Western culture and sensibilities are uncomfortable with variables. The more things we can nail down, the better we feel. Surely that helps to explain why we have no record of modern Christians walking on the surface of the stormy seas with Jesus, as Peter did. That event was more important for its symbolism than for its actual verity. Life in this fallen world is stormy, variable, and a great many things are simply inexplicable. That is anathema to Western culture, and it shows in our discomfort with Bible teaching which does not fall into mainstream patterns. For Peter to stand close to Jesus meant facing the impossible, the fearsome, the utterly insane necessity of things which could never be fully explained. Such is Life under the Spirit.
It is utter foolishness to suggest Jesus cleansing the Temple was not a violent act, or to suggest Jesus didn't actually hit anyone with His whip. Given how the Sons of Annas who ran the bazaar in the Court of Gentiles dressed in conservative Jewish clothing of their day, and Jesus was using a whip made from what amounts to strands of heavy binding twine, there was precious little physical injury to the merchants. However, Jesus did hit them, He did knock over tables and stacks of cages, and almost surely pushed them and kicked them, because those were all common acts in His culture. His actions were symbolic. Not purely symbolic -- the violence was real -- but the weight of the matter falls on the symbolism. Jesus expressed an utterly lawful contempt for what amounts to preventing Gentiles from worshiping in the Temple.
The evil in having the Bazaars of the Sons of Annas, a commercial activity licensed by the former High Priest Annas, arose from a smugly racist mindset still visible today in the behavior of some branches of modern Orthodox Judaism. That's because Modern Orthodox Judaism perpetuates the corrupt religion of the Pharisees in Jesus' day. This was so completely contrary to the spirit of Moses' Law, there are no words for it. Israel was called and chosen primarily as the channel for revealing God's Laws for mankind after the Fall. The Covenant of Moses was for Israel, binding on Israel alone. However, it exemplified what God intended for humanity in general. Had any other nation sought to make a covenant with God, it would have been broadly similar, but He would surely have altered many details. It was incumbent on the Levites in general, on the priests specifically, and most certainly a heavy burden on the High Priest to understand this and teach it, not to license a commerce which prevented it.
Jesus punished those merchants, and by extension that commercial activity, under the Law. Consider for a moment: This was a fully spiritual man -- the exemplar of Spiritual Man -- committing an act of violence to promote the Laws of God over fallen men. By no means did His actions support the government, but supported Law against government. He demanded a legitimate change using a legitimate means, all while knowing prophetically they would not change. The action was necessary for the sake of Divine Justice. His actions point out something important about the juncture between the Spirit Realm and the Fallen Realm.
In modern Christian circles we suffer a major schizophrenia about violence. On the one hand, we often cling to the pagan myth violence is always wrong. Scripture does not support that, obviously. We have no record of violent actions by the disciples and apostles after the Cross, but that's simply a matter of focus, and partly lack of need. Yet Paul counseled the Roman soldiers to cut away the lifeboats from their storm-tossed ship to ensure everyone survived together. If the self-interested sailors bailed out, there would be no one with sufficient expertise to make sure the ship ran aground, offering sufficient opportunity for everyone else to escape, too. Of all people, Paul surely knew his suggestion could have led to a violent confrontation between the soldiers and sailors. Nothing supports the supposition he somehow divinely knew it would not be violent; such is the typical pagan mythologizing of things unknown. Real historical evidence shows the soldiers would have menaced the sailors in cutting the boats loose, to make sure there was no mistaking their resolve. Paul was backing the implied violence for a very spiritual reason, and we often handle that very poorly.
Many time Moses, a very deeply spiritual man, commanded violence against unspiritual and spiritual alike for very spiritual reasons. When the situation was a matter of Law, the Law must be applied. There were things too precious to lose; he could not let it slide. Sometimes God Himself carried out the execution to emphasize the point. In the Early Church, we had Ananias and Sapphira dying at God's hand. God does not forbid violence in principle. All this slaughter of Canaanites is not a different God from the Father of Jesus cleansing the Temple, or healing the sick, both of which He did under the Law, before the Cross. The difference between fiery serpents and Levites with swords in punishing sin in Israel was God's choice, not some concrete principle. The choice fit the need of the moment for the purposes of God.
During His arrest in the Garden, Jesus did not condemn Peter's act simply because it was violent. God was quite ready to send battalions of angels to do violence no man could comprehend, if that was appropriate. The problem was the violence did not fit God's plan. Jesus didn't tell Peter to get rid of the sword, but to put it away. That's not hair-splitting, but stating the obvious, since Jesus had already told the disciples they needed a couple of swords for prophetic reasons (Luke 22:35-38). When they went out unarmed on their preaching mission, it was operating under the Law and customs of the people, but that system was about to go away. When Jesus later said they should exchange their cloaks for a sword, the statement was not wholly symbolic. To operate from an a priori rejection of violence will cause all manner of semantic dancing around that passage, and substitutes Western rationalism for the Eastern morals inherent in God's Word. Joshua, another utterly spiritual man, had no trouble executing men under the Laws of God by his own hands (Joshua 10:26).
This was not just Moses' Law, but the broader Laws of God for all fallen men at work here. We can presume in the Kingdom we should not need violence in working with other believers, but that's not always the case. One does not win debates and arguments by violence, but one can use it to prevent horrific evil by men who choose to operate outside the Spirit, and outside the Laws of God. We cannot possibly satisfy Scripture by proposing violence only as a response to violence initiated by others. Most of the time we would expect to absorb violence with peace. At other times, violence may be the only way to stop some apparently non-violent act. Simple blanket rules are silly and sinful for those in the Spirit. Circumstances and logic do not rule, but the Spirit of God, Who often defies logic and may well ignore circumstances. Our petty fears such an open standard regarding violence could open a floodgate of violence is simply Satanic -- it is purely a cultural expression of a narrow Western and materialistic middle-class culture. It is that very culture which allows men to conceal in their own hearts a readiness to violence controlled by mere emotion and false loyalties, because the damnable Western veneer of rationalism cannot possibly account for everything. By pretending it can, we guarantee the heart is never fully exposed to the Spirit of God for inspection. Worse, we pretend such rationalism should somehow rule fallen men, when it most certainly cannot, since it rejects the very assumptions of God's revelation about Laws.
When we understand the Bible by God's own cultural bias, we realize our modern Western assumptions will find us condemning things He blessed, and blessing things He condemns. Piously waving away objections to the violence of the Conquest on the grounds of mere logic and reason is utter failure, and the secular critics are right, so long as we stand on their grounds. Joshua did not suffer from a primitive view of God's love; Jesus endorsed Joshua's actions. If only His nation had remained true to Joshua's grasp of God's Law, there would have been nothing for Him to correct in explaining the failures of the Jewish leaders of His day. It was the utter failure of Israel to live by the words of God and Joshua (Joshua 1:8; 24:14-15). The place of violence in the Kingdom of the Spirit does not yield to human logic, but must always yield to the Spirit. These are seldom the same thing. Jesus stands out on the stormy waves, waiting for us to embrace Him.
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By Ed Hurst
23 April 2009
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