i promised, but real quick: i got some feedback and wrote some to the seven blog regarding my article there.
i mirror it here since blogger’s archives/permalinks don’t work.
Hey I got an email that said “but did you ever consider the implications of the murder of Christ and his
non-resistance, etc…?”
Uh, yeah, of course. He’s who I’m trying to be like. I follow his example.
But it’s funny that when I was writing that piece, it never occurred to me to mention Jesus’ example. Maybe I thought it obvious and self-evident. Maybe I’ve just stopped writing “Christian” articles. Maybe I just avoid sounding preachy (in the Christian sense) to a fault.
The friend who emailed me later said in IM, “You are for once taking the moral highground, why not pull the Jesus punch? Why not make Christians at least think about it, about his example?” (I’m paraphrasing big time.)
Well, consider Him mentioned.
To be honest, I’m not sure who my audience is with that piece. No mainstream American Christian is going to resonate with it. And I don’t consider most mainstream American Christians to be concerning themselves so much with Jesus; with their church, their pastor, the Republican party, their bible study, Paul even, but normally not so much just about Jesus. So how much weight does the Jesus mention bear with them anyway? To the rest, those with whom the piece might resonate, they probably, like my friend, put the spiritual pieces together themselves.
Anyway, Dan’s article does a great job talking about what Jesus stood for and did. Check out the heading “The Activism of Jesus.”
Maybe I’m just a humanist. Maybe I’m going into a region that had ethinic and religious-based conflict of unimaginable consequence; where, if we’re honest, the Muslims were predominantly the victims. Maybe our own country represents Christianity to the world and has it’s eye on dominating Muslim people the world over.
Maybe the name of Jesus has simply become so tarnished in our modern age that I dare not speak it in public. I dare only to whisper it in private. I use it only to frightenly call to Him who I consider to be deity.
Maybe his name has been dragged through so much mud throughout well over a thousand years, every day in this world, this country, this state, this city, I just didn’t want to even try.
Anyway, those are my only thoughts as to why I didn’t think to mention Jesus, the ultimate pacifist of history, in my pacifism article.