Loving your enemies

With all my respect to you Mr Clearthinking.
Your thinking is not clear this time.

You are talking about an Islamic country culture.
This is not Islam.

I will give you an example from an article I have written about "Apostasy" you can also read other similar articles in the blog such as the word "Infidel".

http://thousteadfast.blogspot.com/2010/07/apostasy-in-islam-is-there-such-thing.html

THE BAD NEWS: Christianity & Islam are the 2 religions always involved in religious violence on one side or both. Their supremacist beliefs bring out the worst in everyone as well. Not an impressive record of spiritual development for these religions.

THE GOOD NEWS: The majority of the world is not Christian or Muslim. Most are Hindu, Buddhists, Sikh, Jain, Confucianist, Taoist, Atheist, etc. These other "religions" do not promote religiously motivated violence.

Islam is impressive for a "religion" in terms of the violence and hatred. Just look at Pakistan today and the so-called moderate clerics celebrating the murder of an innocent. The killer is showered with rose petals, and the victim is blamed. The victim did not even commit blasphemy, which should be a capital crime anyway. He just spoke against blasphemy laws.

Where are the usual apologists for the Islam as the religion o' peace?

abrahamhab1,
U have no shame to put words in my mouth with your preverted and false "transaltion" of what I said, namely that Jesus taught love yet "Christains" committed the most herrendous of crimes and bloodshed in the name of Jesus:Iraq was only the most recent when GW Bush claimed that 'god' commanded him to go for that war.

Clearly u are ignorant of the meaning of 'Ummah':whhich means community:for example the Medina Covenant authored by the Prophet Muhammad in 613 AD considered all the citizens of Medina -Muslims, Jews, Christians and even the heathen-as one Ummah in the defence of Medina from any external aggression.

The Medina Covenant was the first human constitution to treat all citizens of the first city/state in Islam as equals,with the full right to freedom of conscious and the security of life and protection of property;it predated the English Magna Charta of 1215 AD by six centuries.

Yes the Muslims consider themselves as one community in faith-as Christains do and jews even consider themeselves 'the chosen people.' Yet Muslims are divided and oppressed from within and from without and everywhere:divided,occupied and fargmented.

If the Muslims were one community of 1.6 billion souls-a few million alien and illegal jewish settlers would not be occupying of all of Arab historic Palestine.

Sorry for the typos on my comment. My computer is acting up. Must be possessed. I'm sure some will agree.

First of all, all I can do wih a lo of the bloggers here is shake my head and wonder - do the supposed Christians hre ever read the words of Jesus? Do they know anything about telling the truth?

Second, thank you, Janet, for your column. One thing, I think, is missing. ML King talked about the necessity of stopping the cycle of violence by being more willig to take violence upon ourselves than doing violence to others. This is also the testimoy we have of cripture, regarding Jesus. Someone has to be willingto take up the cross themselves, rather than to place it on others. The way o our world is to make others "pay the price." The way of Jesus is to bear the cross ourselves. Those who do not understand this know nothing of Jesus and his way.

His kingdom is not an other-worldly kingdom. Another translation for the "kingdom of God" is "the rule of God." As Christians, we pray, "your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." The Epiphany text of Ephesians 3:1-12 says, in part: "and to make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might NOW be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places." Ancient societies believed there were powers (gods) behind earthly powers. This passage asserts his rule over them as well as earthly powers in the present and, in the context of communion (which this pssage is speaking to), asserts that the Christian community is the "first-fruits" of that reconciled fellowship, which is located in the present, not the future, as the communiy gathers around the table.

Our prayer is that God's heavenly rule may also be an earthy one; as Luther explains, "His kingdom will come of its own, but we pray in this petition that it may come among us." The question is not whether he will rule, but whether he will rule in our hearts and life now. To which we must add, "If not now, when? Some day and far away?" To believe thus, that it s only for the "future" when erything is perfect andthere is no longer a struggle aginst evil, is not to believe at all. It is not faith, but a delusion of faith. We believe in a God who works in and through history, not outside of it, to bring about his rule.

Liberal theology always uses political correctness to expound their false gospel.The Presbyterian Church ceased being Christian many years ago.

The Christian Bible advocated stoning adulterers, WMarkW, but most don't do that any more, except for the fringe element. What Janet is advocating here isn't a hug-a-thon, but rather that Christians not retaliate indiscriminantly due to their fringe having attacked.

You can love, and forgive someone, while defending yourself against them.

A Muslim pontificates thus:
‘2)The violence against the indigenous Christains in Egypt and Iraq is grossly taken out of contex :Iraqi Christains always lived in peace and tranquality with their Muslim brothren untill "god odrered GW Bush and Tony Blair" to invade and destroy Iraq-and as a result some one million Iraqis,overwhelmingly Muslim,were slaughtered-along with very few Christains-all truly regrettable-for which the Christain west is fully responsible.’

The translation of this is as follows:
The Muslim ideology teaches that all Muslims are one nation called Ummah, and in turn all those who profess Christianity are one nation. When the USA invaded Iraq, in the Muslim “mind” that was a crime committed by all those who profess the Christian faith against all those who profess the Muslim faith. When the Nigerian, and the Somali and the Palestinian living amongst us try to harm us they consider themselves as soldiers of Islam fighting “the enemies of Islam”.

"We can all accept that we are all in the same boat. We are all complicit in this tension that erupts in violence and we are all overwhelmingly afraid."

What Christians flew an airliner into a skyscraper? Or tried to blow up a major tourist area in a Muslim city? Or shot up a Muslim army base? What Christian country sentenced a Muslim to death for blasphemy?

Are you drawing a moral equivalency between book burning and blowing people up?

What Muslim (qua a Muslim) need fear any Christian (qua a Christian)?

Janet Edwards

You wrote, "An attack upon Islam is no different than an attack on Christ."

What do you consider "an attack upon Islam"?

Would you consider, pointing out that the god of islam calls Christianity a lie, claims Jesus as his prophet and yet denies Jesus's Divinity which is the very core of Christianity, gets very upset, to put it mildly, if anyone calls God their Father, especially so when Jesus does, an attack on Islam or just answering the question that Jesus asked of us, "Who do you say that I AM?

You then wrote, "Jesus made it clear that the word "neighbor" was a reference for those who are different from us."

I think that Jesus was trying to point out to us that everyone is our neighbor but Jesus also said, "Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you (falsely) because of me", should we show "tolerance" by not pointing out the Truth about Jesus rather than the lie that the god of islam is trying to put forth thru the koran's twistation of what is written in the bible?

You also wrote, "Loving those who are different from us is scary - not just then, but now. And it was a radical idea then - and now."

Do you think that not pointing out the fact that the Jesus presented in the koran and the Jesus presented in the bible are quite different is "Loving" or a participation in the lie/s concerning Jesus in the koran?

You also wrote, "We may all share fear, but we also all share hope that it will get better and faith that the divine wills peace."

Jesus said, "My Kingdom is not of this world", something to think about.

You then wrote, " History teaches us all: Peace never comes through violence. Love your neighbors, including your enemies".

If you are looking for "worldly peace", you not only missed why God became One of us but also what Jesus said concerning this present age.

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

The problem is that in both sections, i.e. christian/jewish and muslim, there are subsections who believe in loving their enemy to death.

At present, the christian/jewish section does this thru state terror and in the muslim dominated countries, it is thru the fringe elements.

This is good to ask what should our politician and religious leaders do. I think what all of us should do.
First we need to understand due to the complexity of the area that those who were behind the incident or any other similar one are one of three (maybe four) groups.
1. An Intelligence entity whether external or internal who are trying to cause disruption and break up unity and cause chaos in the ara for a hidden agenda and we all know there are may hidden agendas around.
2. A deluded group who are being used and directed, knowingly or unknowingly by the same group in number 1.
3. A deluded group who are independent and work on their own accord due to frustration and wrong interpretation of the teachings and think they are doing good.
4. May some crazy lunatic person who knows.

So for all of us to act we need to do as suggested below.

1. For the love of God and Humanity every one must expose those people and know that anyone knows something and keep quite because of certain allegiance should know that they will be held accountable before the court of God sooner of later.
2. Once the above is exposed then this group could easily be handled otherwise they might become group 3.
3. Group 3 requires careful tactics to deal with because of some many complications such as: dictatorship, injustice, poverty, etc which sometimes are liked to foreign interference with internal matter; therefore we need to have and open discussion and lay the facts on the table. Stop portraying the love of Jesus alone and ignore the love of Muhammad, because this will not help, on the contrary it will make things worse. So we need to show and bring out the Love and Peace instructions form the Quran and the words of Muhammad to show how much they preached for Love and PEace (not hoever not being a pettier and pacifist) We say how the prophet said that any one who hurt a person form the people of the book I become an enemy to him on the day of Judgement. Any one who give a trust to a non-muslim and then betray that trust and kills hom will not smell paradise. etc. and much more to show that these people are entrusted to live in the lands. LAos to explain to them that the war in the middle east in no way gives an excuse for any one to take revenge on innocent people, this purely un-Islamic. and so on. So that we corner these people to be illegitimate that no one will think of even being compassionate to their cause let alone support or join.
4. Once the above are resolved then the lunatics will decrease greatly, I hope :)

Peace!

I don't mean to be negative but rather realistic:Where was "the Christain Love" in the brutal murder of Dr.King?

Where was the "loving god of GW Bush" when jews sluaghtered 1500 hundered besiged and starved Palestinian refugees in Gaza in 2008/9?

Rev.Edwars,
1)Moses,Jesus and Muhammad-all taught love and peace.

2) Thou Jesus taught love,most of the horrendous wars and viloence in history were committed by Christains:The Crusades on the Arab Muslim East,Colonialism and its destructive evils, The Inquisition against spainish Muslims and Jews,the Holocaust,two world wars,the nuking of Japanese civilains,the historic injuctice and tragedy of the Palestinian People as a result of the creation of an alien racist and violent jewish entity in the heart of the Arab Muslim East by the west,the genocide of the European Bosinan Muslims,the invasions of Afghanistan and the war of choice on raq.

Let the Christaisns stop hiding behind and abusing the love that Jesus taught.

2)The violence against the indigenous Christains in Egypt and Iraq is grossly taken out of contex:Iraqi Christains always lived in peace and tranquality with their Muslim brothren untill "god odrered GW Bush and Tony Blair" to invade and destroy Iraq-and as a result some one million Iraqis,overwhelmingly Muslim,were slaughtered-along with very few Christains-all truly regrettable-for which the Christain west is fully responsible.

3)Compared to the oppressed Muslim political and liberal parties in Egypt where they rot in jails, Egyptain Copts never had it so good. The attack on the Church is truly regrettable and could only have come from 'isrl' which a had a long history of fomenting trouble and violence in Arab and Muslim lands to weaken them:remember the Lavon Affair in 1950's against American targets in Egypt which turned out to have been engineered by jews.

Rev.Edwars,
1)Moses,Jesus and Muhammad-all taught love and peace.

2) Thou Jesus taught love,most of the horrendous wars and viloence in history were committed by Christains:The Crusades on the Arab Muslim East,Colonialism and its destructive evils, The Inquisition against spainish Muslims and Jews,the Holocaust,two world wars,the nuking of Japanese civilains,the historic injuctice and tragedy of the Palestinian People as a result of the creation of an alien racist and violent jewish entity in the heart of the Arab Muslim East by the west,the genocide of the European Bosinan Muslims,the invasions of Afghanistan and the war of choice on raq.

Let the Christaisns stop hiding behind and abusing the love that Jesus taught.

2)The violence against the indigenous Christains in Egypt and Iraq is grossly taken out of contex:Iraqi Christains always lived in peace and tranquality with their Muslim brothren untill "god odrered GW Bush and Tony Blair" to invade and destroy Iraq-and as a result some one million Iraqis,overwhelmingly Muslim,were slaughtered-along with very few Christains-all truly regrettable-for which the Christain west is fully responsible.

3)Compared to the oppressed Muslim political and liberal parties in Egypt where they rot in jails, Egyptain Copts never had it so good. The attack on the Church is truly regrettable and could only have come from 'isrl' which a had a long history of fomenting trouble and violence in Arab and Muslim lands to weaken them:remember the Lavon Affair in 1950's against American targets in Egypt which turned out to have been engineered by jews.

"History teaches us all: Peace never comes through violence. Love your neighbors, including your enemies."

Oh, come on. Without even looking beyond American history, violence ended British colonial tyranny, Southern slavery and closed Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

The opposition believes the most superior intelligence in the universe commanded them to convert the opposition, with swords if necessary.

We can't just throw pens at them.