Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: dragon!cms@gatech.edu Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: War in the Persian Gulf Against Iraq to Free Kuwait Message-ID: Date: 23 Jan 91 08:13:26 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Computer Projects Unlimited Lines: 86 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Tonight, during my Bible study class at Church, we were discussing the war in the Persian Gulf against Iraq to free Kuwait. During the course of the discussion, I asked the following question: Jesus said, "Turn the other cheek," yet there are instances when Jesus Himself did not turn the other cheek, such as the incident in the Temple, when He physically drove out the money changers with a whip made of cords. He didn't turn the other cheek then. Yet Jesus is the Prince of Peace. This is my question: If I am an American soldier, and I'm sent by my President to fight and possibly kill Iraqis, as a Christian, can I kill Iraqis and be true to the Gospel? The answer of some people in the room was "no," the answer of others was silence, and my own personal answer was, "I don't know." It's a hard question and I didn't expect an answer. But I was surprised by what the minister teaching the class had to say. (He was a minister in another church but decided to become an Episcopalian and is in the process of becoming a priest.) When we were discussing the Old Testament, I said, Jesus told us to love the God of the Old Testament, the One who told us to go into battle, to kill the Midianites, for example, men, women, and children. Now, his response was: God didn't really tell them to kill the Midianites, men, women, and children, smashing little babies heads against walls, etc....God didn't tell them to do that, that isn't what God is all about. I said, the Bible says, God told them to go out and kill the Midianites. He responded, No, God didn't tell them that; these people were using God to justify their actions. They said, "God told me to do this," even though God really didn't; they were just saying God told them to kill people to justify their actions. I must confess, I was shocked. How do I know where in the Bible God is really speaking and when people are just putting words in his mouth? This minister responded, Well, whenever the prophets say, "Thus says the Lord," that's God speaking. Now, Numbers 31 is what we're talking about here specifically. It says, in the first verse, "The Lord said to Moses, 'Avenge the Israelites on the Midianites, and then you shall be taken to your people.'" Now, here, God is clearly speaking through Moses. Later on, however, I will admit, that when Moses tells the soldiers to kill the women who have had intercourse with a man, but save all the girls, this statement is not prefaced by any "thus says the Lord" idiom. Later still, in verse 25, we have a "the Lord said to Moses" phrase consisting of the divvying up of booty and the counting of captives as part of that booty. In 25:16-18, earlier, the Lord said to Moses, "Treat the Midianites as enemies and crush them, for they have been your enemies by their wily dealings with you as regards Peor and as regards their kinswoman Cozbi, the daughter of the Midianite prince, who was killed at the time of the slaughter because of Peor." Now, we practically beat this issue to death on trm a while back, and I've always been bothered by this, but the interpretation that God never actually ordered us to kill the Midianites, that this was just a ploy used by certain people to justify their actions, is new and shocking to me, and I can't bring myself to go alone with it. I have a red letter edition of the NT, meaning, of course, that the words of Christ are written in red. I've never seen a Bible in which the words of God in the OT are written in blue, for example, but, if such a Bible existed, this minister seems to suggest that every time the phrase "thus says the Lord" comes from the lips of a prophet, the subsequent words should be written in blue, and all other words supposedly spoken by God should be kept in black. What do y'all think? Very confused and truly and honestly seeking the word of God as manifest in the whole Bible, OT and NT, I remain, Yours in Christ, Cindy Smith SPAWN OF A JEWISH CARPENTER A Real Live Catholic in Georgia Deeply steeped in the Roman Tradition, Strongly awakened in the Anglican Tradition, A Catholic Christian who apologizes for the redundancy in this line... [If you don't believe that God wanted the Midianites killed, you need not posit that people were using God consciously as an excuse. If you assume that people at the time were not ready to hear all that God would eventually have to say, several alternatives are possible. E.g. God may have been concerned with keeping Israel pure from contamination by paganism, and the people may simply have been unable to conceive of this being implemented in any way other than killing them all. This could imply either that they misheard what God had to say, or that he actually gave commands that would now be considered bloodthirsty because more subtle alternatives were not yet possible. --clh]