BLOG BY DAVE SEIVRIGHT – July 1, 2016
Attorney General Loretta Lynch, after the terrorist attack in Orlando, told Florida’s LGBT community that the “most effective” weapon at America’s disposal against Islamic terrorism is “love.” I assume that she is referring to Jesus’ teaching in the the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew’s Gospel, chapters 5-7.
As a Christian, and a Bible scholar, I am very sensitive to, and strongly disagree with, the way that people like President Obama, and liberals in general, completely misunderstand the meaning of the Sermon on the Mount and the words of our Lord.
Of course we should love our enemies but these words were, in my own understanding, primarily directed to members of the Kingdom of God and how we should react to each other. The sermon of the Mount is a glimpse of the perfection and mutual love which should exist in the Kingdom of God. Of course we should also love those outside of the Kingdom, but as long as we live in a fallen world, Jesus was not contradicting the Biblical right of self-defense and even the doctrine of a just war.
On the contrary early in the sermon Jesus stated that he came not to overturn the Law but to affirm and fulfill the Law. (Matthew 5:17-19)
On a personal level we should love our enemies but the ROLE of the state as set out both in the Old and New Testament is to use the sword to defend individuals and nations against evil. Christians don’t believe that we should lynch somebody who murders our child, there should be no PRIVATE vengeance, but the role of the state is to pursue justice (the lex talionis) and hunt down and punish the murderer of our child. I use this only as one example of a general principle.
The short video which I posted (below) rightly points out that since the Enlightenment, liberals and secularists deny the reality of the fall and the reality of evil. (I am not defending the entire video, much of which I also agree with, but this main point).
As a result liberals have a false view of reality and this affects not only disciplines such as psychiatry (Freud) but also spill over into the matter of politics, justice, and governance, and make them ill-equipped to govern us in a Biblical way.
The Bible is turned upside down by Liberals they cry “love” while they murder tens of thousands of the unborn and call evil good and good evil; they steal private property and redistribute wealth as they please in complete opposition of the Bible’s VOLUNTARY injunctions to give to the poor and the oppressed. Nowhere in Scripture is the State given this power, but this is the teaching of Karl Marx and the other secularists like Stalin and Mao who murdered hundreds of thousands of people. Christianity teaches that private property (and all property) belongs to God; and, individuals (not the state) are appointed the stewards and trustees of private property. See Peter’s words to Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5.
See also this video: https://youtu.be/IC7ZU5vGPy0
