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A case against revenge

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  • A case against revenge

    How can I show people that revenge is wrong?
    sigpic

  • #2
    Originally posted by TheWall View Post
    How can I show people that revenge is wrong?
    By your actions and words. Forgive and speak truth. That's about it.
    That's what
    - She

    Without a clear-cut definition of sin, morality becomes a mere argument over the best way to train animals
    - Manya the Holy Szin (The Quintara Marathon)

    I may not be as old as dirt, but me and dirt are starting to have an awful lot in common
    - Stephen R. Donaldson

    Comment


    • #3
      Often times we try to get people to a conclusion before they've accepted the premises.
      Teach a person to live in the Spirit and the fruits of the Spirit will follow - revenge is incompatible with those fruits.
      Actually YOU put Trump in the White House. He wouldn't have gotten 1% of the vote if it wasn't for the widespread spiritual and cultural devastation caused by progressive policies. There's no "this country" left with your immigration policies, your "allies" are worthless and even more suicidal than you are and democracy is a sick joke that I hope nobody ever thinks about repeating when the current order collapses. - Darth_Executor striking a conciliatory note in Civics 101

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by TheWall View Post
        How can I show people that revenge is wrong?
        Teach them to love their enemies (which might be the hardest command in the Bible to obey). To learn how to love your enemies properly, you need look no further than Christ--His sacrificial death on the cross demonstrates it clearly.

        Besides, all the proper renderings of justice are ultimately the domain of God. Our duty is to strive to be like Christ which means doing what doesn't come naturally--loving our enemies and being kind to those who hate us.

        I wish I could say I was better at this, but that doesn't change what the Bible teaches, and besides, that's the great thing about being a Christian--you know God will redeem you.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Paula View Post
          Teach them to love their enemies (which might be the hardest command in the Bible to obey). To learn how to love your enemies properly, you need look no further than Christ--His sacrificial death on the cross demonstrates it clearly.

          Besides, all the proper renderings of justice are ultimately the domain of God. Our duty is to strive to be like Christ which means doing what doesn't come naturally--loving our enemies and being kind to those who hate us.

          I wish I could say I was better at this, but that doesn't change what the Bible teaches, and besides, that's the great thing about being a Christian--you know God will redeem you.
          If Poland had forgiven the Nazis for the Rape of Poland, the Nazis would simply have destroyed the nation entirely. When faced with people like Hitler and Lenin, forgiveness would have been suicidal, irresponsible, and wicked. The proper course of action against Nazi Germany was to bomb it into the Stone Age, which it could not complain of, since that is what the Luftwaffe had done. ISIS cannot be forgiven, because Islam is a supremacist ideology that takes kindness for weakness; the only good course of action is to destroy them, just as they intend to destroy us. It is us or them.

          The Sermon on the Mount works only in small communities and undeveloped societies. It is hopelessly unhelpful in a society as complicated as the kind in the West. To keep ourselves secure we need capitalism, banking, armies, spies, prisons, police forces, politicians, political parties, voting, and possibly the death penalty & torture; and much more, that was either scarce or non-existent 1950 years ago. Rapists and paedophiles and traitors and murderers and similar vermin need to be punished, and punished properly - not forgiven. Jesus Himself called people "evil", and forgot all His fine words about love of enemies when He was giving the Pharisees and Scribes a tongue-lashing in St Matthew 23. So how can He have expected the S on the M would be any use to anyone, especially as a guide to a whole nation ?

          St Paul adapts the Teaching of Jesus, as though recognising that ideas suitable to a backwater like Judea would be complete non-starters in places like Ephesus, Corinth and Philippi. Out go the Beatitudes and the preaching of social justice - in comes Christian morality.

          Comment


          • #6
            Totally off topic, but Rushing Jaws, do you intentionally look for old threads to resurrect at random or is there a method to the madness?

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Rushing Jaws View Post
              If Poland had forgiven the Nazis for the Rape of Poland, the Nazis would simply have destroyed the nation entirely. When faced with people like Hitler and Lenin, forgiveness would have been suicidal, irresponsible, and wicked. The proper course of action against Nazi Germany was to bomb it into the Stone Age, which it could not complain of, since that is what the Luftwaffe had done. ISIS cannot be forgiven, because Islam is a supremacist ideology that takes kindness for weakness; the only good course of action is to destroy them, just as they intend to destroy us. It is us or them.

              The Sermon on the Mount works only in small communities and undeveloped societies. It is hopelessly unhelpful in a society as complicated as the kind in the West. To keep ourselves secure we need capitalism, banking, armies, spies, prisons, police forces, politicians, political parties, voting, and possibly the death penalty & torture; and much more, that was either scarce or non-existent 1950 years ago. Rapists and paedophiles and traitors and murderers and similar vermin need to be punished, and punished properly - not forgiven. Jesus Himself called people "evil", and forgot all His fine words about love of enemies when He was giving the Pharisees and Scribes a tongue-lashing in St Matthew 23. So how can He have expected the S on the M would be any use to anyone, especially as a guide to a whole nation ?

              St Paul adapts the Teaching of Jesus, as though recognising that ideas suitable to a backwater like Judea would be complete non-starters in places like Ephesus, Corinth and Philippi. Out go the Beatitudes and the preaching of social justice - in comes Christian morality.
              Forgiveness is for offenses past, not ongoing attacks. It is for people not for abstractions like parties. I may forgive someone who trespassed against me, but if someone is still actively moving against me self defense is not refusal to forgive.

              And this is sort of an old thread.
              Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

              Comment


              • #8
                I don't know if we can not apply it to military action, though. The early church unanimously condemned warfare, largely based on Jesus's teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. How that would apply to the Rape of Nanking (in your example), I can't say.

                http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscr...e-in-violence/
                "I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
                  The early church unanimously condemned warfare
                  That's a pacifist canard with no resemblance to reality. And that article is rife with dishonesty (most pacifist diatribes are). IE:

                  Tertullian agreed that God prohibits “every sort of man-killing” (Spec. 2)
                  But Tertullian is not distinguishing between different types of killing in the sense of murder vs self defense vs warfare, he is literally talking about the tools used to murder (he was also into RPGs apparently, because he covers warriors, rogues and mages alike). Tertullian is arguing that just because God made iron, it doesn't mean that it's ok to use iron to murder someone. He then drives that point in with another example (idols).

                  http://www.tertullian.org/anf/anf03/...tm#P900_353744

                  Why, all sorts of evils, which as indubitably evils even the heathens prohibit, and against which they guard themselves, come from the works of God. [8] Take, for instance, murder, whether committed by iron, by poison, or by magical enchantments. Iron and herbs and demons are all equally creatures of God. Has the Creator, withal, provided these things for man's destruction? Nay, He puts His interdict on every sort of man-killing by that one summary precept, "Thou shalt not kill." [9] Moreover, who but God, the Maker of the world, put in its gold, brass, silver, ivory, wood, and all the other materials used in the manufacture of idols? Yet has He done this that men may set up a worship in opposition to Himself? On the contrary idolatry in His eyes is the crowning sin. What is there offensive to God which is not God's? But in offending Him, it ceases to be His; and in ceasing to be His, it is in His eyes an offending thing. [10] Man himself, guilty as he is of every iniquity, is not only a work of God--he is His image, and yet both in soul and body he has severed himself from his Maker. For we did not get eyes to minister to lust, and the tongue for speaking evil with, and ears to be the receptacle of evil speech, and the throat to serve the vice of gluttony, and the belly to be gluttony's ally, and the genitals for unchaste excesses, and hands for deeds of violence, and the feet for an erring life; or was the soul placed in the body that it might become a thought-manufactory of snares, and fraud, and injustice? I think not; [11] for if God, as the righteous exactor of innocence, hates everything like malignity--if He hates utterly such plotting of evil, it is clear beyond a doubt, that, of all things that have come from His hand, He has made none to lead to works which He condemns, even though these same works may be carried on by things of His making; for, in fact, it is the one ground of condemnation, that the creature misuses the creation.
                  Tertullian may well be a pacifist, I don't remember. But the case is not made in that citation.
                  Last edited by Darth Executor; 07-05-2017, 02:32 AM.
                  "As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths." Isaiah 3:12

                  There is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Paula View Post
                    Teach them to love their enemies (which might be the hardest command in the Bible to obey).
                    It doesn't seem all that hard, a good chunk, if not the majority of the Western population loves their enemy and hates their friend.
                    "As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths." Isaiah 3:12

                    There is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Then again

                      http://www.christianitytoday.com/new...gypt-isis.html
                      1Cor 15:34 Come to your senses as you ought and stop sinning; for I say to your shame, there are some who know not God.
                      .
                      ⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛
                      Scripture before Tradition:
                      but that won't prevent others from
                      taking it upon themselves to deprive you
                      of the right to call yourself Christian.

                      ⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Darth Executor View Post
                        That's a pacifist canard with no resemblance to reality.
                        No resemblance to reality? Can you find any citations from early church writers in the first two centuries who state that Christians can participate in the Roman military?

                        To demonstrate that there is no resemblance to reality, you need to actually demonstrate that pacifism was widely opposed, not poke holes in one or two passages used to bolster the argument.
                        Last edited by KingsGambit; 07-08-2017, 10:02 AM.
                        "I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
                          . . . The early church unanimously condemned warfare, largely based on Jesus's teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. . . .
                          The early Church may have condemned warfare. I condemn warfare, but I do not believe that can be extended to pacifism.

                          Luke 3:14 Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.”

                          Matthew 8:5 When he had entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, appealing to him, 6 “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, suffering terribly.” 7 And he said to him, “I will come and heal him.” 8 But the centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9 For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, 3 ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” 10 When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel4 have I found such faith. 11 I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, 12 while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 13 And to the centurion Jesus said, “Go; let it be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed at that very moment.

                          Acts 10:1 At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of what was known as the Italian Cohort, 2 a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people, and prayed continually to God. 3 About the ninth hour of the day he saw clearly in a vision an angel of God come in and say to him, “Cornelius.” 4 And he stared at him in terror and said, “What is it, Lord?” And he said to him, “Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. 5 And now send men to Joppa and bring one Simon who is called Peter. 6 He is lodging dwith one Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the sea.” 7 When the angel who spoke to him had departed, he called two of his servants and a devout soldier from among those who attended him, 8 and having related everything to them, he sent them to Joppa.

                          John the Baptist did not have anything to say to the soldiers who wanted to do right. This is not clearly a support for military service in and of itself, but it certainly shows that there was no strong condemnation of such service.

                          Jesus interacted with centurion at Capernaum and not only did not condemn him but praised his faith.

                          In the Acts account God sent an angel to the centurion, Cornelius. Scripture describes Cornelius as "a devout man who feared God." He was not only not condemned but given a task, to wit, to arrange to have Peter brought to him and ultimately had a significant role in bringing Christianity to the gentiles.

                          Bottom line to me, the early Church fathers are not the ultimate authority. It is the Bible that wields that authority, and it has nothing against military service. God supported military action through out the OT, and He is the same God in the NT.
                          Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
                            No resemblance to reality? Can you find any citations from early church writers in the first two centuries who state that Christians can participate in the Roman military?

                            To demonstrate that there is no resemblance to reality, you need to actually demonstrate that pacifism was widely opposed, not poke holes in one or two passages used to bolster the argument.
                            Not opposed but not actually prescribed. I've heard that in those times Roman soldiers had to swear and worship the Ceaser(emperor) could that have been why Christians were not supposed to join the military?

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
                              No resemblance to reality? Can you find any citations from early church writers in the first two centuries who state that Christians can participate in the Roman military?
                              No, but that is not the same thing as support for pacifism. Pacifists routinely try to deceive people by showing quotes of early Christians opposing military memebership on account of its pagan reqirements as evidence of pacifism.

                              I should also note that early church writers are not the final authority on whether Christians actually DID participate in the military.

                              To demonstrate that there is no resemblance to reality, you need to actually demonstrate that pacifism was widely opposed, not poke holes in one or two passages used to bolster the argument.
                              The subject barely even comes up as evidenced by the drought of honest quotes coming from pacifists. It's not so much that it was widely opposed that it was largely never brought up in the first place.
                              "As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths." Isaiah 3:12

                              There is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt.

                              Comment

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