isusehj%pyr@gatech.edu (Hillary R. Jordan) (05/29/90)
[This is a response to a question about the ethics of Jesus'
attack on the money-changers' tables. The question is what
if a child had accidentally gotten injured in the process.
Were Jesus' violent actions, and his loss of temper excusable?
Is his anger sinful?
--clh]
To answer the question, first remember that while Jesus was on earth and
without sin, He led a life in total submission to the will of God, the
Father. Now, when He entered the church and saw the moneychangers doing
business on the chruch grounds, He got angry. However, the anger didn't
come from a fleshly bias that He had against them because He thought that
what they were doing wasn't right. This anger was a Godly anger spawned
up from within because God was angry at those men for making a mockery
of the place where the people were suppose to come and worship Him.
Remember, God is a jealous God. He doesn't like you to consider anything
or anyone more important or holy than Him and He doesn't like for you
to treat that which He has ordained as holy and sacred with disrespect.
If you do, then you are subject to his wrath, which in our eyes, isn't
always the nicest thing to experience.
Since it was Jesus who walked in on the moneychangers, God used Jesus
as His tool for exercising His judgement upon these people. That
judgement was to forcefully drive them from the church. From a bystander
point of view, this would have been a very violent thing to observe.
Imagine, some guy who says He's a prophet grabbing a whip and driving
these moneychangers out of the church, kicking down tables of money
and other acts of "violence". However, in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 it states
that in the kingdom of God there comes a time for all types of actions
violent or otherwise. The important thing with whatever action is carried
out is that it is the will of God being done in the situation.
As for the child, first of all, God is all knowing. He would have known
that the child was there amoungst the moneychangers, and could have either
a) continued doing what He was doing, just go around the child.
b) killed the child because you don't know who or what spirits might
be influencing the child at that time.
Or, Jesus could have just called on the power of God to destroy the entire
church because after all sin was active there with the moneychangers and
they couldn't legally get in there and do business without the approval
of someone(s) in authority in that church, a Pharasee or High Priest for
example. And God deals with sin as He sees fit. eg. Sodom and Gomorrah
God's judgement upon the sinful people of Amalek (I Samuel 15:1-3) --
destroy all men, women and children, wiping out of 14,700 of His chosen
people because they came in rebellion against Moses (Numbers 16:41-50).
So, if the child were to die, it was for a reason, not the innocent slaughter
of an individual, because God is soverign, He is all knowing, He is
just and Jesus Christ, His instrument in the situation, was completely
submitted to His will.
To God Be The Glory,
Hill -- hill@hermes.gatech.edukamphau@oktext..sbc.com (Mark Kamphaus) (05/29/90)
In article <May.23.23.31.49.1990.17338@athos.rutgers.edu> ii44@vaxb.acs.unt.edu writes: >However, Satan is capable of taking any good thing that God created and turn it >to evil purposes: he has done so with every emotion that God made for mankind >to use for good. Love, pain, anger, kindness, compassion (although Satan I >think may have a difficult time with this one), and any other you might come up >with. The strongly negative emotions, i.e. hate and anger, are the easiest for >him to pervert, and as such we need to be on the watch of those emotions. We >are in danger every time we employ them, for with just the slightest misstep, a >good use of these negatives can become an evil one. This seems to be becoming a prevalent belief in many demoninations by well meaning and sincere Christians. The problem I have with it is that Although it seems sensible, it is not Biblical. Nowhere is there precedent of Satan overcoming God. The biblical illustration is that when Satan is allowed to tempt Man, that Man perverts the Goodness and not Satan. James says that sin begins in Man. all Satan does is provide oppurtunity for these "lusts" to be exposed and acted on. But, Satan is not the only one. Other men can cause a man to fall. It is ludicrise (sp?) to believe that God has a warped sense of Judgement that we will be punished for things we are not responsible for ("the devil *made* me do it"). Satan is not capable of taking any good thing God created and turn it to evil purposes without the consent of God. Anything else deifies Satan as an equal but evil God. It also reflects that God is not omnipotent. This type of thought IMHO, is of the theology that believes one should not be responsible for their actions. It has its roots in the "Blabbit and Grabbit" movement that looks at God as a comodity they command and who must conform to their wishes because of their faith [in themselves]. While the rest of the argument has merit, this misses it. mark
jeffjs@ihlpb.att.com (05/29/90)
[Another possible duplicate, for same reason as previous.] In article <May.23.23.31.49.1990.17338@athos.rutgers.edu> ii44@vaxb.acs.unt.edu writes: > Satan is capable of taking any good thing that God created and turn it > to evil purposes: he has done so with every emotion that God made for mankind > to use for good. Love, pain, anger, kindness, compassion (although Satan I > think may have a difficult time with this one)... Alas, Satan has quite an easy time with that one, so much so that he made distorted compassion the major component of the "in" psychological/addiction problem of recent years, most commonly known as "codependency". This is the problem where a person closely associated with an addict of any sort -- alcohol, drugs, work, rage, you name it -- ends up feeling that he/she must do everything possible to take care of the addict, make things easy for the addict, take burdens off the addict -- to the point that the person doing all this is enslaved to what seems to be compassion and perhaps started as genuine (though misguided) compassion, but now isn't; it's just a compulsion, like any other addiction. This probably has its deepest, most virulent effects on addicts' children, who don't know any better and who consequently make herculean efforts to be supportive of and helpful to their addicted parent(s), and end up knocking themselves out in the process -- actually knocking their *selves* out, coming to the point where they, in a sense, have no selves of their own, only enslavement to their habit of trying desperately to give all to the addict. I say "don't know any better" because what seems to a child, or indeed to any codependent (e.g., a spouse), to be compassion for an addict actually might not be considered compassion in the strict sense, as it involves alleviating immediate suffering and trouble but not getting at the source of the trouble, the addiction itself. Christians need to be especially sensitive to codependents. The last thing a codependent needs is to be told to be compassionate, supportive, helpful, "loving" -- in other words, to take the world on his or her shoulders as has been habitual. A codependent desperately needs to know just how deep and wide and long and high are the grace and love of God, that God does not demand that the codependent be the Messiah (that's already been quite well taken care of, thank you) but rather has sent the Messiah to heal the deep wounds and fill the empty places in the exhausted and unhappy codependent, that His yoke is easy and His burden light. It's OK to be not the Samaritan but the wounded man whom the Samaritan helped. It is OK, indeed necessary, to receive Christ's true compassion; after that, the person can (if called) be compassionate in the Spirit (bringing life), rather than in the flesh (bringing only death, to everyone concerned). So you see, Satan is, alas, highly ingenious, since he can even spoil "the milk of human kindness". But no matter how clever he is, Christ is greater -- and Christ is in us! That being the case, we have all the strength, love, joy, peace, power, wisdom, and anything else we need to annihilate Satan's influence over our lives. -- Jeff Sargent att!ihlpb!jeffjs (UUCP), jeffjs@ihlpb.att.com (Internet) AT&T Bell Laboratories (temporarily) IH 5A-433 (708) 979-5284
lums@ai.mit.edu (Andy Lumsdaine) (06/05/90)
> When Jesus, in the the temple, got angry and began to turn over > tables and create a fuss, what if by some terrible misfortune > a young child was hit over the head by a turned table and was > killed. I suppose one of the answers might be he would have > simply worked a miracle on the spot and brought the boy back > to life, but I don't think that is a very satisfactory answer, > and it fails to address the ethical, and moral implications > I am dealing with. Were his violent actions in temple > excusable because he was the son of God? As our example what > are we to make of this example? > Again, regardless of whether he is able to bring the boy back to > life, he would have killed him, and this would be considered a > sin. His loss of temper resulted in a violent death, and if any > of us did the same thing, we would surely recognize it as sinful. > Is his anger and the resulting emotional outburst justifiable. > Since the Bible dosen't tell of anyone getting hurt in the melee, > I suppose most of you might consider this a worthless question, > but if we are to consider what Jesus himself said when he said > just the exsistence of anger counted as sinful, regardless of > whether or not someone killed somebody, then how do we apply it > the scene in the temple. No one was hurt, or killed but somebody > could have been, and that is my point. > The issue is that if "he that is without sin" can do something > violent and possibly harmful out of righteous indignation that > anyone of us could not do without being pulled into sin, then > what else could he have done without being pulled into sin? > Sexual relations? Gluttony? Excessive drinking. If we > pardon his anger because of who he was, what else do we > pardon, and if we don't pardon his anger, then how can he > be called sinless? Hmm. These are interesting questions. First you ask what are the ramifications of Jesus' anger, given that he could have accidently hurt or killed someone in his cleansing of the temple. The pat answer here is that no "terrible misfortune" could happen to Jesus -- He is the Son of God, or really, he is God. And maybe this answer isn't so pat. If Jesus is truly God, then he would have certainly been completely aware of all possible consequences of his actions. So really, no one could have been accidently hurt or killed. Furthermore, in reading the accounts of the cleansing of the temple (Mt 21:12-13, Mk 11:15-18, Lk 19:45-46, and Jn 2:14-16), it's not clear that Jesus was acting because of some outburst of his temper. Rather, his actions seem very deliberate. Now, one could still certainly imagine that the Lord was angry, or at least was displaying characteristics which in us would be indicative of anger. So why wasn't it a sin for him to be angry? To answer this, I think we need to define exactly what we mean by sin (this would probably be a great news thread in itself). I've always liked C.S. Lewis' definition (paraphrased by me): sin is a corruption of something good that God has given Man. For instance, there is nothing wrong with sex in and of itself. Sex only becomes sinful when God's intentions for its use have been corrupted, e.g., adultery. All right then, what about anger? Is anger in and of itself a sin, is it a corruption of something good? Or, are there two kinds of anger, righteous and unrighteous? I claim the latter is the case; I think that anger becomes a sin when the intention in the heart of the one who is angry is unloving. For instance, I am personally angry about the state of the earth's environment. But this anger is compelling me to take positive action, to recycle, to support environmental causes, etc. On the other hand, I sometimes get angry when driving around Boston (if you've ever driven here, you understand), but in these cases, my anger makes me curse, makes me wish I had a rocket launcher, etc. It seems to me that the first type of anger is not a sin, but that the second clearly is a sin. That's my own two cents worth, but there does seem to be scriptural support for this. In Ephesians 4:26, Paul says: "Be angry, but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger." The implication seems to be that anger in and of itself is not sin, but that it can lead to sin if not properly controlled. Now I want to bring up something in the temple cleansing that might be even more troubling than the question previously posed. In John's account of the event, Jesus fashioned and used a whip to aid in the cleansing. This is somewhat troubling, because were it the case that he used the whip on the money changers, it seems that he would be *deliberately* hurting people. I checked a few different translations of this account. In the RSV, one reads: "... he drove them all, with the sheep and oxen, out of the temple ...", but in the NIV, one reads: "... and [he] drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle ...". There is a subtle difference here. The RSV seems to imply that Jesus used the whip on everyone, but the NIV seems to imply that he just used it on the sheep and cattle -- a perfectly reasonable way of getting them out of the temple. I checked the Greek on this, and it seems there that he used the whip only on the sheep and cattle, but I'm no Greek scholar. If he did indeed only use the whip on the sheep and cattle, there's no problem. But even if he did direct the whip towards the money changers, it was to shoo them out, not to hurt or abuse or punish them. The Lord's primary intention was to cleanse the temple. I can only conclude that his actions were not sinful. I hope this was helpful. Peace, A.L. -- Andrew Lumsdaine "When aiming for the common denominator, lums@rice-chex.ai.mit.edu be prepared for the occasional MIT RLE division by zero."