When Jesus Said, “Love Your Enemies” . . .
Sep 4th, 2008 by Micah Tillman | 4 Comments |
One of my favorite bumper stickers (I saw it on CUA’s campus one day) says:
When Jesus said, “Love your enimies,” I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean, “Kill them.”
The snarkiness is just fantastic.
And what’s better is it’s entirely true. Had Jesus meant, “Kill them,” he would have said, “Kill them.” Jesus wasn’t afraid to say what he meant.
The only times Jesus didn’t say what he meant was when he was telling parables. And I’ve never heard anyone claim Matthew 5:43-48 or Luke 6:27-36 are parables.
Besides, had Jesus said, “Kill them,” that would be creepy. Jesus was weird, but usually not creepy.
But I’ve been pondering whether the following might make a good companion bumpersticker to the above:
When Jesus said, “Love your neighbors,” I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean, “Let your enemies kill them.”
Hmmm… good one.
Yes, what are we to do. Where is the happy medium. Who decides?
PS I love the snark, too. And though “snark” means something else when it isn’t joined by the y at the end, I think I’ll continue to use it in this context ’cause it sounds so definite-yet-confusing. “Just look at all this snark!” “You could cut the snark with a knife.”
You know, though, he actually was out-and-out creepy when he started talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. He actually lost some followers over that one.
The excellent “I became a Christian and all I got was a lousy T-shirt” by Vincent Antonucci has some really great stuff about this– an imagined conversation between Jesus and the public-Image conscious disciples, where they try and talk him out of expressing himself this way, for example.
Got me there. You’re right about that stuff being creepy.
Don’t think I’ve ever heard of Vincent Antonucci. Thanks for the info.