Scary God?
I got this from Greg Boyd’s website, he highlighted it in a recent blog entry. Thanks, Brad Cole, whoever you are, for this article.
an excerpt
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your friends, hate your enemies.’ But now I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may become the children of your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:43-44 – GN)
I’m tempted at this point to take this article in a different direction and to ask, “What should a Christian look like?” This is radical stuff and sadly it shows that Christians do not often follow the teachings of Christ, but the point to make for now, with regards to the Old Testament is this. Jesus’ repeated words in this sermon “You have heard it said….BUT NOW I tell you…” suggests something critically important to our understanding of the Old Testament. This may sound strange and perhaps even wrong, but please wrestle with this statement. Here it is: There is a hierarchy of truth in scripture.
Why does that sound wrong? Well, one view of inspiration is that since the scripture is God-breathed everything is on an equal plane of truth whether we are in the book of Judges or the gospel of John. But what did we just hear Jesus say? He said that the rules such as ‘eye for an eye’ were not the ideal. That rule is a very, very dim light compared to the very bright light of loving your enemies. In Jesus we can say that Gandhi was right, that “an eye for an eye makes the world blind.”
the whole enchilada here.
