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Jasun Horsley's avatar

"Should we not at least try to drive the money-changers from the temple? "

I lean towards seeing Jesus whipping the money lenders out of the Temple as a Gospel-anomaly that requires some explaining, just as when he curses the fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season (?). It might even be read as a moment of weakness (human fallibility) on JC's part, as when he feels forsaken by God on the cross.

(I do not understand Christians who want their Christ to be infallible, since “to err is human” and were he perfect, then he would no longer be human and imitation would be futile. The second part of the saying about human error is—Christ’s divine prerogative—forgiveness, which is only necessary/possible because of our capacity for missing the mark.)

Violence may sometimes be a necessary human response to injustice, then, and preferable to the sort of false humility that suppresses (out)rage and swallows it down in an attempt to be more than human, and so does violence to ourselves. But it is still missing the mark, insofar as it is a reaction that stems from being scandalized by the world (Satan), and feeds the very thing that it is pushing against, that stumbles over the block in a reactive move to get around it: as evidenced by the revolutionary blueprint, how government oppression leads to revolution, lead to oppressive government, ad infinitum.

The idea that a revolutionary response is legitimate, and therefore comes from God (as expressed in a comment below, advocating the Trump admin reformation) is a serious (maybe cardinal) mistake that conflates rendering unto Caesar with what God wants. Ironically, “Render unto Caesar” advocates non-revolutionary action, compliance to state power, which suggests a different Christ to the rough “justice” he administers to the money lenders. (This latter is perhaps because of their hypocrisy in pretending to be one thing while being another?)

The essential Gospel idea here is “My kingdom is not of this world” and “Get thee behind me Satan (Peter), because you value the things of this world and not those of God.”

ALL Trump (or any candidate) supporters, and all revolutionaries, are valuing the things of this world, allowing themselves to be scandalized by Satan, and so becoming an instrument of that. And of course they imbue their worldly-value/alignment with a religiosity as its cover, and dress it up in kingly robes, because that’s how their error manifests and propagates itself: by raising up worldly values to supplant those of God.

And I, meanwhile, run the risk of being scandalized by the fools who look to political reformers to fix their lives & fill up my comment sections with scandalous blarney. ;)

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Jasun Horsley's avatar

45 comments in under 12 hrs, must be a record; will have to catch up tomorrow!

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