AphroditeGoneAwry
failure to thrive
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2009
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- 451
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- sx/so
Fair enough but I find this level of pacifism self-destructive. To me this is analogous to saying if a rapist forces himself upon you instead of resisting and trying to flee you should embrace him closer or open yourself up more to him.
I have not studied rape much in the Bible (OT), but it is not painted in a good light at all, for the victims or perps.
But, yeah, Jesus spread a new word, and it was basically love to those who are evil to you. Interesting that we now know most rape is caused by those people who are already close to you, whereas in the 80s we thought it was caused by strangers. Point being there might already be a loving bond between the rapist and his victim, and it is an acting out of repressed anger and rage that the rapist needs to express. If the victim lets the rapist act this out without causing more insult, as crazy as it sounds, it might do more to further God's love than fighting back. I don't know, I am just surmising.
Rape is just an extreme act of intimate power over another, but in a way such as to elicit love from them. The rapist lacks in feeling loved to the degree he/she must take it by force.
It's not that loving your enemy is going to save them, it is that it shocks them into feeling love in a new way. A way they are not used to. The Jews and Paul joked that loving your enemy is like heaping hot coals on their head; to them being loved almost hurts because they are so not used to it. Ideally, they can then begin asking themselves, "What is up with this person and this way they have? I want to know more about it."
I realize this is an extremely idealistic perspective but that is the point this morning: to magnify this ideology in order to really understand its nuances.
Of course, this is for people past the age of reason, as I call it. Children would be a different matter entirely. Children should not be expected to turn the other cheek, although that is exactly what they do, because children are most like Jesus of all, until they become more and more tainted by the world.