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Something me and my buddy from church were discussing, when is violence justified against someone else, from a biblical sense? See, this question was very confusing to me, because the entire OT is god using violence and nations to squash the different nations who are disobeying. Also, god does not say to give up your country, but rather assimilate to christianity. Christianity would be gone if it endorsed getting slaughtered if someone tried to kill you.

And then this begs the question, if one commits a sin against you, than are you justified in commiting a sin to protect yourself? Seeing as most self defense laws were created in the height of us being a Christian nation, much smarter people before me figured out the answer themselves.

Something me and my buddy from church were discussing, when is violence justified against someone else, from a biblical sense? See, this question was very confusing to me, because the entire OT is god using violence and nations to squash the different nations who are disobeying. Also, god does not say to give up your country, but rather assimilate to christianity. Christianity would be gone if it endorsed getting slaughtered if someone tried to kill you. And then this begs the question, if one commits a sin against you, than are you justified in commiting a sin to protect yourself? Seeing as most self defense laws were created in the height of us being a Christian nation, much smarter people before me figured out the answer themselves.

(post is archived)

The Christ described in the Bible certainly believed that you should submit to violence without resistance, hand over more of your belongings to theives than they ask for, do good works to those who hate and persecute you, and be extra submissive towards your enemies.

He said to welcome foreigners into your lands and strangers into your homes, to feed them, give them shelter, and care for them, he said that it is a requirement to hate yourself, and to abandon your family, and your people in order to follow him.

He also implored slaves to serve their masters well, and that tyranny should be submitted to, he also called all gentiles the dogs of the jews for only for the scraps tossed to them by their jewish masters, and said that his salvation is not available to gentiles.

Most famously, he said not to judge others for their actions, unless you yourself are completely sinless, and that also means that you cannot punish anyone for anything they do, ever.

Jesus himself broke his own rules, but he has a few thing going on that makes him an exception:

  • first, he is God, and is therefore exempt from his own judgment, he can do as he dsmn well pleases.

  • second, he changes his mind, you can see a 180 ftom him before he was rejected as messiah, where he loved the pharisee and commanded his disciples to obey them, and after he was rejected as messiah, where he absolutely hates the pharisee. So essentially these could be seen as two distinct Jesus's.

If it sounds like the words of Christ are suicidally impractical, keep in mind the following:

  • The goal of Christianity is to achieve salvation from sin after death, it was never to spread Christianity to the whole of the world forevermore.

Jesus never intended his religion to live as long as it did, and he also expected the endtimes to come soon after his death.

Christianity survived by having most of its believers be absolutely ignorant of their religious texts for most of its existence, nowadays reading the Bible is considered something a good Christian does, but for most of Christian history, it was an act of heresy.

The Bible was intended only to be read by designated religious authorities who selectively quoted and interpreted the texts to socially engineer the will of the people.

This is the real reason why it was such a big deal that some Christian denominations formed that actually permitted the layman to read it for themselves.

Those laws you mentioned, and all the military acts carried put by religious people, were not done out of religion but out of practical considerations, often by people who knew or thought little about the problematic aspects of the words of christ, and sone weren't even really Christian.

We got people who basically do what they decided to do, or think what they decided to think, and then simply attributed it to God, they can even find some Bible quote they can take out of context to justify their claims.

So yes, your religion is exactly as bad as it sounds, but white people made it work.