For over a week we’ve been expecting the imminent birth of our second son.
Our first son knows about violence. He likes to pretend to punch things, throw spikes, burn and freeze. He knows that if you cut somebody, there’s blood, that he wants to kill bad guys. At the age of four, his penchant for terror worries me already. Will he grow up to respect human life in the way I want him to?
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The last chapter discussed what Jesus meant by “bringing a sword”.
In Chapter 11, Andy Alexis-Baker looks at the case study of a Roman Soldier: “What About the Centurion?”
The argument has gone that since the centurion showed great faith, and that Jesus commended him, and did not tell him to leave the service, that it was ok for the centurion to be a soldier, and thus it’s ok for Christians to war.
But if you grew up with the heritage of faith that I did, you are very very familiar with how the whole “making arguments from silence” thing works. I’ve seen whole debates on whether silence is permissive or prohibitive (or either of these exclusively). Baker says “Jesus’ silence on the centurion’s profession has become a tacit endorsement of Christians becoming involved in state-sponsored killing.”
In the last chapter Greg Boyd argued that God expects all Christians to “turn the other cheek,” but he may not necessarily hold nations to a standard only held within a covenant with him.
Chapter 8 begins the other side of the book. Before, we looked at “practical” questions that apply scripture to situations. The second half deals more with interpreting and understanding what scripture says on the matter, beginning with Ingrid Lilly’s question “What About War and Violence in the Old Testament?”
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CALEB COY 