Week 9 (09.11.08)

This week we looked at the part of the Bible in which Jesus talks about the Old Testament saying, "Eye for eye and tooth for tooth," and about love for our enemies.

In this passage (Matthew 5:38-48), Jesus quotes the scriptures where it says "eye for eye and tooth for tooth." He then tell his listeners that they shouldn't "resist an evil person." If someone hits them on the right cheek, they should turn their left cheek to be hit also. And if someone wants to take their tunic they should give them their cloak as well. If someone forces them to "go one mile" they should go two miles. He also says that we should give to those who ask for things from us, and that we should not turn away from those who want to borrow something. He then goes on to quote the saying "Love your neighbour and hate your enemy," the first part of which can be found in Leviticus 19:18, but tells us that instead we should love those who are our enemies and pray for those who persecute us so that we can be true children of our Father in Heaven. He goes on to say that God makes the sun rise and the rain fall on those who do good and those who don't at the same time. He says that there is no reward for those who love people that show them love back, reminding us that even the tax collectors (who everyone knew to be evil in Jesus' time) manage to love those who love them in return. Again he says that if we only greet those we love we are behaving in exactly the same way as everyone else because even the pagans (the people who were neither Jews nor Christians in that time) did this. He concludes by saying, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

We first spoke about what Jesus was saying about revenge. We thought that this passage had a lot of references to things that would have been relevant in Jesus' time, but that don't really make sense today, so we went through the passage verse by verse to 'translate' it so that it speaks more clearly to us today. So in the end, we had four 'stories' that looked something like this: "You have heard it said, 'If someone steals your car, take their car, and if someone steals your money, take their money too,' but I tell you, do not give into the temptation to do wrong to someone who has done wrong to you. If someone breaks one window in your house, let them break the rest of the windows in your house too, if they want to sue you for your house, give them your car as well, if someone makes you help them with the shopping on one day, carry their shopping for the whole week." Basically our conclusion was that Jesus doesn't want us to take revenge on people who have hurt us in some way; or that if someone wants to take advantage of you in some way, we should show that we love them anyway, and rather than retaliating with more evil, we will show that we aren't letting them take advantage of us by giving them more than they tried to take.

We also spoke about the passage that speaks about loving our enemies. Jesus knows that there are going to be people who we find annoying or who really don't like us for some reason (maybe because we follow him), so he is not saying that we should pretend to get on with everyone, but that we should especially take care to love those who we don't and treat us badly, even if the way they treat us seems unfair. We asked why we should love those who clearly don't love us and we thought that, for one thing, we might actually start liking them or help them like us and no longer want to treat us badly; and secondly because we want to be different from all the people around us who don't follow Jesus, we want to show them that being a Christian actually makes us different from the world, so we would be teaching the person who is our enemy the gospel by returning their hate with God's love. Finally we thought about what it means to 'love' someone who actually we don't like for various reasons. Paul describes love in 1 Corinthians 13, and from reading this we soon find out that love is not just a feeling but is actually in what you choose to do and how you choose to treat someone. For example, if you do not like someone, you could choose to make this obvious in various ways, or you could choose to treat them with love anyway. This is not to show off or to be a 'goody two-shoes,' but if done in a spirit of wanting to please God and to live in such a way that would reveal him to those who don't yet know him, or to set an example to those who do; then we can know that we have a clear conscience, because we've done all we can to make sure that a friendly relationship between us and our enemy is possible. This can be really difficult, but it is something God has commanded us to do and therefore he will help us and we know it is possible because he would not ask us to do something that isn't possible: as Philippians 4:13 says, "I can do all things through Christ, because he gives me strength." Moreover, if someone knows that they are treating you deliberately badly and you return this with a loving attitude and actions that show them love, you will really have an impact on their life, even if you don't see this in the time that you know them. Romans 12:19-20 says "Do not take revenge, my friends ... on the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he's thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." This does not mean that we should seek to act kindly towards those who are our enemies in order that burning coals will suddenly fall from the heavens onto their heads, because that is not a loving attitude! It means that they will be ashamed of the way in which they have treated you because of the way that you are responding to this treatment. This doesn't mean that they will always change the way they see you: sometimes people will harden their hearts when faced with this way of being that is so much the opposite of how the world tells us we should behave, but at least you know and God knows that you are blameless in the situation and therefore if you are only treated worse by the one you are trying to be loving towards, you can trust that God will sort that out. However, often when we respond to cruel behaviour with persistent love, we see God work through and turn the situation around, so we should always carry on living the way he wants us to and pray that he will help us to do so and also that he will use the fact that we are being faithful to him to change the lives of those around us.

The last thing we took note of was verse 42 which tells us to give to those who ask and not to reject anyone who wants to borrow something from us. We spoke about how everything we own really belongs to God and therefore if he has blessed us with more things and more money than others, it is not because he loves us more, or wants us to be 'happier' than others for some reason. Instead, he wants us to use these things in the same way as we should our talents: to bring him glory. Therefore if we have something, we have it so that we can help those who do not, they will see God's love when they see how generous and kind you are. We will talk more about this when we look at 'Treasures in Heaven.'

Lois and Eleanor