As anticipated I received a ton of mail concerning the Words for the Day entry for Friday. The subject matter seemed to be just as thought provoking this time as it was many years ago when I first published it. I received numerous responses and some were positive and some decidedly negative. Most all were interesting.
One person wrote: “I loved it! I’m not too sure Jesus might not have gotten a chuckle out of seeing you drench the cyclist. I can see myself doing the same thing. The thought occurred to me how inconsiderate the cyclist was. There he was thinking he was the most important person on the road, not caring that his actions were affecting many, many others. It was all about him.”
One guy summed it up as follows: The devil made me do it sounds like the cyclist got a WAKE UP CALL. Heck you could have rammed him, so spraying the water was what Jesus would do, a little correction…tough love?
Another wrote: “Not feeling remorse after committing a sin! Sort of reminds me of how I felt after committing fornication as a single man. When a brother rebuked me, I replied “But how can something that feels so good, be so bad?”
One time I was sitting at a bar and was in my typical foul mood, filled with hate and bitterness for about everything including myself, and I was sullenly glowering down into my glass of rum and Coke and not talking to anyone. The guy sitting next to me was rapidly becoming an obnoxious jerk. For some reason he was ranting and railing about Jews and calling them every name in the book, none of which were complimentary.
Finally I’d had enough; I looked over at him and raised my hand slightly and when he looked at me I smiled at him and then coldly looked him right in the eye and said, “I’m Jewish!”
He knew my reputation around the French Quarter and he wanted no part of my psychopathic rage. The color drained from his face and he had a sick look on his face like he’d just stepped in dog poop. I proceeded to thump him all over that bar, breaking his nose and knocking out a couple of his teeth, and beating him half senseless in the process. When I left he was lying in a pool of his own blood and he was no longer ranting about Jews to anyone.
Of course I’m not Jewish and at this period of my life I could have cared less for them, I was just in a bad mood and tired of him running his mouth and annoying me. Many people might applaud such action saying that this jerk got exactly what he deserved and the same is true for the inconsiderate cyclist that I doused with water.
I’ve studied the Bible for many years and cannot imagine that such actions should be applauded and I feel sure that Jesus would never engage in anything remotely representative of such.
So what about Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden and others? Should we let them do whatever they desire with impunity as candidate Ron Paul seems to imply? Or for that matter, should the inconsiderate cyclist be allowed to continue to rudely hold up traffic for miles forever with no retribution?
Should we fight back? Is it a sin to do so?
Perhaps we are at times to be used as God’s chosen instrument in righting wrongs. Someone has to stop dictators and tyrants. Who’s to say that it shouldn’t be us? Was the Navy Seal that put a bullet in Bin Laden’s brain God’s instrument of vengeance?
I think he was…Did he sin? I don’t think he did…
But me on the other hand, I wasn’t thinking about righting a wrong when I doused the cyclist, nor was I worried about racism when I beat up the guy who was denigrating Jews.
So I think it boils down to the heart and our motivation. Some wrongs in this world need to be made right and God might use us to do it, just like He used King David to take out Goliath. But make no mistake it’s a slippery slope at best. In my case it was sin, plain and simple. It did feel good at the time, but so did shooting up meth….until it nearly destroyed my life….
The way of the world is clear and so is God’s. The world wants to take the Bible out of context and cling to ancient laws in Leviticus like, “fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has injured the other, so he is to be injured”. But Jesus added a line indicating what He wants our course of action to be.
Uh oh…
Matt. 5:38
You have heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also