“It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi ~
When confronted by violence, and the desire to do violence in return, it is very hard, but possible to be active without being violent. Love is a powerful force, and in return for violence, it can change much. It is not simply some sort of ethical counterstrike, or spiritual Judo. It is making a choice that the harm done by evil is harm done to the spirit. The loss of worldly things, even the loss of life is not the true evil of violence. It is the death of love.
However, you may very well get the shit kicked out of you, and probably more than once. If that is enough to make you abandon love of your enemies, you have fallen short of the example of Christ. Get used to it, you are going to fall short now and again. Get up, and start over. Start with forgiveness. Generally, that is a good place to start.
Yes, you might die. Others might die, as well.
Now, I won’t claim that there are no situations in which I would resort to violence. I have rage. I have the hero reflex. But I don’t pretend that that is a part of me that is Christ like. Perfection is not even a goal, for humans. It is the general direction toward which we strive. Striving is the goal.
I’m not suggesting my argument is awesome. I am suggesting that mine and others who seem to agree with me have presented a reasonable case complete with Biblical support. I am sincerely surprised and bewildered by the absolutism approach. So yes, it occurred to me that what I’m reading is “I refuse to admit any other possibility even if I see it” In a previous post I retracted any suggestion of dishonesty. I’ll leave it at stubborn.
It’s not that hypothetical considering the history of the religion threads on the Dope. In the interest of accuracy and staying on subject I retract the statement. What I meant was the absolutism of interpretation by non believers in this thread seems similar to the absolutism that fundamentalists are criticized for fairly often on the boards.
Irrelevant since I never suggested any such thing
This strikes me as reasonable although I’m not sure you should be speaking for the Quakers. I’m content to leave it as an honest disagreement about interpretation. The suggestion made by some seemed to be that anyone who disagrees with what is obviously the correct interpretation must be looking for an excuse to not really follow Jesus. I find that almost comical coming from a group of non believers.
I don’t find this to be true when we’re talking about life, unique individuals, and countless possibilities of situations that might arise. If a Quaker has made a choice to forswear all forms of violence that’s fine. I wouldn’t say he was absolutely wrong. I’d also say it wasn’t absolutely wrong for someone to defend themselves under extreme circumstances. It’s a matter of spirit not the physical act. The question is, could we love our enemies and still defend ourselves?
Let me take it a step further and say “Do not resist evil men” as a spiritual teaching means IMHO, that we cannot overcome evil with the eye for an eye mentality. He’s teaching that when you are wronged you cannot overcome evil by getting even. Ultimately we can only conquer evil by truly loving our fellow man and seeing that we are all, even our enemies, imperfect children of the same God.
or as Master Po put it, “You cannot overcome evil in the world, you can only resist it within yourself”
It is a teaching about the spirit more than a physical act.
I haven’t mocked anyone who are sincerely trying to follow a personal conviction.
The post I responded to made references beyond self defense in the face of lethal danger. I made a generalized comment that is relevant based on that.
Well, actually I spent most of the day working. I spent some minutes on the post as a whole. I spent a few seconds on that response to a single line. Granted, it’s not my best effort.
I’m a Gandhi admirer and I’ve never seen this quote. Excellent. Thanks for sharing it.
In most situations love will turn us from violence. I agree that it is the striving, the process of spiritual growth through each experience is key.
Gandhi speaks of personal honesty. I call it being true to yourself. If we can find the courage and discipline to be true to ourselves {rather than true to someone else tells us is right} and hold love and truth as our ultimate goals, new experiences will teach us what we need to learn.
So, someone raised with a physically confrontational attitude might encounter the words of Jesus and, if those words resonate in him, and he sees examples of love around him, he will gradually change and grow as a person. Through love anger fearfulness and resentment, can be overcome.
Per the OP though , do you think we can love our enemies and still defend ourselves or others in certain extreme situations? If the choice becomes defending others or allowing them to be slaughtered what does love require of us?
Well that pretty much takes care of the entire Sermon on the Mount then, doesn’t it? He doesn’t actually say that any of that stuff applies “in every conceivable situation.” He says “Love your enemies”-- but not in every conceivable situation! Loophole! “Judge not, lest ye be judged”-- no, it doesn’t specify “at all times.”
For that matter, he was addressing a very particular group of followers with that sermon-- do any of his words apply to Christians of today? Who can say, really? Maybe it’s entirely acceptable for today’s Christians to demand an eye for an eye. He didn’t specifically say not to, did he? Do any of Jesus’ words really matter?
There have also been many, many interpretations that claimed Jesus’ teachings are consistent with Crusades and Inquisitions and witch-burning. What about them? Is there any behavior that can’t be accomodated?
And fortunately, if push comes to shove, you don’t even have to love your enemy! After all, does it really make sense that Jesus meant to ALWAYS love your enemy? If some psychopath is trying to rape and murder your wife, are you REALLY supposed to LOVE them? Obviously not, right? Jesus wouldn’t object to you hating them in that situation, surely.
I think that if you believe Jesus taught that violence is a sin that displeases God, then you won’t resort to it. I think there are Christians that actually do believe this. Do you honestly think they aren’t practicing love for their fellow man?
Well, what sort of behavior wouldn’t be permitted in an extreme situation, according to Jesus? It’s a shame that his sermon only covered minor everyday inconveniences, then. We’ll never know for certain whether he would have been okay with blowing people up to prevent them from sinning.
You can call it whatever you like. Obviously it doesn’t matter, since I can just interpret it any way I want to.
That’s quite convenient. In the meantime, you can just continue to do whatever you would have done anyway, without regard for any of Jesus’ actual words. Why bother tying yourself down to any particular interpretation, when you can just use your Spider-sense when the need arises?
I can’t with certainty. Maybe he wasn’t perfect either. Personally I wouldn’t classify “escaping” as “resistance,” since he wasn’t using violence. But that of course is my interpretation.
Can you explain how Jesus making a whip and driving money changers from the temple demonstrates loving his enemies? Is it therefore acceptable for a Christian to use a whip to express their disapproval of others’ sins? How many lashes do you think would be appropriate for such a situation? Please answer.
It is kind of puzzling why Jesus bothered with those lengthy sermons at all then, isn’t it? He could have delivered his message much more easily by simply telling people to trust their own discernment about everything. I guess he just liked to hear himself talk.
Speaking for myself, I agree that those couple of verses can be interpreted in different ways. I believe that one interpretation requires earthly sacrifice and discipline, and sets aside material comfort and safety in favor of Heavenly rewards. The other interpretation is much more flexible, explicitly limits its sacrifices to unimportant everyday matters, and doesn’t demand much more than lip service. I look at the rest of what Jesus had to say, how he lived and how he died, and conclude that the first interpretation is much more likely to be the correct one.
If I were trying to impute motives to you for having your interpretation, I would impute the motive of looking for an easy way out instead of trying to follow a difficult teaching. However, I think that it’s not productive to impute motives to other folks in a debate, so I sincerely won’t do that. I’ll thank you to follow the same principle.
For the reasons I gave above, it’s not. And here’s the thing: although I am not a believer in Jesus’s divinity, I do think that he, like a lot of other religious figures (Thich nat Hanh, certain other rabbis, Lao Tzu, etc.) offered some pretty amazingly strong moral principles to guide behavior. The fact that they were very difficult to follow is what leads to things like Theravada Buddhism, in which it’s assumed that only a few people will actually live up to the ideal. Jesus, as I see it, is equivalent to a professor with very very high standards. And if a person is going to consider themself a follower of Jesus, I’d admire them more if they’d not soften those expectations, if they’d strive to meet them even if that’s not always possible.
What I and other nonbelievers often seem to see is that folks claim they follow the teachings of Jesus, but interpret those teachings in a way that makes them, to our eyes, functionally meaningless. What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus if you’re also leading a Crusade, or signing a death warrant, or putting people in prison for consensual sex practices, or practicing torture, or any of the myriad other things that self-proclaimed followers of Jesus have done coldly and with premeditation? It’s as if someone claimed they were a Marxist yet they lived in a mansion amidst wretched poverty, or as if someone claimed to believe in liberty, equality, and fraternity yet owned slaves. Worse yet, it’s as if those people explained Marxism and liberty in a way that condoned their activities.
If you’re going to profess to follow difficult ideals, either follow those ideals, or admit that you’re not living up to them. Don’t find a special way of interpreting those ideals such that they condone your behavior.
For this nonbeliever in Marxism and in Jesus’s divinity (note that there are powerful differences between the two types of nonbelief), it irritates me when professed followers of either philosophy appear to deviate so wildly from the philosophies.
Being a Christian, as I read Jesus’s words, oughta be really damned fucking hard. If you’re wealthy, you should not be at all comfortable with that fact. If you resist an evil person, you oughtta be trying to do a lot better next time. In either case, you shouldn’t be looking for ways to contextualize Jesus’s words such that being wealthy or resisting an evil person is good by Jesus.
Not that I expect Christians or Marxists to turn to me for approval; I don’t control membership in either club.
[and yes, here I do seem to be imputing motives to others in a debate. I apologize for this, and I don’t claim that these are your reasons; rather, I offer this explanation in response to your suggestion that we atheists who give a shit about the matter are “almost comical”, to explain why it chaps our hide. The debate about what Jesus meant stands apart from the reasons why I care about the debate.]
Good grief. Describing someone’s philosophy != speaking for them. Are you not sure that I’m allowed to describe philosophies with which I’m familiar?
You misunderstand my point. I won’t claim there’s an objectively correct thing to do when confronted with an evil person. I will claim that, when (if) Jesus actually spoke those words, he meant something specific by it. The neurons were firing just so in his brain; he intended those words to carry a specific meaning, just as when I type, “My watch is on the desk to the left of my keyboard,” I mean something specific by those words. If you interpret those words to mean that, as I type, a watch is lying on my desk next to the keyboard, you will have hit on an objectively correct interpretation of my words. Someone else might interpret my words to mean that I’m assigned guard duty, and the place from which I perform this duty is to the left of my keyboard on my desk. That person will have hit upon an objectively incorrect interpretation of what I meant by my words.
In the same way, if two people disagree about what Jesus meant when he said not to resist an evil person, assuming he actually said those words, at least one of the two people is objectively incorrect in their interpretation of what Jesus meant. Not necessarily incorrect in their interpretation of what they should do, but in their interpretation of what Jesus meant they should do.
Why, then, didn’t he say that? I believe Gandhi was the one who pointed out that an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. I’m not religiously devoted to Gandhi, but nonetheless I hope allow me to have an opinion on his teachings; what he offered was subtly different from what Jesus offered, and was also quite wise and quite difficult to follow. If Jesus had wanted to say something like what Gandhi had said, I trust his oratorical skills would have enabled him to say it, instead of suggesting instead that violence be met by giving the evil person the opportunity to commit further violence.
I’m not sure why you went to this. It certainly isn’t my argument. Who can say? I believe I’ve answered that in a previous post.
Teaching such as Jesus and others did and words in general, are reflections of a living spirit. Unless that spirit moves us then words mean whatever we can justify, which seems to be just about anything.
If you accept Love your enemy, as a teaching you want to try and follow you then must ask yourself “What does that mean exactly?” “How do I turn my resentment and anger into love?” Asking yourself those questions sincerely, and meaning it can begin the process. The more we learn the more we experience the better we understand. Hopefully we begin to actually feel love for our enemies rather than fighting ourselves to resist punching them in the nose.
The same with “don’t resist evil men” Blind obedience to an interpretation doesn’t teach us much.
Not if that’s your goal.
Actually, it seems far off the norm but it does make sense. As someone mentioned in another thread, if we all followed those teachings there would be no enemies to struggle with. My position has been that is is possible to love your enemy and still be in a situation where you must defend yourself or another.
Again, it’s the state of the spirit rather than just the physical act. If one Quaker lost it and was about hit some asshole with a shovel, should another Quaker, out of concern for his soul, physically restrain his Quaker brother?
The rule , rather than a written rule book, is seek to live and act in the spirit at all times. There is only one able to judge what that might be in every situation.
Behavior that isn’t motivated by love. IMO part of the problem with religion in general is that too many want a written rule book of what is good or bad. They seek an external source rather than looking within.
Jesus said of the two most important commandments the second is love thy neighbor as thyself. All the rest fall under the two he said were the most important. Loving my neighbor, myself, my wife and kids equally, what does love require if my neighbor goes off his meds and decides to go on a killing spree.
It’s an extreme situation I know. I’m just saying it’s about the spirit rather than a “don’t ever defend yourself under any circumstance” interpretation.
It’s in the struggle and striving to actually feel love rather than just obey rules that we grow.
Only as much as sincerity and honesty matters. Two people can both be sincere and honest and still disagree right?
My spider sense only works for danger. I need god for love. Honestly I think if love is the sincere goal of a person’s heart they can get experience it without ever reading the Bible. Jesus was not the only teacher. He’s just the one we’re talking about.
Maybe he used the Jedi mind trick. Maybe he pushed or threw an elbow. We just don’t know.
Not with certainty either but maybe the whip is the exclamation point on the teaching not to market God. If only modern religions understood this better.
It does say he drove the cattle and sheep. It doesn’t say if he got any licks in on the money changers themselves. Maybe one or two by you know, “accident”
Only if they are sinning with cows and sheep
That varies depending on the breed
“No written word or spoken plea can teach young minds what men can be, nor all the books on all the shelves, but what the teachers are themselves.”
The words are only one small facet of the teaching. When I read the NT I see the message of look within.Seek that inner loving spirit that connects you with everything else. No rule book or opinion will ever suffice.
A fair and reasonable assessment even though I don’t completely agree.
Very gracious of you and appreciated. Apology accepted. I have been known to lean toward sarcasm myself. I was trying to tone it down these last few posts. I also apologize if I’ve offended by choosing my words poorly.
I agree. I see Jesus as a great teacher among other great teachers. The Bible also says few will live the ideal. I’m not trying to soften expectations. At the end of the SOM Jesus says. “Be ye Perfect” That is the expectation. Did Jesus purposely give us an expectation that we couldn’t meet? Are we expected to attain that soon after becoming a follower? A week? A year?
Ten years?
I agree. Those examples are a far cry from what we are discussing here and anything I’ve proposed.
No response because I think it’s off subject and not a realistic comparison to what I’ve proposed.
Again, this is not something I’ve proposed for anyone IMO.
Fine. I’d hardly call any of my proposals or examples “deviating wildly” That’s why I’m surprised at the very rigid interpretation from you and others.
I’m not pulling a phrase out of context to justify torturing people into believing. IMO it’s you and other posters who are pulling a few words out of context to form some absolute doctrine. I think there’s been enough alternative passages offered to introduce a realistic question mark. When posters infer that I’m in some way disregarding what Jesus said to make up my own doctrine it strikes me as the pot calling the kettle black. I’m saying there’s room for doubt on the self defense issue in extreme circumstances, while maintaining that we must love our enemies. I’m not the one proposing anything absolute.
As I read Jesus words it’s about my relationship with the living inner spirit he spoke of. I agree it’s hard. It’s an ongoing process. Jesus even told his disciples there were things they weren’t ready to bear or hear. Does that mean he encouraged them to be less than perfect and justify bad behavior. No. Neither did he revoke their discipleship for the errors they made along the way. He realized they would not be perfect simply because he told them to be a couple of times.
It makes total sense to me for any reasonable human to be irritated by the things you’re describing in this post. Someone preaches love but practices hate. Someone preaches compassion but treats others with disdain. I haven’t proposed that by any stretch of the imagination , yet still thats the kind of response I get. What am I to conclude from this type of exaggeration? Posters are reading something into my posts that isn’t there at all IMO.
I’m only somewhat familiar with the Quakers but I agree with the basics.
From here
Thats sounds a whole lot like what I’ve been saying in this thread.
You said “What I the Quakers and others claim” Yes that strikes me as speaking for them and others to. My thoughts were that perhaps the Quakers have chosen a path for themselves but don’t insist quite so rigidly that their path is the only realistic interpretation of the words of Jesus.
Lets see
No sarcasm intended, it seems to me that the Quakers are more in line with what I’ve been saying.
I don’t misunderstand your point at all. I just don’t agree. From your statement I know your watch is lying on the desk next to your keyboard. There’s a lot I don’t know as well. What kind of keyboard is it. What is the desk made out of? How tall are you? Your statement is simple objective fact. Jesus’ was not. If you say I love my wife I only have an idea what that means until I get further information on how you interpret love.
I’m suggesting that the statement made by Jesus still leaves certain questions unanswered.
Incorrect. Jesus is talking about a condition of spirit rather than a list of specific actions to take.
At that specific moment? I don’t know. Because he knew his audience?
It doesn’t seem realistic to me for you to infer your interpretation is more correct because of what you think Jesus should have or could have said. That’s especially true considering the history of the Bible. There is also a major difference between a the political struggle for India’s independence and a moment of crisis for the individual.
I’m less familiar with this aspect of Jesus’s words, but my understanding from my own experience in Presbyterianism is that Jesus recognized that we are all sinners. He told us to be perfect, and recognized that none of us would be; nevertheless, we were supposed to give it our A game.
In one sense, yes; in another sense, no. Once you’ve said you’re willing to use violence under any circumstance, to paraphrase a joke, we’ve established what you are; now we’re just negotiating the price. Jesus set down what appears to me to be an absolute rule, not a rule that you could violate if you could justify the violation.
If Jesus had made a central part of his teaching that you should not drink alcohol, I’d consider the eating of brandy cordials to be a wild deviation. The “turn the other cheek” doctrine appears to me to have been a central part of his teaching. Failing to live up to it is one thing; concluding that it meant something other than never resisting an evil person seems to me to be a wild deviation.
I genuinely don’t. It reminds me of D&D arguments in which people pull sources from three different books in order to justify something that, IMO, is plainly unintended by the authors. The intent of this passage seems crystal clear to me, in context and by itself; the passages you’ve offered do not modify that limpid meaning.
Certainly in some places that’s what he said, but in others, I’m pretty sure that’s not what he was talking about. He spoke clearly and at length on material matters and how the devout should engage with other people and the material world. If you consider those passages unimportant, or signs that Jesus wasn’t always right, that’s cool; but I don’t think it makes sense to claim he meant something other than what he meant.
Yes, the link you found did not address Quaker pacifism, and if you didn’t know about it, you might conclude from that link that the Quakers weren’t the sort, for example, to demand that a Quaker president’s church repudiate him for his participation in a war; they are:
Now, not all Quakers participated in that call, obviously, so perhaps I should have said it’s what I and some Quakers claim. Nonetheless, while Quakers agree that you gotta be guided by your inner spirit, many (if not most) of them believe that guidance must happen within certain parameters.
Wow–you DEFINITELY misunderstand my point. Trust me on this, and read what I say next with that in mind.
Yes, the fact that my watch is on my desk is objective fact. That’s not the objective fact I’m talking about: the objective fact I’m talking about is that I am telling you the watch is on my desk. Take a different example: I say, “Kiss my grits!” If you take that to mean, “Find my southern-style cooked hominy and kis it,” you are objectively incorrect about what I intend to communicate. If you take that to mean, “I don’t care what you think, so leave me alone!” you are objectively correct about what I intend to communicate.
We disagree about what Jesus intended to communicate. At least one of us is objectively wrong, because he objectively did intend to communicate an idea, assuming he ever said those words.
A couple of questions for you, or any other poster who claims that Jesus demanded absolute pacifism:
(1) Do you have a clear definition of what does and does not count as “using violence”? For example, if I physically restrain you from beating someone (maybe by putting you in a wrestling-type hold), am I using violence? If I hold a gun on someone but never pull the trigger, am I using violence? If I smash someone’s crack pipes, am I using violence? If I forcefully take someone’s car keys away from them when they’re way too drunk to drive, am I using violence?
(2) How do you reconcile Jesus’s prohibition against violence/resistance with his apparent approval of his followers’ carrying swords, mentioned earlier in this thread?
ETA: My intention is not to argue against your position (with which I have some sympathy) but to try to understand it better.
He said not to resist an evil person. The first two examples appear to violate that. In the second two examples, we’re not talking about an evil person, so it doesn’t appear to violate that. And no, that’s not a technicality: there’s a big difference between acting in what you believe to be someone’s own best interests, and acting in ways to thwart them from harming another person’s interests.
In that case, he had followers in a particular circumstance; he wasn’t preaching to the masses. If I tell a crowd of friends, “Be quiet!” it’s very different from standing before the masses and saying, “Be quiet!” THe latter case is a general command to follow; the former is occasion-specific.
In that occasion, he knew that his followers were getting ready to travel. He named two items that are emblematic of travelers; according to a website I looked at earlier in this thread (somebody linked to it, I forget who), the sword he told the followers to purchase was standard traveling equipment, used to fight off bandits and animals. Jesus never said not to resist wild animals.
Given that he said as a general command not to resist an evil person, and that using a sword on a person would violate that command, it looks to me as though he must have intended something else with that occasion-specific directive. He may have been speaking metaphorically; he may have been speaking literally, but trusted that the disciples remembered that having a sword didn’t mean they could stab people with it.
I appreciate the “what appears to me” However if it wasn’t intended to be an absolute rule then a reasonable interpretation is not seeking justification but a sincere search for what Jesus meant.
When the pharisees complained that those with Jesus were violating an absolute law he said
I see this the same way. The teaching is clearly to love all people including our enemy. Every other teaching only points to or facilitates that one. Jesus said so himself. So, I maintain that self defense in certain situations does not violate the teaching to love.
Could you explain that further? How is it that driving the money changers from the temple is not resisting evil men? How is it that telling your followers to buy a sword is an admonition to never defend yourself under any circumstance. Can you explain how evading the previous mobs is not resisting evil men?
I’m not claiming that. I’m claiming that neither you or I know clearly what he meant just from a personal interpretation of the Bible.
I see you found something about wars which I never mentioned. This doesn’t really address my point. You may still be correct but so far I haven’t seen it.
I tend to think since they seem to encourage personal communion with God over a strict interpretation of the Bible, some might defend themselves or others under certain circumstances, like the ones I’ve described.
It sure does…You’re the one who’s wrong.
Seriously, I see the difference. What I’m saying is that Jesus was using words and mundane examples to direct us toward a spiritual truth. Namely, that love for our fellow man is the true path rather than a set of rules like the laws of Moses. Although we can say what love is likely to prompt in us {what Jesus describes as fruits} we cannot make a realistic comprehensive list of what love requires in every situation. In that regard suggesting that any violence is strictly prohibited is veering off course from the point of the teaching, IMO.
I appreciate that we’ve returned to more civil discourse.
No disrespect intended but this sounds very close to the same type of logic used by Christians to justify beliefs. Since you’ve already assumed X is absolutely true then an interpretation of a seemingly conflicting verse is made to fir the assumed truth.
I’m curious to see how you’ll respond to the other verses mentioned.
Does this still seem much more logical and likely than an alternative interpretation?
Oh, I wasn’t going to pop in on this “debate” but I’m laughing so hard I’m crying ROFL!!!
So, since I’m here: It was asked if a person can defend someone being violently attacked without themselves feeling any angry, hateful feelings. I’d say the answer is obviously no, but since that would invite 1,000 levels of parsing to attempt to force a coherent, consistent perspective onto what are obviously contradictory biblical passages, I won’t. The same person who questions who gets to decide intent is frequently the same person who then attributes intent, refers to the intent of biblical passages, and sums up by saying that at the end of the day all interpretations are merely subjective – which means the intent is pretty much unknowable. The life of Edgar Bergen, indeed.
All of which is why humor is sooooo cathartic. Thanks, Terrifel.
It seems clear to me that you’ve got the pulse of those that work very hard to contort religious teachings into secular priorities and values. Cake and eating it too, etc.
The xianity I was raised with was definitely of the sort that looked upon the religion as ultimately a way to “make friends and influence people” so to speak as you said; it seems that at the end of the day they want to be able to do what comes naturally with some moderate, but totally manageable, adjustments and then if and when those aren’t adhered to one can always fall back onto “well, I’m not perfect…”
In answer to the OP, yes of course the verse means what it states. Don’t resist.
It’s plain. All other contradictory behavior comes for elaborately extrapolated ‘commandments’ of such phrases as love others. If I’m being killed, it’s more of a stretch to say that I should resist him out of love (and with nary a bad feeling in my soul to boot – which I can later just repent about anyway if any come about because I’m not perfect!) than it is to say that I…just…shouldn’t…resist…him.
I have a theory that many religious folks need to look hip (to themselves) and hence all the contortions to arrive on the scene as not completely insane.
But that’s another thread.
Incidentally, all things being equal, I actually think non-believers of a given religion are probably more qualified than believers to correctly interpret that belief’s scriptures since they’re looking at it secularly, as literature, and without the handicapping spiritual layers of delusional belief. Again, another thread.
The assumption that X is absolutely true is that, when Jesus said, “Do not resist an evil person,” he was sincere in what he said. I take him at his word here.
It’s true that the attack on the Pharisees appears to contradict what he said. At this point, One has three options that I can see:
Try to find a way to resolve the contradiction. My previous explanation of the sword passage resolves that apparent contradiction to my satisfaction, but I do not see a convincing way to resolve this one.
Follow what Jesus did, not what he said to do.
Follow what Jesus said to do, not what he did.
This passage makes the most sense to me as a sign of Jesus’s imperfection. He blew his top and did something that he probably shouldn’t have done, according to his own teaching. Since I don’t believe that he was perfect (and indeed I think that’s a view shared by some believers, who point to his “Why have you forsaken me?” plea as an example of his imperfection), seeing this as a deviation from what he told folks to do is unproblematic.
The same person who questions who gets to decide intent is frequently the same person who then attributes intent, refers to the intent of biblical passages, and sums up by saying that at the end of the day all interpretations are merely subjective – which means the intent is pretty much unknowable. The life of Edgar Bergen, indeed.
Thanks, Terrifel.