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Scott Gendron's avatar

Dan, I will agree with you on this point - The Message does feel very different and I would say the problem is it is an interpretation and can stray to far from the real "message" which is the gospel. We have to be careful not to make Christ out to be a pacifist. Taking all of scripture into purview is important. Christ made a whip out of chords and drove the money changers out of the temple. That does not seem very "kind" or "pacifist" to me. However, when I take the full breadth of scripture and use it to interpret and inform each piece I can come up with a cohesive understanding. The part in this message I most am concerned with is the part where you stated "First, when I’m feeling super spiritual I will say something along the lines of, “I’m not hating my enemy, I am speaking truth to them. It’s for their own good.”" Certainly I can see this happening and not being an action out of "our understanding" of love. But there are instances where "speaking truth to them. It's for their own good" could actually be the most loving and correct thing to do. In fact, I would argue that "speaking truth" is always the loving thing to do no matter the delivery. It is also the most loving thing to do for your enemy and if you really love them you will do it. Christ said many things we could think were unkind like "you brood of vipers" but he was revealing a truth about the state of some of the leaders hearts. We need to understand this passage in a wider context and yeah we can implement what Christ is talking about here in a 1-on-1 situation and in some wider audiences and we should strive to do that. But we must always be thinking about our wider audience as well if there is one. Certainly we should be humbled when it is revealed to us when we did not act out of love. I would suggest though that based on Christ's life itself and some of the actions He took and the words that He used and said weren't always pretty. With this understanding can we at least agree that "Love" doesn't always look like the world's definition of what love looks like or should be? Love may sometimes look "ugly" to those outside the kingdom.

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