Sunday/New Laws and Hyperbole

                                                     

                             Sunday/New Laws and Hyperbole

Gandhi said, “Everyone in the world knows that Jesus and His teaching are non-violent, except Christians.” 75 percent of Christians believe in capital punishment because they think we can stop the killing by killing the killers.

The tribal law of retaliation, (Lex Talionis = Tit-for-Tat), was written by the ancient lawmaker Hammurabi during the period 2285-2242 BC. It has been ridiculed as crude and primitive but probably was a real philosophical advance for the time. It was actually an effort to eliminate tribal justice that would hold groups responsible for individual acts and individuals for group acts, for example, Hatfield and McCoy thinking. (This "primitive " thinking is now returning in Western politics, shamelessly.)

It is believed that the Mosaic law absorbed this thinking during the Jews ' captivity in Egypt and it became Old Testament law. instead of mutilating or murdering all the members of the offender’s family or tribe, one should discover the offender and only punish him or her with an equal mutilation or harm. Later, a milder version of this law was substituted that demanded monetary compensation, as decided by a judge, in place of physical punishment.

What Christ says in today's gospel is revolutionary. He says, “You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil." This is the "Turn the other cheek" gospel where one is to forgive the attacker, give away your clothes until you are naked and pray for those who persecute you.

This is simply different thinking, revolutionary in the West. And it is simply overwhelming as a way to live; one might say even "unhuman."

Yes, as Christ Himself says later in the sermon. "So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” That is hyperbole. We can not be perfect. He is not asking us to change what we are, only to see an ideal to approach.
It's like how Flannery O'Connor explained her hyperbolic imagery: Sometimes the audience is so dense you need a two-by-four.