes as the model for his followers to emulate. By studying his example directly I have found two main takeaways. Let’s review each.

Steered Rightly)

The first lesson that I learned was that the correct action for a disciple to take in response to evil is more nuanced and case-specific than I had expected. I learned that we cannot just apply a static rule to predetermine each behavior for all time, but rather that we must have a living connection with God to steer us rightly in each and every situation.

In every great war there are times of attack, times of defense, and even times of strategic sacrifice. God is actively waging war with evil, across a front that is constantly shifting and moving. We are but foot-soldiers, with only a narrow view of the field. If we find ourselves waiting for orders we must conduct ourselves according to what seems best from our perspective, but when the higher command is given, it trumps anything that we thought up to that point. Only the General has the perspective over the whole, and knows the greater movements that are at play.

Perhaps we do not feel it in our nature to go on the offensive, publicly declaring truth and renouncing sin, but if the General needs a victory in this sector it is our duty to give it to Him. Perhaps it feels wrong to us to silently suffer oppression and derision, but if the General is allowing the enemy to make camp in our valley, we must be willing to pull back, remembering that this is but one step in His long and intricate dance.

In short, it is up to God when we are to be bold and when we are to be meek. There are examples when Christ was fierce, and examples when he was mild, all according to the larger, broader plan. So, too, it must be for us.

Our Limitations)

Something else that I learned from my study is that there are limitations on the acts permitted for Christ’s disciples to take. We are at times called to act in many different ways, but that doesn’t mean we are going to be called to act in every way. Some tactics are outside of our Master’s strategy guide, and we cannot employ them as His servants.

Most particularly, it is not for man to condemn another. The Lord taught, “of you it is required to forgive all men,” (Doctrine and Covenants 64:10).” In none of the examples that I studied was there any reason to assume that we are ever called to permanently dye another’s soul black and call them a lost cause.

Firstly, we must not do that because we never know the full picture. Secondly, even if we did have the full picture of another person, their beginning and their ending, their inner thoughts and motivations, the state of their very heart, it would still not be right for us to pronounce final judgment upon them because it simply isn’t our place to do so. Even if we could judge them rightly, it just isn’t our job to do it. “The keeper of the gate is the Holy One of Israel; and he employeth no servant there,” (2 Nephi 9:41).

But that isn’t to say that the worldly cry of “don’t judge me!” is in harmony with Christ’s examples either. There are two salient points that need to be understood in combination with the fact that we have no right to condemn one another.

  1. Judging sin and calling it wrong is approved by the words and example of Christ. As already established, we are not to condemn a fellow-child of God, but absolutely we are called to condemn the wicked acts that they do. We condemn the wicked acts that we, ourselves, do also! In all cases, we can, and should, point out when behaviors are of a devilish spirit, and renounce them most emphatically.
  2. While we do not condemn others, God does, and sometimes He calls on us to bear the message of that condemnation, or to carry out His sentence. The Israelites had no right in-and-of-themselves to choose life or death for the pagan kingdoms that occupied Canaan, but God did, and He ordered their destruction by the hand of His people. Similarly, informing others of the judgments that God has already made is not the same as casting our own judgment upon them. The scriptures clearly spell out certain behaviors that God has called sinful, and they also clearly proclaim that all sinners are worthy of damnation. To proselytize that message, along with the Good News of salvation through Christ, is entirely justifiable, so long as we do not mix in our own personal condemnation while conveying God’s.

***

It is a careful balance we are called to walk as disciples of Christ. How wisely he said that we were to be “wise as serpents, and harmless as doves,” (Matthew 10:16). We do not condemn our brothers, but we do condemn sin. We do not stand in final judgment, but we do forewarn what God has revealed for when that judgment comes. We are ready to fight and ready to endure, to reproach and to hold our peace, all at the direction of our Heavenly General. We are adaptable to the situation and the command, but consistent in God’s spirit through it all. He is our one constant in this intricate, dangerous dance.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Loving Your Enemy vs Renouncing Evil- Deferring to the Mob

John 19:8-11:

8 When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he was the more afraid;

9 And went again into the judgment hall, and saith unto Jesus, Whence art thou? But Jesus gave him no answer.

10 Then saith Pilate unto him, Speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee?

11 Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin.

We see in the final days of Jesus’s life how he submitted himself to the power of strange leaders and violent mobs. When Pilate gave Jesus an opportunity defend himself from false accusations, Jesus gave no reply, permitting the lies of his accusers to stand alone.

However, when Pilate asserted his power over Jesus, Jesus was quick to shoot that down, pointedly reminding Pilate of the transience of his station, while Christ stood on much surer ground. Jesus had averred just a few days ago that he could command legions of angels to save him, but he chose not to, instead allowing the campaign of evil to achieve its ends.

But it wasn’t always so. The example of Jesus is not strictly one of deference to the mob. There was a time before when an angry horde sought to throw him off a cliff, but he calmly suppressed their efforts. Luke 4:28-30:

28 And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these things, were filled with wrath,

29 And rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong.

30 But he passing through the midst of them went his way.

Christ rebuked this mob’s designs because it wasn’t yet his time. Later he did not resist because it was his time. So, are we, as Christians, required to patiently suffer injustices and abuse from others? Yes, absolutely. But are we required to do so in each and every situation? Absolutely not!

Like our leader, Christ, we are to be ready to endure all things, but also to be ready to rebuke all things. We are to meekly suffer, but also to boldly defy. We are to resist, and also to acquiesce. And all of this, not according to our own will and judgment, but God’s. It is His place, not ours, to decide when it is time for which response. If we depend only upon our own views, we can be both wrongly meek and wrongly bold. It is too simple to say that we should just be humble or should just be defiant, we must be rightly both.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Loving Your Enemy vs Renouncing Evil- Father Forgive Them

With my last two posts I’ve brought up scriptures that are commonly used to argue that disciples of Christ cannot judge wrong behavior, and explained why this interpretation is false. I will continue this pattern with today’s entry, where I examine the greatest act of non-judgment in all the scriptures. It is, of course, the moment where Christ was upon the cross, being executed for false charges, and asking Heavenly Father to forgive his killers. Luke 23:33-34:

33 And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left.

34 Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.

If Christ would forgive the people that did the greatest evil imaginable to him, then shouldn’t we excuse everyone else for anything that they ever do?

Well, no. That goes too far. And the reason why is that while Christ’s forgiveness was certainly magnanimous, it was not absolute. I believe there are two clear limitations on Christ’s forgiveness here.

  1. He was not seeking forgiveness for everyone. It seems clear in these two verses that the “them” he asked forgiveness for was the same “they” that “parted his raiment,” which would mean the Roman guards assigned to carry out his execution. There is nothing to suggest the Jesus was asking for forgiveness for the Pharisees that had called for his death on trumped up charges, knowing full well that they were condemning an innocent man, and of whom Christ said, “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” Christ was able to distinguish between the truly guilty, and those only guilty by association, and here he only asked forgiveness for the latter.
  2. He was not trying to have them forgiven for everything. Jesus was speaking specifically of his execution, which was carried out by these men only because it was assigned to them by their superiors to do so. He was beseeching for them in this matter where they “knew not what they did,” but that would not make them any less culpable for other sins, ones where they did know what they did. Before or after executing Christ, if any of these men should lie, or steal, or contradict their conscience in any way, they would still be on the hook for those actions.

Thus, this passage is an example of forgiving the ignorant when they are ignorant. It makes no assertions, however, about the knowingly guilty. Does this passage still have a lesson of love of forgiveness for followers of Christ? Of course! We should all aspire to similarly remove ourselves from our pain and recognize whether we have been wronged deliberately or ignorantly, and we should have the presence of mind to pardon those that are still learning. We should be gracious enough to give the benefit of the doubt as far as it can rationally be extended, though not so far that it becomes a farce.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Loving Your Enemy vs Renouncing Evil- Judge Not

Matthew 7:1, 4-5:

1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.

4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

In my last post I considered one of the passages typically used to say that Christians should not judge others, today I am looking at another.

“Judge not, that ye be not judged,” Jesus said, and so, we are told, it is not our place to call out the behavior of another as sinful or in need of censure. Admittedly, when looking at that verse in isolation, that could be a potentially correct interpretation of the passage. But how, then, does that hold up when three verses later Christ talks about removing the beam from your own eye so that you can remove the mote from your brother’s? How are you even to determine that there is a mote in your brother’s eye, and help him to pluck it out, if you have not “judged” that something about him is amiss?

And surely, even the staunchest critic of Christian judgment must admit that they, too, believe in renouncing some forms of evil. Can we not call a murderer, a child abuser, or a rapist wrong? Would anyone really make the case that with such crimes we must simply shrug our shoulders and say “well, it’s not my place to judge?!”

Obviously, any coherent interpretation of “judge not, that ye be not judged” must be consistent with Christ’s other words and also consistent with common sense. So what could a more fitting interpretation of this phrase be? Well, let us consider that our English word “judge” has multiple meanings. There is the sort of “Judging” with a capital “J,” such as when I am convicted by a court of law for a serious crime. There is also “judging” with a lower-case “j,” though, such as when my neighbor thinks I am lazy for leaving my Christmas decorations out until Easter.

And, as it turns out, this same strong/weak form is also found in the original Greek word that is used in today’s passage. The word that is being interpreted as “judge” is κρίνετε (krinete). This word is used at various points in the Bible, in a weaker form, being written as “judge” with a lower-case-j. In it’s strong form, however, it is more similar to our English word “condemn.” In fact, it is translated exactly this way in other verses, such as in John 3:17 where it states, “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”

Do Not Condemn)

In the King James Version of the Bible, Matthew 7:1 is translated as “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” but another valid interpretation, and one that I think might be more accurate to our current vocabulary, would be “Condemn not, that ye be not condemned.” And this sentiment I fully agree with. If anyone tells me that it is not the role of an individual Christian such as myself to “condemn” another person, they are absolutely right. I am not sitting in final judgment for anybody. I cannot comprehend the sinner’s whole life story, where they are coming from or where they will go, and I cannot state unequivocally that they deserve hell fire. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t, it just isn’t my place to say.

But that doesn’t mean that I cannot judge their behavior. That does not mean that I can’t stand in opposition to the act of sin and renounce it emphatically.

Put another way, Christ’s words compel us not to condemn the sinner, for that is a child of God, but we absolutely should condemn the sinful behavior, for that is the work of the devil. I am, myself, a sinner, and everyone should condemn my acts of selfishness and meanness, just as I do. But also, I am a Son of God, and because of that fact no one should write me off as a completely lost cause. It is possible to do the one without the other.

This is exactly what Christ is describing in the passage above, hating the mote in the eye, but loving the brother enough to point it out so that it can be removed. Not only are loving our enemy and renouncing evil compatible with one another, in most cases they are one and the same thing! Like God’s Son, let us not condemn the world, but let us use righteous judgment to help save it from the condemnation that it is already in!