Copyright 2016 Don Ray
Maybe after recent thefts I better understand Yeshu (Jesus) saying “the guy takes your cloak, give him your coat too”.
It is a great attitude, and it has not just to do with love and generosity as usually taught. It reflects a way of going through life, a realistic awareness that in this human world some people will try to steal from you, and your only choice and control is over your response to that situation. How much will you let it matter? Clearly I have a long way to go in that regard.
Yeshu’s radical statement, like so many of His radical statements, makes no sense in human terms because
this human world makes no sense spiritually. Turning the other cheek and giving your coat to the thief sounds like madness to the world.....but the business of the world, including lying and stealing, makes no sense in spiritual/eternal terms.
Which of those two overlapping universes, the temporal or the eternal, really matters?
We see Yeshu getting angry at that which threatened His spiritual universe: at Peter tempting Him with worldly titles, at businessmen perverting the Temple, at those who would claim the purity to allow them to cast the first stone. But for typical-common-worldly thievery and threats and abuse, instead of getting mad He seemed to use those worldly abuses as opportunities for spiritual triumph
If one seeks to live in deep communion with that Kin'dom that is eternal, much of your life will, like Yeshu’s parables and life, make absolutely no worldly sense at all.
If we say Yeshu's parables are paradoxical and impractical, we are correct per the perspectives of this temporal world. But that begs a nagging question. How much sense do our worldly values, priorities, and lives make from an eternal perspective?
Copyright 2007 - 2016 Don Ray
If you benefited from this, please pass it on.
Maybe after recent thefts I better understand Yeshu (Jesus) saying “the guy takes your cloak, give him your coat too”.
It is a great attitude, and it has not just to do with love and generosity as usually taught. It reflects a way of going through life, a realistic awareness that in this human world some people will try to steal from you, and your only choice and control is over your response to that situation. How much will you let it matter? Clearly I have a long way to go in that regard.
Yeshu’s radical statement, like so many of His radical statements, makes no sense in human terms because
this human world makes no sense spiritually. Turning the other cheek and giving your coat to the thief sounds like madness to the world.....but the business of the world, including lying and stealing, makes no sense in spiritual/eternal terms.
Which of those two overlapping universes, the temporal or the eternal, really matters?
We see Yeshu getting angry at that which threatened His spiritual universe: at Peter tempting Him with worldly titles, at businessmen perverting the Temple, at those who would claim the purity to allow them to cast the first stone. But for typical-common-worldly thievery and threats and abuse, instead of getting mad He seemed to use those worldly abuses as opportunities for spiritual triumph
If one seeks to live in deep communion with that Kin'dom that is eternal, much of your life will, like Yeshu’s parables and life, make absolutely no worldly sense at all.
If we say Yeshu's parables are paradoxical and impractical, we are correct per the perspectives of this temporal world. But that begs a nagging question. How much sense do our worldly values, priorities, and lives make from an eternal perspective?
Copyright 2007 - 2016 Don Ray
If you benefited from this, please pass it on.
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