You Shall Not Avenge Yourself
Romans 12:17-21 : Repay no one evil for evil. Respect what is honorable in the sight of all men. If it is possible, as much as it is up to you, be at peace with all men. Don’t seek revenge yourselves, beloved, but give place to God’s wrath. For it is written, “Vengeance belongs to me; I will repay, says the Lord.” Therefore “If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in doing so, you will heap coals of fire on his head.”
Once upon a time Moses told the nation, that stay behind I'm going up to the mountain to converse with the Lord and then I will come back and I will tell you what the Lord wants.
It was not even a similar situation when a lousy husband told his wife in New York that I'm going to the corner news stand to buy a paper and I'll be back within a minute, but he had not come back for 32 years. When he did, he found her wife living with an other man. Even after 32 years later, it was rather disappointing for the man.
It didn't take to Moses that long to come back. It took only 40 days and forty nights but his return was similarly rather disappointing.
During waiting certain some Israelites became somewhat agitated spreading rumors that Moses got killed among the mountains, that either God killed him or the hilltop lions or enemy guerillas, or the Sun dried him as a salted fish, or hunger and thirst combined their efforts to unlive him.
When he finally returned with the stone tablets, he saw the people dancing around the golden calf worshiping it as an idol. He got so angry, that he brake the tablets into pieces, despite that the Lord wrote the words on the tablet Moses carried down.
The tablet contained the Ten Commandments, designed to unify the twelve tribes around the Law, to create morals and justice, to stop infighting, vendettas, civil wars, tribal warfare and alike. However, and of course, it was nothing new, even the Egyptians had the equivalents of the Ten Commandments in their 42 confessions.
Also, according to the sages, they agree, that Seven Laws were given to the sons of Noah, after the Flood. Six of the seven laws are derived right from Book of Genesis, with the seventh being one of the most important, and it is the establishing of the courts to settle disputes instead of blood revenge or punishing military campaigns, civil wars or international wars. All disputes on Earth must be settled on appropriately established courts.
Aggression and cruel revenge is absolutely forbidden, just like dancing on the grave of our fallen enemies. However, self defense is a moral obligation, it is a must. Defending the women and the children, defending the righteous traditions, the law and order, that is what real warriors do, according to a great sage from the Prairies.
Obeying dictators and blindly following orders of tyrants, that is what soldiers do, including generals.
The commandment says that You shall definitely not murder, as it is a premeditated evil. As omitting of self-defense is technically a suicide, so it is a murder of the self, it is forbidden, as well. Thus, self-defense is a must, an obligation of every one and every community.
A lot of maxima, what Jesus said in the Gospels, often got misinterpreted, misunderstood, sometimes taken out of context and even arbitrarily twisted by the next generations.
It is not at least accurate to depict Jesus as a mindless pacifist.
The famous quote here is that Jesus asserted in the Gospel of Matthew that " I tell you, don't resist him who is evil; but whoever strikes you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also."
It is almost hard to explain, how the non-resisting can mean the justifying of self-defense. However, the famous quote of Jesus about the turning the other cheek is a figurative speech.
As in the frame of the Sermon of the Mount, in an other figurative speech, he taught also that “ If your right eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it away from you. For it is more profitable for you that one of your members should perish than for your whole body to be cast into Gehenna. If your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off, and throw it away from you. For it is more profitable for you that one of your members should perish, than for your whole body to be cast into Gehenna. ”
Taking this speech out of the context and taking it literally, it could cause that the majority of the serious followers of Jesus on Earth would lack an eye or two, or a stumbling hand or two. Regarding the turning of the other cheek, the context is “that everyone who is angry with his brother without a cause will be in danger of the judgment.”
It means, that whatever are my grievances, if I get ragingly angry with my neighbor, and in revenge, I or my war party will wipe out the entire neighboring village, that will be counted against me on Judgment Day.
Figuratively, turning the other cheek for the slapping would be better than getting angry or taking a raging revenge, just similarly as plucking out my stumbling eye or cutting off my stumbling arm would be better than going to the Judgment Day, and letting them defile my soul before the Creator. But it is a figurative speech, or a metaphor.
In real life, we should not turn the other cheek to the obviously wicked, but we have to defend our families, our community, our town, our country, our planet, our galaxy.
The Lord God of Israel, as a participant in a war in Middle East style, usually was represented by his angel. Tradition holds that it was usually Michael, as it is written in the Book of Exodus, chapter 23 that “Behold, I send an angel before you, (…), Pay attention to him, and listen to his voice. Don’t provoke him, for he will not pardon your disobedience, for my name is in him. But if you indeed listen to his voice, and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies, and an adversary to your adversaries. ”
The notion that the Lord God of Israel is not only a protective war deity, but the Lord is the universal Creator God of Heaven and Earth, had to develop through centuries and millennia. There happened some moral developments on other continents as well, thus we also have to acknowledge, that almost all major religions on Earth were able to reach the conclusion that one of the major value in the Universe, which is undeniably God’s will for the living creatures, is the the principle, that You Shall Not Do Harm. It is really that simple.
There is no real need to read all the books on Earth to understand why and how you shall not do harm, because it is enough to ask your own heart, or at least the better part of it, in order to know the right answer.
Eventually, doing no harm is not enough, we have to defend the innocent and the weak, especially the women and the children.
Nonetheless, the great coin of love and justice has two sides. Doing no harm is just one side of the coin, because the justice counterpart and the similarly ultimate commandment on the other side of the same coin is that we must defend the innocent against the wicked.
Nonetheless, we can expect God to fight on our side only, if we are on the right side, which is the side of God. If we are on the wrong side, God will fight against us.
May the Lord help us mightily fight evil forces and wickedness, greed and idolatry, always, AMEN.
