Posted on by Abe Austin

Loving Your Enemy vs Renouncing Evil- Turn the Other Cheek

Matthew 5:38-40, 43-44:

38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

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.

43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

There are a few passages of scripture that are often used to to argue that Christians should not judge others. Today I am looking at the first, which is Christ’s teaching that we should “turn the other cheek.”

We all have a basic sense of justice within us that when a person insults us we want to insult them back, and when they strike us we want to strike them back. But Christ compelled his followers to suppress that natural spirit of retaliation, and instead invite another rebuke from them! This is extraordinary, and it certainly asks a great deal of every disciple, but we should note that there are certain requirements attributed to this sermon that Jesus never actually called for:

  1. Nowhere does Christ say that the offender is to be absolved of their guilt. Turning the other cheek is not the same as justifying what the other person has done. If anything, our invitation to be struck again doubly condemns the offender! Also, note that while verse 44 calls on us to love, bless, pray for, and do good to those that harm us, Christ does not ever say for us to approve, justify, or defend their crimes. We can both love our enemy and turn the other cheek, while still maintaining that their behavior is wrong.
  2. Christ gives examples of how we would accept relatively light forms of physical violence and the loss of an article of clothing. These are both small infractions, and both related to the loss or harm of earthly, physical things. It is not right to take this instruction and apply it to wrongs of a greater severity, such as another person trying to kill you and your family, or of a different type, such as another person trying to spread lies in your community. Nothing in this passage suggests that there is never a time to defend or push back.
  3. In each example, Christ is only talking about the disciple accepting a personal slight. There is a great difference between allowing wrongs to be perpetrated against the self and allowing wrongs to be perpetrated against others. Christ does not say, “whosoever shall smite your child upon the cheek, turn to him your other child’s also!” That would be passivity to the point of cruelty to the innocent. We do not only refute the evil of the world for our own sake, but for the protection of the weak and the innocent also.

What Christ teaches in these verses has real weight and meaning, and calls for a real change in his followers. But we should limit the lessons that we take from this to the ones that were actually intended, and not mis-attribute other lessons upon it as well. Christ is calling us to do something very hard, but only on a personal level and for particular sorts of offense. Nowhere in these verses does Christ say that we should allow others to take every liberty against our person, or call evil good, or cease to preach repentance to the wicked, or fail to protect the innocent. We can do all of those things while still being totally consistent with the instruction to turn the other cheek.

Posted on by Abe Austin

God and Abraham and Sodom and Gomorrah

I have already reviewed the account of the Lord’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in my standard scripture study, but the story has been on my mind lately and I wanted to address a few points about it in greater detail. All the verses I will be discussing can be found in Genesis 18-19.

God’s “Haggle”)

What first prompted my thoughts on this story was hearing a celebrity give it as evidence of God’s capriciousness, an example of Him being so petty and heartless that He would bargain and haggle over the lives of His children before destroying them. This is, of course, in reference to Abraham petitioning the Lord if He would spare the city for fifty souls, then forty-five, then forty, etc.

And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?
 Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein?

So, let me first point out that these accusations are obvious falsehoods, completely misrepresenting the story as it is written. God did not haggle or bargain over how many people it would take for Him to spare the city and He never changed His position on the matter. Abraham’s position changed, but not God’s.

The first thing to note is that God never brought numbers into the matter. He simply expressed His judgment, which was to destroy the city, no numbers attached whatsoever, and it was only Abraham who brought up the idea of sparing the city if a particular number of righteous people lived there.

Abraham wanted to know whether God would have spared the city for 50 righteous, and God assures that He would have… but there just aren’t 50. Abraham wanted to know if God would have spared the city for 45 righteous, and once again God indeed would have… but there just aren’t 45. And so on and so on, until Abraham reaches his own personal limit for mercy: 10 righteous souls to spare the city.

That Abraham presses the matter no further than 10 seems to suggest that he, himself, could not condone sparing the city for any less righteous than that. Even he felt it was justified to lose nine or eight righteous, if it meant that such a terrible evil could be blotted from the earth. And, once again, God shows that His mercy extends as far as Abraham could ever hope for. God, too, would have spared the city for 10 righteous…but there just aren’t 10.

When I read the account in Genesis 18, it is not about God and Abraham haggling, it is about Abraham not yet fully trusting God, and him exploring the limits of God’s mercy until he is convinced that God’s judgment is worthy of his trust. God had pronounced judgment, but Abraham wasn’t able to trust that judgment until he was convinced that God came to that determination by due prudence and fairness, and God indulged Abraham’s tests because He wanted to earn Abraham’s trust.

Thus, there is no haggling going on in this story and no changing of God’s mind. God was simply allowing Abraham to double-check His calculations so that Abraham could begin to learn to trust the Lord’s decisions.

God’s Mercy

And, as it turns out, not only was God as prudent and merciful towards Sodom and Gomorrah as Abraham, He was even more so. For after there were not even 10 righteous in the city Abraham would have surrendered any good souls to their destruction, but God would not. God shows us in this story that He cares for even the individual righteous soul, the 1 over the 99. Thus, while He was determined to destroy the city, first He sendt two angels to draw Lot and his family out of the midst of it.

In the records we have, Abraham never beseeched the Lord for the life of his nephew, Lot, even though he knew that Lot lived in the path of destruction. Abraham seems to have been ready to let his own kin die as a justified sacrifice for this destruction of evil. It was only because God was more good than Abraham that Lot and his family were spared.

A Lesson for Abraham)

Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice the righteous for the greater good returns again later in his story. When God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, we do not see a moment of hesitation in Abraham’s response. He forthrightly makes preparation, goes to the place of sacrifice, binds his son, and raises the knife to take the lad’s life. Abraham knew that his son was good, but as with Sodom and Gomorrah, he was willing to sacrifice that good to fulfill the demands of the Lord. But then, as with Sodom and Gomorrah, God intervened to save the good and provide another way.

I wonder whether Abraham being commanded to sacrifice Isaac was, in part, a way for God to teach Abraham a lesson that He had tried to teach with Sodom and Gomorrah, but which hadn’t fully clicked yet. I wonder whether Abraham was too quick to believe in the God that would sacrifice good to destroy evil. I wonder if God temporarily assumed that role when He commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, so that He could then dispel that illusion from Abraham once-and-for-all. I wonder if one of God’s lessons to Abraham in that moment was “Stop seeing me as the God of sacrifice, the God of taking, the God of destroying evil. See me as the God of saving, the God that brings back, the God of redemption!”

This is, of course, pure speculation. I don’t claim to know that this was the subtext to Abraham’s trial, or even if it’s likely. It is simply something that I wonder about. At the very least, it does stand out to me that we have no account of Abraham pleading for Lot’s life nor Isaac’s, and yet God saved them both. Whatever else those facts mean, surely they mean that these stories show God’s mercy, not wrath. They show His care, not indifference. They show His compassion, not brutishness. They show that God is a God who can be trusted when He declares His judgment because He has already analyzed the situation more than we ever could, and He cares for the innocent more than we ever would.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Optimism in a Falling World- Luke 9:52-56

And sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him.
And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem.
And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?
But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.
For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. And they went to another village.

COMMENTARY

And they did not receive him, and when James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?
Yesterday I considered Jonah’s desire to destroy the wicked. Today we see an example from Jesus’s own disciples to do the same. Because Jesus and his followers were denied access to a city, James and John sought to kill all the inhabitants with fire.

But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.
The Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.
James and John might have believed they were serving the spirit of justice, yet Jesus avowed that they were serving another. What they sought was simply vengeance, and Jesus’s purpose was not to bring vengeance, but salvation.
I believe that many of those who hope for the destruction of the wicked take their cues from the stories of the Old Testament. It is in those early books that we read accounts of the earth being flooded, of fire and brimstone consuming cities, of the armies of the Lord stamping out other nations. In these stories there is a definite immediacy between evil actions and divine retribution. One could not go to war against God without quickly enduring the consequences of that action. But what is forgotten is that this was the Old Testament and the earth was in a fundamentally different situation than it is now. Mankind had been expelled from the Garden of Eden and the atonement had not yet been made. Things were far stricter, and there was little to buffer between sinful acts and the holy justice administered in return.
But Jesus Christ had come to be that buffer. Jesus Christ had come so that the immediate justice for evil works could be born out in his own body instead. Divine justice still applies, even to this day, but now it is executed in him, while mankind is given a second chance.
Thus today we now live under the New Testament. And that means that if we look at the evil in the world today and crave punishment for the guilty, we are denying the fact that that punishment was already endured by our Savior. We are therefore looking for a double punishment, one carried out upon Christ and one carried out upon those he died to save. That isn’t justice at all. Like James and John, we are not comprehending what manner of spirit we are of. It is a cold, cruel, and evil spirit, one that has nothing to do with Christ.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Optimism in a Falling World- Jonah 4:1-3

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.
And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.
Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.

COMMENTARY

In my last post I considered the people of Nineveh, whom God had been preparing to destroy, but then He spared them when they ended up repenting of their sins and returned back to Him.

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry.
And he said, Was not this my saying, when in my country? Therefore I fled: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.
And Jonah couldn’t stand it! This is the first point in the story where it is explained why Jonah initially ran from the city of Nineveh. The natural assumption would be that he was afraid of the people, nervous that they would murder him for pronouncing doom upon them. But it turns out this wasn’t his concern at all. What he was afraid of was that God would show the people mercy!
Jonah wanted those people to die! He didn’t want to warn them about it and give them a chance to repent. He wanted them to stay wicked so that they would die.

Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live
Jonah is a miserable being. Throughout the rest of the book God patiently tries to get through to him, but we never do find out what became of the man in the end.
But my reason for bringing him up is because he is far from the only person to desire vengeance on the world. There are many who are excited to see our falling world burn. And I am not referring to people outside of religion, either. I have heard members of many churches who, like Jonah, were gleefully looking forward to the world getting what it deserved, intending to gloat over the suffering of the wicked.
Such may be surprised when the fiery brimstone falls from heaven and it is centered on their own home!

Posted on by Abe Austin

Optimism in a Falling World- Alma 17:12-14

And it came to pass that the hearts of the sons of Mosiah, and also those who were with them, took courage to go forth unto the Lamanites to declare unto them the word of God.
And it came to pass when they had arrived in the borders of the land of the Lamanites, that they separated themselves and departed one from another, trusting in the Lord that they should meet again at the close of their harvest; for they supposed that great was the work which they had undertaken.
And assuredly it was great, for they had undertaken to preach the word of God to a wild and a hardened and a ferocious people; a people who delighted in murdering the Nephites, and robbing and plundering them; and their hearts were set upon riches, or upon gold and silver, and precious stones; yet they sought to obtain these things by murdering and plundering, that they might not labor for them with their own hands.

COMMENTARY

The sons of Mosiah took courage to go forth unto the Lamanites to declare unto them the word of God.
And they had undertaken to preach the word to a wild and a hardened and ferocious people; who delighted in murdering and robbing and plundering.
It is remarkable to me what sort of people it was the sons of Mosiah chose to take their missionary efforts to. One would think they would look for a people that were already mostly in harmony with the gospel and preach to them, that way they would expect to have greater success, let alone a greater chance of survival!
But no, they went to the most corrupted people that they could, the people who hated them, the people that were furthest away from God. Of course Jesus’s disciples did much the same when they carried the gospel to the gentile nations, even to the same country that had carried out the execution of their master! They walked straight into the lion’s den, somehow expecting to accomplish good there.
And, remarkably, both the Nephites and early Christian missionaries absolutely did accomplish some good. Though they had trials, they also had great success. Because, as those early missionaries seemed to have understood, the people who are furthest from God are also the people who need God the most!