The Placing of Robert E. Lee in Hell… a Cultural Analysis

“The task of history, therefore, once the world beyond the truth has disappeared, is to establish the truth of this world.”

Karl Marx

“The march of Providence is so slow, and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.”

General Robert E. Lee

 

In the last week a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee, on his horse Traveler, was melted in effigy in a fiery furnace heated, we were told to 2250 degree Fahrenheit. This was something that could have been done quite apart from fanfare and hoopla, as the enemies of Lee and what he symbolizes had already achieved victory a couple years prior with the removal of the Lee statue from the public square in Charlottesville, Virginia. However, old feuds run deep and the descendants of the victors of the War of Northern Aggression were compelled by their hatred to add insult to injury and so one of the communiques of the Marxist left (The Washington Post) felt it necessary to rub large amounts of salt in a very old wound by placing a photo of Lee burning in a hell like furnace. This was the Jacobin Left gleefully rubbing the noses of Heritage Americans in Jacobin triumph and our defeat.

My immediate thought upon seeing the photo and reading the article was, once my rage passed, “and this is what they wish they could do with all of us who find this action to be a testimony to vile Marxist revolutionary behavior. What does one expect from Marxist pigs but Marxist grunts?”

In this smelting of Lee we see once again the Marxist disciples of Marx reaching to accomplish what Marx spoke of in our lead in quote. The Left is working on the task and has been working on that task, since its inception in Genesis 3, of scrubbing away the world beyond the truth so as to establish their truth of this world. As such the melting of Lee is not merely an attack on Heritage Americans, it is also an attack on the Biblical metaphysics that gives meaning to reality in favor of a humanist epistemology wherein history and Marxist historians are given the task of “establishing ‘truth’ in this world.”

They have been at this task, hammer and tong, in regards to Gen. Lee at every turn. Consider that in 2021 the Cathedral of the Rockies finished replacing a stained-glass windowpane that the church felt was racist and non-inclusive. The offending stained glass window featured Robert E. Lee standing shoulder to shoulder with Washington and Lincoln. Lee was changed out here for the first Black female Bishop in Methodism with Boise ties. Lee was probably pleased to be finally removed from having to be in the same windowpane as Lincoln.

Also in 2021, Robert E. Lee IV, a descendent of the General, made some news ripples when he denounced his forefather by offering to whatever microphone he could find that, “We have made my ancestor an idol of white supremacy, racism and hate.” One wonders who the “we” is that RGL IV is referring to?  This same descendant of Lee was quoted in 2016 in the Washington Post, “of the shame he felt over his great-great-great-great uncle’s legacy.”

A great irony in all this is that Lee himself was relieved that slavery had ended. The man, if we are to take his own words seriously, was pleased that slavery had ended;

“I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interests of the South. So fully am I satisfied of this, as regards Virginia especially, that I would cheerfully have lost all I have lost by the war, and have suffered all I have suffered, to have this object attained.”

However, to the Marxist gods this is irrelevant. History will be what they and their “historians” say it is, and may the truth that is beyond this world be damned.

In all this we need to keep in mind here that Robert E. Lee is not the only one who is being tossed upon the bonfires of vanity either by way of removal, destruction, or defacing. The symbols of Western Civilization and American History are everywhere being cast aside. Everyone from  Maj. Gen. Philip Schuyler — he of American War of Independence fame, U.S. Grant, to Christopher Columbus, to George Washington to Juan Ponce de Leon, to abolitionists Matthias Baldwin, and John Greenleaf Whittier. At this point it is past obvious that this is not merely an attack on the Old South but it is an attack in revolt against every semblance of civilization and order that has any whiff of Christianity in favor of the anarchy of old chaos and dark night.

Anybody who is familiar in the least with the nature of Revolution understand that once the revolutionary mindset gets rolling that eventually the Revolution eats its own. The Revolutionaries started with the statues raised to the honored confederate dead but the frenzy extends now even to 19th century abolitionists who may have been animated in their opposition to slavery due to their Christian principles.

Also lets not miss here that all the pilloried statues have one other thing in common and that reality is that all the symbols of the West being pulled down are of white people. For those with eyes to see all this statuary removal is clearly a concrete expression of the desire to rid the West of the white man, and the irony here is that a great percentage of those pulling down the statuary are white people who don’t realize that soon enough the Revolution is going also thrown them on the bonfires regardless of how many white statues they helped pull down.

Those who are aware of the way worldview warfare works understand that this current phenomenon of pillorying the statues of our heroes is in no way something new. If one looks at the era of the Reformation one finds the Reformers tearing down Roman Catholic statuary left and right. If one looks at the era of the rise of the Revolution in France or the Bolshevik Revolution one finds statues and symbols being pulled down. Even in the war against Iraq one of the streaming images instantly broadcast was of an American tank pulling down a statue of Saddam Hussein. One way a person can know that their is worldview change in the air is by seeing what we are seeing now and that is the assault on the symbols of the people who are being replaced.

This brings us to the observation of George Orwell;

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

The attack of Gen. Lee as well as the pulling down of the symbols of the Christian West is, proximately, in the service of destroying the Christian White man and behind that is the ultimate purpose and that is the stripping from Jesus Christ the title of “King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” The Marxist mob hates Christ and because they hate Christ they hate the Christian White man who has been, in God’s providence, the carrier of Christian civilization and so the fragrance of Christ. That fragrance is deeply hated by the Left and so they cast us all in Hell by snapping a photo of Lee’s face as red hot and molten. There is very little more that these Marxists demons could do to inform us that they intend to wipe out anybody who opposes the Revolution.

In one respect this disrespect to Lee, Christianity, and Jesus Christ is a good thing. It is a good thing because it draws a bright line between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. This kind of thing establishes the anti-thesis between those who are of their Father the devil and those who are on the Lord’s side.

We are approaching a crescendo on this matter. Pat Buchanan summarized this nicely a few years ago;

“In half a lifetime, many Americans have seen their God dethroned, their heroes defiled, their culture polluted, their values assaulted, their country invaded, and themselves demonized as extremists and bigots for holding on to beliefs Americans have held for generations.”

When the crescendo finally arrives you can be sure that, just as during previous historical crescendos on this count there will be blood in the street, just as there was blood in the streets in Paris in 1789, in the streets of Harper’s Ferry in 1860, in the streets of Moscow in 1918, in the streets of Budapest in 1919, in the streets of Peking in 1949 and in the streets of  Havana in 1956 Whenever these Revolutionary Christ haters are able to expand their Revolutionary mindset the blood begins to flow by the gallon.

For those with their ears close to the ground, none of this is surprising in the least. With the success of the Civil Rights movement, animated and financed as it was by the Communist International and by Marxist philosophy the hand-writing was on the wall. Then in the 1980’s when the Marxist Martin Luther King was officially placed in our pantheon of heroes it was only a matter of time till American heroes who stood for the principals exactly opposite to those of King would be pushed out of our pantheon of heroes. King is taken out of the closet and is replaced in the closet by Lee, Jackson, Washington, Jefferson, etc.

So, the Jacobin war of Northern Aggression continues apace. It never really ended and it will not end until Christianity and the white man is wiped out and incinerated in just the same way that one of the greatest Americans of our history was incinerated.

In the end this casting of Gen. Robert E. Lee into Hell was a testimony to the greatness of the man. The man was so great… such a Christian hero, that he now is, to the left, the embodiment of the Christian White man. All of the Christian virtues that the Jacobin left so deeply and viscerally hates are distilled in the great Robert E. Lee. Even after his death 153 years ago he remains the bete-noire of the Jacobin left here in these united States of America.

It is my prayer that those responsible for this desecration of Robert E. Lee… for this further cynical attack on Biblical Christianity, for this attempt to further attempt to snuff out the Lordship of Jesus Christ will result in an eternity of their seeing that red and molten image of Lee ever before them.

Sic semper tyrannis.

 

 

McAtee contra E. Michael Jones’ Description of Lutheran Theology

A Roman Catholic describes his understanding of Reformed soteriology. McAtee returns the favor.

“According to Lutheran theology, sin is not removed from the sinner through confession, penance, and a firm resolution not to sin again. Sin is ineradicable, but God in His mercy covers it with His grace as ‘snow covers shit.’ Grace does not perfect nature because nature cannot be perfected. Instead, it maintains a tension between corrupt nature and it’s redemption that Hegel would later describe with the term ‘Aufhebung,’ which is an essentially untranslatable term, meaning roughly both to exalt and maintain.”

Dr. E. Michael Jones
Hollowcaust Narrative — p. 210
Idiot Roman Catholic

Of course the flip side of this is;

“According to Roman Catholic theology, sin is removed from the sinner through confession, penance, and a firm resolution not to sin again only to find that such an arrangement is a lie since always sin comes back so that the sinner has to continue to go to confession, penance again and again and again because the Roman Catholic penitent’s resolve not to sin again is like shit that covers snow. This means that the Roman Catholic is never done with sin and that all his rigamarole is just so much play acting that has absolutely zero impact on either his sin nature or his actual sin. For the Roman Catholic sin is also ineradicable but by the legal fictions that are Rome’s sacramental system it is pretended that sin is dealt with. Grace does not perfect nature because nature is always having to return to Rome’s blasphemous sacramental system where grace is like just so much water in a leaky bathtub. Rome’s “grace” can never clean the poor supplicant because by the time the supplicant leaves the confessional booth he is more dirty than when he arrived since all that sacramental grace has leaked out of the human container.”

Should Theology be in the Domain of Politics? — McAtee Undresses Wolfe

Over on X Stephen Wolfe offers a typical Natural Law kind of statement by posting;

“Christians need fewer theologian writing about politics. Politics, for Christians, should mainly be a discipline of non-theologians.”

Stephen Wolfe

From here Wolfe quotes from Francis Junius, a man who was trained to be a minister but left disgusted with the politics in the Church and his native country surrounding the controversy between Arminius and the supporters (including his own Uncle) who supported Calvinism.

“If any theologian labors concerning the matters relating to the ordering of human society, he wastes himself, and does the most serious injury to the God who calls him, to the Church for whose sake he has been called, and to her calling by being a busybody and meddling in others’ business which is insatiable ambition.”

Francis Junius
The Mosaic Polity — pg. 20

A few observations here.

1.) Wolfe’s position here, amazingly enough, apes the position of Radical Two Kingdom Theology (R2K). R2K, like Wolfe here, insists that ministers should stay away from politics. Don’t talk about abortion from the pulpit. Don’t talk about sodomy from the pulpit. Don’t advocate for sabbath laws in the social order from the pulpit. Don’t give reasons from the Bible as to why magistrates are in sin for pursuing an immigration policy that dilutes both the religion of the people and the original stock. Wolfe wants all this to himself and others like him. Wolfe desires for the elimination of “thus sayeth the Lord,” ringing from the Church. This is the same exact position of David Van Drunen –he of R2K fame.

2.) Wolfe being a Thomist and following the Natural Law school basically advocates here for the same kind of philosophy/ideology/theology that emanated from the pagan Enlightenment. Wolfe doesn’t need any stinking theology in order to arrive at his politics. Indeed, per Wolfe, politics should belong to non-Theologians (as if that were even possible). Wolfe is echoing the Endarkenment project and is advocating that man — starting from himself, by the use of right reason and natural law– can come to truth without any Scriptural revelation.

3.) Allow me to say, once again, that there are exactly zero academic disciplines that can be pursued apart from theology. Whether one is talking about sociology, education, judicial realm, arts, philosophy, politics, history etc. etc. etc. theology is inescapable and is the beginning point for all disciplines. There is no pursuing any discipline without theological a-prioris. This includes the Natural Law Thomists types who hide from themselves the theology that they are working from while insisting that they are not doing theology. Wolfe does this in his book, insisting in his book that he is not doing theology. I promise you… all any of us do, all the time (including Dr. Wolfe) is theology. It’s just either purposeful disingenuousness or a blindness of epic proportions to deny this.

4.) There are whole books out there connecting theology to politics. Martin Foulner’s “Theonomy & the Westminster Confession” is one such book. Dr. Glenn R. Martin’s “Prevailing Worldviews of Western Society Since 1500,” is another. R. J. Rushdoony, Francis Schaeffer, Gary North, and C. Greg Singer all connected what they wrote on politics to theology. Pray tell,  what does Wolfe do with the Black Robed Regiment in the American colonies during the run up to the War for American Independence?

Now Wolfe, hating the presuppositional school as being a Natural Law theologian (and I feel the same way about his philosophy as he does about my theology,) like his R2K bedfellows doesn’t want the presuppositionalists swimming in a pool (politics) he thinks should be exclusive to him and his R2K pool buddies but I’m here to tell you that he’s in over his head and is drowning.

5.) I understand how frustrated Wolfe is by so many clergy who are absolute dorks who are resisting him. However, the problem with these dorks is not limited to politics. These dorks rot at politics because they rot at theology. They shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a pulpit. Frankly, I’m surprised that God has struck many of them dead where they stand in their pulpits for resisting the Lordship of Jesus Christ over nations. However, the conclusion here isn’t to restrict a theology that touches every area of life (including politics) from the bailiwick of the pulpit.

6.) I have liked some of the conclusions that Wolfe has arrived at but I absolutely loath … despise … hate the man’s Natural Law methodology. We see the instability of it again in Wolfe’s echoing of the R2K school in his desire to eliminating theology from politics. Here we have R2K who insists that they are the voice of God’s Natural Law, and Wolfe who insists he is the voice of Gods’ Natural Law, and these two are at each other’s throats as to what Natural Law teaches. If the R2K Thomists, and the Wolfe crowd Thomists can’t agree on what Natural Law teaches how is anybody else going to read the tea leaves of Natural Law rightly.

Natural Law went the way of the Dodo bird because men began to see that it was clearly a thin and weak reed to lean on. Natural Law was eclipsed because it sucked wind as a theology/philosophy that could provide stability for a social order. The reason then, and the reason now, Natural law sucks so badly as a epistemological foundation is that it is completely subjective to whomever is reading Natural Law. This is proven, in spades, by the fact that the R2K fanboys, and the Wolfe fanboys, who both love them some Natural Law can’t stand to be in each other’s presence when it comes to working out what Natural Law really means.

Christian Nationalism & The Use of Force

“God’s law, and the punitive stipulations attached to it have never been rescinded.

The Gospel is to preached to all men. Those whom God has chosen from eternity will hear and believe.

God’s law is to be applied and upheld in every sphere of man’s endeavor. It is not meant to convert but to control the lawless and when necessary remove them from society. The state wields the sword and enforces the law but it must do so in submission to Christ the King.

The failure of the church to operate as described above is testimony to effeminacy. It is anti Christ.”

Mark Chambers 

This is the answer to the old canard from “Christians” insisting that Christian Nationalism (CN) should not be supported by Christians  because it implies the use of force. The argument is that CN is not legitimate because nobody can be forced to convert.

To the contrary CN can and should use force upon people in order to be installed. People have to realize that the force that CN must and should us is not intended to convert people, but rather force is intended to make the lawless respect the King’s law. Whether they will convert or not is the work of the Holy Spirit in the context of the preaching of the Gospel. That people will be forced to obey is the work of the Christian magistrates sword.

As such there is nothing desultory and there is no degradation to a Christianity which uses force to make people outwardly conform to the law of God, even if inwardly those people hate doing so. We do it all the time. We used force to make sure that people who might want to murder, rape, and steal don’t murder, rape, and steal. The fact that they are not doing the murdering, raping, and stealing that they might otherwise do if force wasn’t promised against them if they did so may make them hypocrites but that is irrelevant as to living in a social order within the bonds of God’s law.
They may secretly desire to disobey that which they are being forced to obey but they don’t and they don’t for the fear of force used against them if they do. That is a good thing.

The above explains how CN is not inconsistent with the usage of force. It is true that force can’t convert people but that is not it’s intent. The intent of force is have people obey God’s law outwardly whether they want to or not. And that would be a good thing.

The usage of force in the rise of CN is no different than the usage of force in a Christian family. 12 y/o Johnny may not like any number of the family rules but force will make sure that Johnny complies. Now, to be sure, the hope is that Johnny will one day enjoy and own the family rules but until that day arrives little Johnny is kept in line by the promises of consequences (force) if he does not comply.

“Christians” who bring up the canard about how the prospect of force in CN make CN a non-starter are not really complaining about the prospect of force. What they are complaining about are laws in God’s gracious Law-Word that they don’t want enforced. If they could force their law on the world (whatever that might be) they would be perfectly fine with force.

Think about it a second…. the Baptists are some of the Christians who are screaming the loudest about how the usage of force is not consistent with Christianity. These Baptists are therefore against CN. However, keep in mind that the pluralism that we have now that is kept as expressive of our social order by force is a pluralism that is an expression of Baptist theology. Pluralism is the child of Anabaptist thinking, so naturally many Baptists  oppose a CN coupled with the usage of force because that would mean the end of their preferred social order (pluralism) which is maintained by force.

In the end, force is an inescapable concept when it comes to how social orders operation. That force will either be put into the service of God’s law or it will be put into the service of some other god’s law (like polytheistic pluralism).

Jesus Use of Hyperbole in the Sermon on the Mount & Anabaptist Pacifism

Matthew 5:38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. 40 If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also. 41 And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. 42 Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.

A few years ago (2015) the popular Baptist minister, John Piper wrote an article titled;

Should Christians Be Encouraged to Arm Themselves?

It was a typical Anabaptist pacifistic kind of examination considering the issue of self-defense. This passage in Matthew was featured predominantly. I was reminded of all this, this week, when I came in contact with another Anabaptist online discussing the same type of thing.

This online chap, in the course of the conversation rebuked me for suggesting that Christians had the God given duty to oppose wickedness, even if by force if necessary. This chap said to me with a pious flourish, “I trust God to protect me,” of course meaning I wasn’t trusting God to protect me since I advocated that it is a God honoring thing to protect the innocent even by deadly force if needs be.

Of course my answer here was, “And I trust God to provide for me, but I still plant a garden every year.”

This non-violence is typical of Anabaptist thinking. This insistence on turning the other cheek always and all the time is their motto. I even have seen it when Reformed clergy get together for their twice annual meetings (Classis) and I earned a great deal of enmity several years ago when I stood on the floor of Classis and communicated my shock that the whole room had embraced Anabaptist pacifism.

So, this is an issue I’ve logged some miles on. And it has been an issue you find in history. For example in the early American colonies the Quakers refused to defend themselves against Indian raids but they thought it perfectly acceptable to hire mercenaries to rout out the Indians who were raiding them.

Returning to Dr. Piper at one point in his article writes that the matter reduces to

“Can I shoot my wife’s assailant?”

He then proceeded to write,

“My answer is sevenfold.”

Now, when the question comes up as to whether or not I can shoot my wife’s assailant I hope I can simply say “yes,” as opposed to going into a long dialogue about the nuances of whether or not I can shoot someone who is intending to do my wife bodily harm.

But that is consistent Anabaptist pacifistic type thinking.

Dr. Piper went on to write in his 7 fold explanation,

“5) I live in the inner city of Minneapolis, and I would personally counsel a Christian not to have a firearm available for such circumstances.”

Topping it off with

“6) I do not know what I would do before this situation presents itself with all its innumerable variations of factors.”

I’m sure his wife found that very comforting.

This issue of pacifism is coming to the fore once again. Rev. Andrew Isker in his book on “The Boniface Option,” took all kinds of flack from the Anabaptist crowd for being “so militant” … so “in your face”… “so needlessly provocative.”

Indeed there are times when one wonders if Christianity has become some kind of ethnocide/suicide cult with the message being that “Christianity means you lie down and die.”

That this pacifistic kind of message is in the air accounts for a recent testimony from a 20something young man who told me;

“I grew up in a church that thought we had to be totally passive. When I became a fireman and had seen violence and defended innocents against it, and I used my aggression to be an effective first responder my church had zero answer to this and accused me of impiety and sin. It got so bad to the point they excommunicated me for refusing to be effeminate.

The glory of young men is their strength. Part of strength is the ability, desire and courage to stop violence and to rescue people.

A young man incapable of this is a terrible man.”

Christopher Eade

So, do the Anabaptist have this right with their invoking of the Sermon on the mount? Are we always and at all times to turn the other cheek to violence done against us and/or our loved ones. Does Christianity require Pacifism in order to be Christian?

And if we answer that question “yes,” what do we do with many of our Christian heroes through the centuries? Do we consign to disgust and maybe even hell people like Charles Martel who drove the Muslims back over the western Pyrenees lest all of Europe become Muslim, or Charlemagne who was familiar in the usage of violence against pagan tribes, or Alfred the Great, or the Godly Crusaders, of Oliver Cromwell or the Christians who followed Don Juan in turning back the Muslims at the battle of Lepanto, or Jean Val Jean who with a handful of Christian Knights against swarms of Muslims secured Malta against all odds for Christ or the black robed regiment who put the fire of the God of battle into their parishioners so as to war against the British?

Were the Anabaptist’s right and all these Christian heroes in sin for not turning the other cheek?

Well, of course you know I’m going to answer this question in the negative. Indeed it is my conviction that one reason the Church in the West has languished is because she has lost her militancy has being led by effeminate clergy who are sickened with the disease of Anabaptism.

So, lets take up the text this morning and ask if holiness is defined by pacifism in the face of those who would assail the judicially innocent. Must we teach our children that Christianity is a suicide cult?

When we come to the Sermon on the Mt. we find all kinds of extreme statements. Many of them we don’t take literally. We are going to look at some of these and then ask if we should take “turn the other cheek” literally all the time in every situation. I will tell you at the outset that what we are going to learn here is that Jesus was using a common rabbinical teaching tool known as “hyperbole” in order to accentuate an important point.

Hyperbole is “a figure of speech in which exceptional exaggeration is deliberately used for emphasis rather than deception.

We see hyperbole used in the OT, Isaiah 11

The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling[a] together;
and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.

Clearly, this is not to be taken literally. Rather the use of hyperbole is teaching that the Messianic age would be characterized by incredible peace and stability but no one thought that lions would begin eating straw like an ox or that infants would literally play near cobra dens.

We find hyperbole used likewise in the New Testament;

And the winepress was trampled outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress, up to the horses’ bridles, for one thousand six hundred furlongs.  Rev. 14:20

The point here is that the violence is going to be extreme. Everyone understands that we are not looking for literal rivers of blood running for sixteen hundred furlongs (200 miles).

In the same way Jesus is using this rabbinic technique to hammer home important points. Jesus is using hyperbole throughout the Sermon on the Mount.

The best known examples of this hyperbole that is slung around mindlessly from the Sermon on the Mount by many, including Christians, is the “judge not, lest ye be judged” and “turn the other cheek” passages. These get an inordinate amount of air-time. Even though the “judge not, lest ye be judged” passage is seen as hyperbole when Jesus elsewhere says in John’s Gospel,

Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.” 7:24

And St. Paul likewise can say on the matter of judging; I Corinthians 6:1f

 If any of you has a dispute with another, do you dare to take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the Lord’s people? 2 Or do you not know that the Lord’s people will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? 3 Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life!

Clearly Christians are to judge in this life. Indeed it is not possible to not judge but the point of the “judge not” passage is that we are not to be a people who are overly censorious and critical in our analysis and evaluating of others.

The same kind of reality is presented to us in Jesus Sermon on the Mount;

Here are some examples;

1. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away… (5:29)

Do we really think Jesus wants us to pluck out our eyes and throw them away? No! He is speaking hyperbole to emphasize the fact that we must eliminate all obstacles to serving God.

Besides, if we think about it we all realize that it is never the eye that causes one to sin as if we only got rid of our eyes then we would not longer lust.

2. … if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away… (5:30)

Obviously Jesus isn’t expecting to have a flock missing their right hands. The point here is that sin is to be taken seriously.

3. But I say to you, Do not swear at all… Let what you say be simply “Yes” or “No”… (5:34-37)

Jesus himself honored the oath the High Priest placed him under in Matt. 26:63: “I adjure thee by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God” (in Leviticus 5:1, we have a reference to the “oath of adjuration” where the High Priest is revealed to have the authority to place someone under an oath to testify). If Jesus taught oaths to be unlawful or immoral, he would not have responded or he would have protested and made clear that he did not agree with the concept of oaths.

St. Paul swore oaths, or at least did not present everything as a simple “yes” or “no” as Jesus said in Matt. 5:37, in multiple places in the New Testament (see Phil. 1:8; II Cor. 1:23; 11:31; 12:19; Gal. 1:20). Jesus’ actual meaning was that oaths should not be necessary among the faithful because we should be known for our honesty; however, because of the evil that exists in the world oaths are very necessary. But you don’t get this from the actual words of Matt. 5.

4. Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you (5:42).

Do we really believe Jesus meant we have to loan or give money to anyone and everyone who asks us? All Christians would be broke and unable to raise families! No! He uses hyperbole in teaching Christians should be known for their generosity.

No, the point here is that we are to be a people known for our generosity.

5. … when you give alms do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret… (6:3-4)

Did Jesus really mean no one should ever know what we give? Then why would Jesus have commended the poor widow who gave the now famous “widow’s mite” in Mark 12:42-43? Or, why would the apostles have had a very public display of giving in Acts 5 when Ananias and Saphira were condemned for lying about how much they actually gave? This implies that everyone knew what each was giving!

The truth is, Christ was emphasizing that we should give for love of God and neighbor’s sake, not to be seen of men as a matter of pride.

6. … when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret… (6:6)

Did Jesus really condemn praying in public here? If so, he would have been condemning himself! He prayed publicly in the Garden of Gethsemane (See Mark 14:36); he prayed publicly when he raised Lazarus from the dead in John 11:41-43. The apostles often prayed in public (see Acts 1:24; 4:31; 6:6; 20:36, etc.).

Jesus was here using hyperbole to emphasize that prayer should never be a performance to be seen by men.

7. Do not lay up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven… (6:19-20)

Do we really believe that Jesus condemned banks and bank accounts here? This would hardly square with Jesus’ “Parable of the Talents,” in Matt. 25:27: “Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest.”

8. And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these… will [God] not much more clothe you, O you of little faith (6:28-30)?

If we are going to argue that “turn the other cheek” must be taken in a strict, literal, and absolute sense, then it would seem we would also have to say Jesus is condemning farms, farming, or even planting seeds to grow food in these verses. After all, the birds don’t do that and God takes care of them!

Jesus would also be condemning the making of clothing. I suppose we should all remain naked and wait for God to clothe us, right?

Now, this last may seem really ridiculous. We all know God is condemning forgetting about our Lord and his providence in all of these affairs. But if we are going to take some of the Sermon on the Mount in a strict, literal sense, why not all of it?

Sum

The entire Sermon on the Mount can be summed up in Matthew 6:33: “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.” The idea here is God must come first in every aspect of our lives.

So when it comes to turn the other cheek, Jesus is not saying we should be doormats and pacifists. In fact, Jesus himself makes this clear in Luke 22:36-38 when he tells the apostles to “take up a sword” for self-defense. And while it is true that Jesus tells St. Peter to put away his sword later in verses 50-51, this was only after Peter lashed out offensively and against Jesus’ will. Jesus had already told the apostles that it was God’s will that he suffer and die (see Luke 9:44; 18:32, etc.). Peter was acting contrary to Jesus’ revealed will. But this does not negate the fact that it was Jesus himself that told Peter and the apostles to take up a sword to begin with. This implies the necessity of legitimate self-defense.

Jesus also praises the faith of the Roman centurion in Matt. 8:8ff. Never does he say that serving in the military is wrong, which it would be if he was teaching pacifism. The truth is: Jesus was using hyperbole once again in order to tell us that we are to be peace-makers. We should always seek peace even though sometimes self-defense or even war becomes necessary (cf. Eccl. 3:3, 8).

When we condemn the warriors in our midst for their lack of pacifism we are at that moment making Scripture contradict Scripture.

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
2     a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3     a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4     a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6     a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7     a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8     a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

Jesus was not a pacifist as seen in His crafting a whip that doubtless left painful welts and bleeding cuts as He harried the Jewish Bankers out of the Temple. Further, the Bible does not teach Pacifism. That is a Anabaptist shameful twisting of Scripture and it is one more reason why we detest the errors of the Anabaptists. This Anabaptist reasoning has turned Christianity into a death cult inasmuch we are being told from countless ministers like John Piper that the issue of whether or not a Christian can shoot someone who is assailing their wife is complicated.

Then there is the reality that the Anabaptist seek to weigh down with false guilt anyone who would dare disagree with their pacifism. The Church in the West has to get its mind right on this issue and that right soon lest those who are teaching that Christianity is a suicide cult end up winning the day.

Now, having said all that it is not my understanding that Scripture teaches we need to go looking for fights nor is it my understanding that we should twist the sermon on the Mt. so that it means the opposite of what it says. Christians should be known for doing all they can to live peaceable lives and to be the bringers of peace to volatile situations.

If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. Rmns 12:18

Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it. Psalm 34:14

But there are times, and I fear we are living in such times, when,

a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

In short Pacifism is stupid and more importantly it is not the mind of God

Oh…. and unlike John Piper … if you seek to assail my wife or my children … I’m coming after you.

And God will be fully pleased with that.