Thursday, January 28, 2016

I suppose that since I've left the Christian faith and officially become an agnostic now, I no longer really have a dog in this fight.
But before eventually throwing in the towel completely, I did spend about 10 years or so in a transitional phase where I was some sort of liberal-Christian/religious-pluralist of some stripe.

As a hold over from those days, it still really bugs me when I hear conservative Christians say something like, "Remember the Bible says 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' "
I would hear this rebuttal often when debating the death penalty or just war theory with conservative Christians.  It's astounding how often it comes up, actually, considering it's one of the Old Testament Bible passages that Jesus specifically went out of his way to renounce.

From Matthew 5: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also."

So whenever I hear conservative Christians cite the "eye for an eye" rule, I always just answer, "You've not read your Bible, have you?"  (You'd be surprised at how many conservative Christians have never read the Bible....or actually, come to think of it, you probably wouldn't be.)

Anyway, all this comes up again, because Donald Trump is the latest conservative Christian to make this mistake.  
I know, I know, the fact that Trump isn't really a real Christian surprises absolutely no-one.  I'm just taking this rant here because the mis-use of this verse is one of my pet peeves.




...I've mentioned the mis-use of this verse as a pet peeve of mine once before, in this post here.

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