You’re not the only one.
…but you can’t make it provide valid cites.
No one claimed Jesus was passive.
I meant to cite the Gospels where Jesus drove out the money lenders as well as their animals, and kicked over their tables, and the one where He made a whip.
He used violence. That’s what the cites say. Are you claiming that this is pacifism? If you are, you have a rather different definition of the term.
Regards,
Shodan
So according to you, if Martin Luther King Jr. had charged onto the buses in Selma, kicked the bus driver out of his seat and onto the street, and then had the bus overturned, you would agree that this is pacifism?
Regards,
Shodan
Your cite says he drove the sheep and cattle out, overturned the tables and yelled at the people selling doves. Not absolute pacificism by any means but are you assuming he whipped the people as well?
OK, so then if we use your definition, then you would agree that it’s OK to restrain or control someone who is dangerous. I’m OK with that. I agree that we should not set out deliberately to kill every criminal or insane person that presents a threat. There are as they say, other ways. Where we might differ, is when the situation is so extreme, the choice of sparing the person is taken away by that person (he’s actively trying to kill you or others, and there’s no other way to stop him).
Obviously they’re not going to stop ME from doing it. And I of course will be shooting him in the back.
I think branding Jesus as an absolute pacifist might be a little iffy only because the question was never posed directly to him on a “If every Jewish man, woman, and child was going to be raped and killed, would it be ok to resist?” or “If you wake up in the night and your family is being murdered by a serial killer, is it ok to defend them with possibly deadly force?”
Instead we have mild anecdotes which are vague enough to be interpreted however the reader wants.
E.g.
-The market place incident
-“Render to Ceasar that which is Ceasar’s” (Taxes pay for soldiers for national security)
- General discontentment among some because he wasn’t advocating rebelling against the romans
If I recall correctly(and I do), your “cites” were a direct response to this:
Cloud the issue all you want-your cites still fail.
“I think it would be a very good idea.”
To understand Gandhi as primarily a philosopher is to misunderstand him. He was primarily a politician and a revolutionary. As a philosopher, he tends towards irrationality, hypocrisy, sentimentalism, and woo. As a religious or philosophical thinker, he borders on cheerful incoherence.
But as a politician and a revolutionary, he was a genius in terms of conceptualisation as well as execution. He knew his opponents well, and he knew his supporters well and he was able to mobilise a gigantic force behind him.
He was also a bit of a joker. This was a joke, and it had exactly the effect he wanted – to amuse his supporters and to annoy his opponents.
Bible Study Bible readers like myself, remember the turn the other cheek philosophy. It is even more .
That’s how I like to live.
For that matter suppose Caesar asks for military service in the army as part of conscription?
I don’t see any ambiguity in my statement; it was quite clear. For Gandhi, the ideal was nonviolent resistance; if that was not possible, then violent resistance, because violence resistance is still preferable to surrender. IOW, if you lack the courage to stand up to an oppressor and not fight them, then you should fight them; but defeat is the worst option. Clear?
Yes
no-one can take your choices away, just like no-one can force you what to think. You make your own choices, and accept the consequences. The consequence of a belief that violence solves anything, is a world where violence is used to solve damn near everything. Which is not the world I want for myself or my family.
I should add that I’m not averse to being shown that Jesus had physically thrown out the moneylenders or whipped them or whatever as long as it doesn’t require an extreme interpretation, but it’s certainly not the way I’ve ever heard it told.
Oddly, my sunday-school interpretation was always that Jesus HAD physically tossed out the moneylenders–it seemed obvious to me that if a dude with a makeshift whip starts ruining your place of business, if you’re then driven out then he’s probably at least credibly threatened you with violence.
Threatening to beat someone up and actually doing so are two very different things.
So we have a philosophical (?) difference. Nothing more. At any rate, I doubt you would ever feel threatened or endangered by me, any more than I would feel endangered or threatened by you.
As to choice, to give an extreme example (very extreme), if some maniac was shooting people, killing them, and I was armed, yes i would shoot him. Why? It’s as much about self preservation as it is about stopping him. Obviously, I can’t just rush him, that would just add to the body count. So I’d shoot him, given the “opportunity”. One possibly dead maniac vs who knows how many possible dead “other guys”.
In my opinion, that’s true if and only if we can know with 100% certainty that said threats wouldn’t be carried out. That is, had the moneylenders stayed, would Jesus have then proceeded to get Biblical on their bitch asses? We can’t ever know.
Wouldn’t you think Christians would assume the best of their leader, and not the worst, in the case of ambiguities like this one?
Unless, of course, they want to follow an aggressive Christ figure.
I’d assume the aggressive Christ as default over the pacifist one, if the histories of Europe and the Americas are any guide. I’m not sure when, if ever, a pacifistic Christian society ever flourished without the sufferance and protection of a larger, more aggressive one.
Sure, Christians might say they like the meek lamb and all that jazz, but the rest of the time it’s “praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.”