I dislike presenting half-baked blog-posts but I don't have anything better than this today. So bear with me. I might never get a full resolution on this issue.
Matthew 5:38,39 reads
As a modern man reading this in 2026, it seems so very wrong. As a parent who has had to display "tough love" at times, it seems very wrong.
I read some commentaries. I read Chapter 5 several times for context and am still working to reconcile this quote with what I believe about humans.
Commentary
The most commentary by assorted preachers is that "slap" is to be interpreted as "an insult to our dignity or honor" similar to Black culture's "I have been disrespected". Their take on the verse is that Jesus is telling us to not escalate conflict but to ignore the insult.
Context, Part I
That is very consistent with the vignettes that are immediately before this verse. All of them are some version of slippery-slope situations with the possibility where escalation is a natural and logical consequence. Jesus is telling us that are morally liable when we start down those paths.
That interpretation is also diametrically opposed to the interpretation of the radical pacifists who say this verse tells us that we must passively submit to evil and let God sort it all out on Judgement Day. We know from history that refusal to confront institutionalized evil allows it to flourish. That is the opposite of the meta-message about natural and logical outcomes.
Context, Part II
I think there is much value in thinking about the audience Jesus was speaking to. He was in Galilee which was a rural backwater.
Towns, such as there were, were tiny.
Archeological digs determined that the Nazareth of Jesus's day consisted of fifty foundations, not all of which were used for human habitation. Estimates in the 1800's was a population of 2000-to-2500. That has since been revised downward to 200-to-480.
Having seem images of the foundations of Roman era Capernum in Israel and measured them using Google Earth, it is hard to imaging 10 people living in a one-room house that measures 12'-by-8' so my gut-feel is that the number is closer to 200 than the 480 number.
Given the populations of those towns and the extreme lack of social mobility, i.e. they couldn't just let their lease lapse and move to L.A., the impact of people with Narcissistic and Borderline Personality Disorders would be enormous because it would be impossible to escape them. A typical town of 200 people would have three of these toxic people since the base-rate is about 1.5% of the population.
If you were to ask nearly any of the people in the audience listening to Jesus at the time "Can you name one person who is 'Evil'?" they would almost certainly name one of those three people in their village (maybe all three!). They would be unlikely to mention Harod the Great, Tiberius Caesar or Donald J. Trump. Those people were as far removed from their daily lives as mythical creatures like mermaids.
Those people thrive on the energy they "create" through digs and insults. They crave it. They cannot live without it. If you feed the troll, the troll gets bigger and more powerful. If you ignore them they are diminished.
If you "feed" them, they will torment you.
In today's society
It is my belief that the base-rate of Cluster B Personality Disorders is increasing rapidly. Our brains are very plastic and respond to our environments. The internet and social media rewards the trolls. It feeds them. They reproduced like mosquitoes after a hurricane.
Summary
My relationship with these Bible verses continues to evolve. My current stance on them is that Jesus is telling me to shun people who act in toxic ways when I am present. My interacting with them is harmful to me and it is harmful to them.
It does not mean that Jesus is telling me that I cannot exercise "tough love". It does not mean that I cannot respond with force to evil people who threaten life-and-limb. It does not mean that I must vote for judges and prosecutors who refuse to exercise legitimate, legal penalties against people who earned them.
If that one verse is taken at face value verbatim - the the Bible and Christianity effectively becomes a suicide cult. And if I were a demon spouting scripture to deceive - that one verse would be the first one I'd pull every time. Matthew did NOT write that verse to enable evil.
ReplyDeleteG@d gave his Angles Swords to fight evil.
ReplyDeleteJesus is quoted as saying to swap your cloak for a sword.
Jesus weapon of choses was a whip.
It is ok to fight evil.
While Jesus is not quoted as saying this, the encouragement in Ephesians 6:11-13 to "Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes..." certainly doesn't seem like passively taking what is dished out by evil, rather fight against it as best we can, even in ways that might seem trivial. Seems that if we curl up in a corner against evil, all hope is lost in this world...
ReplyDelete"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Attributed to many including John Stuart Mills and Reverend Charles F. Aked.
DeleteYour analysis provides deep thought! I like the way you think. Perhaps you'd continue to share your reflections on this tangent... considering the likely oral to written processes, (historically) questionable authorship, various translation paths, and conflicting wisdom presented, maybe not every line we read from the Good Book, is written precisely as the original thought that produced that line. Thus, it is up to us to discover and discern our own individual morality given the big picture... as you are doing.
ReplyDeleteGiven enough time, most people will shit on you.
ReplyDeleteMatthew 5:38,39 was reinterpreted by Thomas Aquinas, who acknowledged the self-preservation instinct. He found using minimum, but all necessary, violence against an attacker to stop an attack completely morally justifiable.
ReplyDeleteAquinas’ moral insight is called the 'Principle of Double Effect': single actions can have multiple outcomes. Harming an aggressor while defending an innocent life is an example. Aquinas found the morality of violent action depends upon intention. He held killing is never morally acceptable when killing is the sole intent. Killing as an unintended secondary effect of self defense is always fully justifiable.
Consequently, current Catholic teaching is that a Catholic may use deadly force to defend one’s own life or the lives of others without committing a sin.