The commandment is to honor your parents and stealing does not bring them honor.
Matthew 12:11 And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out?
Romans 13 13 Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:
4 For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
Observe the sabbath as best you can, but resist no man:
Matthew 5 39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
To lie and claim you’re worshipping an idol when you are not? Why would you do that? But yes, lie is sin.
To lie and claim you’re not worshipping and idol when you in fact are? Well it was already evil in worshipping the idol and further evil to lie about it.
Depends, if:
A) They/everyone doesn’t know you stole
B) Your stealing brings more honour than it loses
C) They’re a family of thieves or they otherwise respect your craft
What if you dishonourably steal to save their lives? You can’t honour parents more than saving their lives.
So Matt is cool with breaking a commandment, good to know.
Why you would do it doesn’t matter, it’s possible to do it, so is it evil or not if you do?
Again, my examples are rhetorical, is it evil or not to break a commandment to uphold another? Apparently you don’t have to follow the Sabbath one - any other ones that you don’t have to bother with?
Well, I guess God would know and it would dishonor them in the eyes of God since they produced a son/daughter who steals.
Eh, it’s tough to see how.
That’s a good one
Well, they’re already sinning so they’re not honorable anyway. Idk, pirates had an admirable life in a sorta way, but from the biblical point of view, nope.
Remember that Jesus had to become a martyr. Dying is not dishonorable and the Japanese commit suicide to regain lost honor. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku
No, Jesus said that. The Pharisees were trying to set him up. Here’s the context:
12 At that time Jesus went on the sabbath day through the corn; and his disciples were an hungred, and began to pluck the ears of corn and to eat.
2 But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the sabbath day.
3 But he said unto them, Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungred, and they that were with him;
4 How he entered into the house of God, and did eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests?
5 Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are blameless?
6 But I say unto you, That in this place is one greater than the temple.
7 But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless.
8 For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day.
9 And when he was departed thence, he went into their synagogue:
10 And, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered. And they asked him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days? that they might accuse him.
11 And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out?
12 How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days.
13 Then saith he to the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, like as the other.
14 Then the Pharisees went out, and held a council against him, how they might destroy him.
I said yes.
It says to remember to keep the sabbath day holy. What does “holy” mean?
I am the Lord thy God, thou shall not have any gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything.
You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.
Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
Honor your father and your mother.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house, wife, or property.
Try to come up with some other dichotomies and I’ll see if I can shoot them down
How do we determine what is stealing? Can one steal within the law in a society? I would say yes, one can. Capitalist US certainly allows this in many forms. (which does not mean I am a communist in case anyone thinks completely in binary terms and since I believe one can make a great case that the state steals in Communist nations). So we have the laws of the state, the ways property is defined, how one ‘gets the right to acquire’ property. Maybe those rules are immoral. Perhaps stealing is fair. Perhaps legal acquisition is stealing.
Profit is legitimised theft - literally the act of employers skimming off the top the revenues that employees make for them that they haven’t been contracted (legitimised) to claim in wages: the employee(s) earned it, but its not all theirs because it’s backed by force that they in fact only earn less.
And what greater way to bring honour than to “make” money and become rich/successful/powerful/influential in this way?
Biblically, your conscience would be the guide. If you feel taking something is wrong, then it is wrong regardless of a law. The Amish take it to another level. I remember when Scottrade opened a banking division and offered a checking account with interest and one without, so I had to call to inquire why one paid and the other didn’t; what are the strings attached? The guy laughed and said “no strings, it’s for the Amish”. The Amish do not want anything they did not earn and they feel that includes interest. So by their definition, stealing is taking something that you did not work for.
I believe employing people is theft unless it’s a profit sharing situation or if they are for some reason overpaid. I used to be an employer and, looking back, that’s how I feel about it.
Yup, but is it honorable to God or to Man? Jesus said it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into heaven.
So you’re proposing an extra layer to honour, that one can honour one’s parents “to God”/ in the eyes of God and his judgment.
In this way you can honour your parents (which is all the commandment says) in their eyes, but not honour God, and therefore you aren’t honouring your parents even if they feel honoured?
You’re saying you have to honour your parents in their eyes AND in the eyes of God in order for the commandment to be upheld. If so, I suggest the commandment is badly worded.
Further, I would suspect that if this is your point, then all commandments presumably have that extra clause, e.g. that a murder was committed in the eyes of all men, but if might not be in the eyes of God?
I feel no solace in the fact that rich people aren’t gonna end up in heaven, I am neither vengeful nor am I divorced from my worldly reality.
No, what’s honorable to man is not honorable to God. Honoring the one is dishonor to the other.
16 Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
17 But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face;
18 That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.
19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
23 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
Jesus said “He that doesn’t gather with me, scattereth abroad”.
Joshua said “Choose this day whom ye shall serve” (because you gotta serve somebody.)
And from the Freewill song by Rush, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
That could be and it could be by intention because Jesus said “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.”
No doubt there has been much perversion of the texts through the ages. Some say it’s impossible to discern the word without the guidance of the Spirit. Other say the bible was veiled to hide meaning from the church (weird since the church compiled it). Idk, but it’s allegorical and contains deeper meaning like most philosophical works.
Anyway, the exact lettering of the commandment isn’t so important since faith is required for salvation and not adherence to a law; rather, the practicing of the law is evidence of the faith/salvation (like the fruit on a tree informs you of the kind of tree it is). One doesn’t “not murder” because he’s trying to be saved, but he finds he doesn’t have a desire to murder or, for some reason that he can’t really explain, finds he has a desire to fight the desire to murder, steal, whatever. That is where Judaism diverges from Christianity since the Jews still practice the law as a requirement for salvation. I can’t argue the Jewish position since I fundamentally disagree with it.
Aquinas said, “The law wasn’t given with the expectation that we would obey it, but to show us we could not.”
Paul said, “To will is present with me, but how to do good I find not. For the good that I would, I do not; and the evil that I would not, that I do!”
I think the idea behind the commandment not to murder is the presumption of who is worthy to be murdered; not so much that murder is inherently wrong. Man is simply not in the position to make the call.
Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
I’m not really a bible-thumper, I just happen to know a lot about it because I was raised in that environment.
Have you never felt guilty about something and then realized, perhaps after conversations with friends that might not have occurred, or with the perspective of the passage of many years, that you did not do anything wrong? Do you know that battered women often stay in relationships partly because of guilt? They judge their rejection of and anger at their partners as not being loving enough? It seems to me people are quite capable of feeling guilty on poor grounds and feeling fine about stuff that is really quite terrible. Even by their own later estimations. Ah, but then they worked it out in the end. Nah, life is short, who knows what we do not catch up on regarding.
Though perhaps if I explained that fiat banking necessarily deflates the value of the money the Amish got through labor, they would realize that their money is being stolen and interest is a fair replacement for this. Banks loan money they do not have. This puts more money out there without increasing labor as much as it does the money. This creates inflation and reduces the value of our money. What the heal is stealing, I still ask. The Amish have used guilt to prevent them getting fair compensation for their labor.
Ah, good so you see that conscience may not be a good guide. If you had died back then, you never would have realized that you had been stealing, by your own sense of what stealing can be. But the good thing about this is that you have just judged the norm as stealing. If the norm is stealing, this puts what gets called stealing in a context where being robbed is nearly impossible to avoid. If I am being robbed all the time, then my stealing to feed myself or my family is very different. It becomes more like a slave on a plantation taking from the master’s vegetable garden: risky but not immoral. I am not arguing that all stealing is OK, but rather pointing out that if we take your own definition of stealing on, we end up in a society where what stealing is is very hard to track and judge. That it might be OK, morally, to steal in terms of what the law considers stealing might be just fine.
Not that I can recall. It’s more likely to be the other way around.
If you can’t trust your conscience, what can you trust? If your conscience fails to be a moral guide, then perhaps there is a deeper problem.
16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
Inflation of prices is not directly caused by inflation of the money supply; that is a myth. Price is determined by supply and demand. If jobs are plentiful and wages are rising, then consumers are willing to pay more and prices rise. In some cases competition comes to partake in the increased demand which lowers prices with increased supply.
The way the Amish would probably see it is if prices are rising to deflate the value of their money, they simply charge more for products and it evens out.
Well, I knew it wasn’t quite right, but I was young and under the impression that I was being a good entrepreneur. Still, I couldn’t let the cat out of the bag about how much I was making or my employees would have left, so the fact that I had to hide says a lot about how I felt even then. Many times we justify our actions to be rid of guilt.
That’s why I see redistributive taxes as righting the wrong of the theft by employment.
It’s still wrong.
38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
I would say most decent people confuse guilt with conscience and a guilt that includes self-hate, and a lot tof unloving ideas about the self. One can develop out of this, but I don’t think anyone should trust their conscience, unless they have worked for quite a while, and been very surprised in the process, to separate out judgments handed down to us from parents that are not about us, cultural habits that are not good rules for interactions and a lot of of other dreck.
Sure, that’s an example of communication that either 1) does not know what humans will do with this kind of comment: hurt themselves or 2) it wants good people to feel guilty about things they should not. I mean who has not brought forth evil fruit. I know good people who beat themselves up for necessarily being corrupt trees, when they are at worst imperfect humans.
It’s not the only way devaluation of money happens, fiat banking that is, it’s one way. Not the fact that the money has no, for example, gold standard. But the ability to loan what one does not have. To invent money on a computer. It is absolutely amazing that we give some people the right to make money of thin air.
They will always be behind. And the banks are making money off having their money in their banks, and making money off it not through labor.
Sure, and sometimes we think we do not deserve to feel good, have a wonderful romantic partner, not starve like someone is somewhere, be paid a fair wage and we feel guilty.
So would you say a slave stealing from his master’s garden - in the old South - was wrong? If not, where do you draw the line?
Letting someone smite you on the other cheek is doing both of you a disservice. It’s a double sin.
Well if you cannot trust your conscience, what can you trust? If you can’t trust yourself, can you trust your mistrust of yourself? Is that well-founded? If you can’t trust yourself, you can’t trust anything. So there is no choice; you have to trust yourself knowing that you will let yourself down on occasion because there is no alternative.
How much bad fruit do they bear?
Fiat money is the best way, the only problem is the fed skimming off the top rather than having the treasury issue its own money. How else are the rich to get richer while also not allowing the poor to go broke? Either the money supply expands or taxes redistribute the money back down to the poor so that it may flow up again.
Yes the bankster are serpents.
I don’t beat myself up about it, but just saying that we need redistributive taxes to stop the nonsense. I don’t understand why poor or middleclass people defend the rich to spite some snot-nosed punk getting minimum wage who may be being paid more than he’s worth. People actually will cut off their noses to spite their face.
If you’re defining it as stealing, then it’s stealing and therefore wrong. Otherwise I don’t know the master/slave relationship back then. Maybe slaves were permitted to eat from the garden. I’m just arguing the bible point of view, not what I actually would do. I wouldn’t have made a good slave anyway, so I wouldn’t have lived long enough to have discovered what I would have done in that situation. I have too much pride
In a sense you are not quite responding to what I wrote. I am saying the conscience is fallible. We cannot count on it. You presented it as the way to determine the goodness of acts. One can develop trust and we could go into that. Here you say it lets you down on occasion. It has let millions of people down their entire lives. Think of the things people have felt guilty about due to religion, for example, like sexual urges, and their consciences told them they were bad for these normal, natural facets of being social mammals. Or in the other direction, people who were racist, haters of women, whatever, based on cultural norms. This is not an issue of exception, even today, amongst secular people. They are taught that having strong emotional reactions are bad, for example. In fact most of us are trained to be ashamed of our emotional reactions and the way we want to move our bodies, as a rule. Yes, you are fucked if you cannot trust yourself. But on the other hand, you have to recognize the enormity of the problem and develop the tools you have to where you can distinguish between the various voices in the mind to find the ones worthy of being a conscience.
Notice the grammatical tense you use, one that implies that their bad fruit bearing is ongoing. The scripture actually says that good trees cannot bear evil fruit. Period. So one, basing one’s conscience, as many do, on such really quite evil texts, can feel guilty for acts in the past that one regrets and would not do again. The writer should know this, since the writer is taking such an authoritative stance. If the writer does know this about humans, and how easy it is for good ones to find a way to hate themselves, then the write was being evil in that time of creating. If the writer does not know this, they erred in self-knowledge around their expertise.
It was considered stealing by law. I don’t think it is stealing.
Pride and the urge to survive being a struggle i would have had, sure. I am just saying that if one is saying stealing is always wrong, one should make it clear that one probably should make it clear that we are not talking about what the law considers stealing (and what it considers ownership, etc.)
You are encouraging them to sin, or to be an asshole in the way I would more naturally describe. The striking a cheek is a metaphor for any wrongdoing, up to physical violence. If my wife treats me like shit, say, and I just let her do this and do not protest, do not try to stop the repetition of this, I am denying her my full intelligence and selfhood. In addition to allowing myself to be treated poorly. It is no service to other people not to call them on their shit, it is a disservice. Of course it is often practical to call them on their shit, given power dynamics, etc. But if you can manage not to give them access again to your cheek, that is the minimum implicit criticism you should strive for.
The Lord is in a better position to know right from wrong, but we are not. If the blind lead the blind, they both fall in the ditch.
I disagree that consequences for actions should be seen from the perspective of the child as coming from the parent instead of the world because that is precisely the dictatorship that made me as rebellious as I am. I suppose it depends upon the situation, but that’s my general rule.
If a woman slaps you, are you going to slap her back? How about a child? Why not? Why withhold disservice from men but apply it to women and children? If loving is to hit back and reward evil with evil, then isn’t it loving to clobber women, children, very old men, the handicapped?
That is a faith based assumption and wrong according to your own bible.
1 Thessalonians 5:21 Test all things; hold fast what is good.
It seems that we are being directed to use our own judgement. No?
You are part of the world and the world is not around to correct if your child thinks or does something inappropriate.
If your general rule is to not correct your child and let the rest of the world do it, then IMO, you are abdicating your own parental responsibility.
But hey, if you trust the judgements of other over your own, what can I say.
Yes. If correction is required, the gender should not matter. Do you think a female rapist should not get the same punishment as a male rapist? Do you have a double standard of justice? Is justice not supposed to see us all as equals?
Sure. At his level of strength, not at the adult level. Have you net heard a mother tell her bitten child to bite back? I have. Is reciprocity not fair play where you come from?
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I will ignore this rant and just ask.
Is reciprocity fair play where you are. Do unto others etc. is a reciprocity rule.
If you are to reward evil, why stop with a slap. Why not reward the rapist or murderer?
Your policy has some value at low level insult type things but cannot apply for anything significant and is thus a poor policy.
That may be why modern social scientist use a different set of rules that are used by about 75% of us world wide.
Harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, in-group/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity.
Care in our initial case, is provided by correction, not by rewarding evil.
You might also want to look at the Jewish meaning of turn the other cheek. It does not mean what you think it means.
Well what does determine goodness of acts? It can’t be cognition because we can’t process all the variables nor take an objective view in order to proclaim what is good to begin with even if we could process all the variables.
Oh I know all about that. I grew up in it. Alan Watts said the church institutionalized guilt and the audience erupted in sudden applause.
He who doubteth is damned.
13 Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.
14 I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean.
15 But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died.
16 Let not then your good be evil spoken of:
17 For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.
18 For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God, and approved of men.
19 Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another.
20 For meat destroy not the work of God. All things indeed are pure; but it is evil for that man who eateth with offence.
21 It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.
22 Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.
23 And he that doubteth is damned if he eat, because he eateth not of faith: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin.
You said “who has not brought forth evil fruit” to which I replied “how much bad fruit do they bear?” Is the tree overall good or overall bad? That’s about all we have to go on because there is no tree that only bears good fruit.
Obviously it cannot be as literal as that because no one can bear only good fruit, but figs do not grow on thistles, not that some figs aren’t better than others on a fig tree. An apple tree can have a rotten apple, but it’s still an apple.
The writer in that case was supposed to be Jesus and he says “He who has an ear to hear, let him hear.” Then goes on about thanking God for confounding the wise and revealing unto babes. If you try to make it too literal or read too much into it, you’re going to miss the point.
Like Bruce Lee said, “It is like a finger pointing at the moon. Do not pay attention to the finger or you’ll miss all that heavenly glory.”
But you said the slave would be stealing from the garden, so it was defined into the problem. Did the slave have rights to the property or not? If not, then it’s stealing. If so, then it’s not. It just depends how the problem is stated.
That’s why I say the conscience should be the guide because the law cannot be that clear. This hearkens back to the forum-rules debate we had before: we can’t make rules to account for every crime and as soon as we detail exactly what is a crime, then people will mold their insults to skirt the rule.
I don’t have all the answers, but there are some cases where not striking back is better because one can always sue later
In the case of mom, I put it to her that either she admit I’m right about some things or don’t talk to me because we’re going to go round n round forever simply because I have too much pride to bendover all the time. And she has too much pride to admit that I’ve grown up and am capable of knowing more than an 8yr old. Who wins? Neither of us because I lost a mom and she lost a son because of stupid pride. But I’m not a robot nor a saint, so idk.
I don’t even know if he was real. Whoever wrote his words was very smart though.
It’s not my bible. I threatened to burn the damned thing on easter. Dangerous book!
The Lord is presumed to be the only righteous judge and that’s the underpinning of the religion otherwise how could any law have authority if no entity could be a judge?
Yes because what else can you do?
Parental responsibility is to raise adults, not children, not dependents, nor minions, bootlickers, nor rebels.
You could come up with an example.
I have been the egalitarian suggesting to turn the cheek across the board, you’re saying to hit back. So if a woman slaps you, you will slap her back, right? Well, just be sure a bunch of other guys aren’t watching or you may have a brawl on your hands.
That’s child upon child, not adult against child. Mothers don’t tell children to antagonize adults who hit them, but run to find help. And hitting someone weaker than yourself is immoral imo. You can restrain them and hold them down, but not clobber them.
Reciprocity only occurs on equal playing field. Handicapped against healthy is not a fair fight and not reciprocity.
17 Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men.
18 If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.
19 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.
21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.
So it would seem that feeding the rapist and murderer is prescribed.
How is the punishment policy working? How many are rehabilitated? As far as I can tell, they come out of prison and return to their actions like a dog to vomit.
Proverbs 26:11 As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.
Eh, it’s not consistent with the rest of the literal, allegorical interpretation of the bible nor in the spirit of it.
Now we’ve come full-circle in illustrating how honoring God is at odds with honoring man: God says to do good to the murderers, man says to lock them up. God says to turn the other cheek, man says to come up swinging.
Proverbs 14:12 There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.
I don’t know what determines the goodness of acts. I see theories and they seem weak. This doesn’t mean I am rooting for my theory, whatever it might be.
Now don’t be bringing Watts in again, LOL.
He who don’t doubteth is probalby an asshole.
I am not sure what to do with that.
I am not arguing it is literal, he’s talking about people and acts. The problem is that it is a rule, with no gradations or exceptions. The metaphor could have been used in a way that would have created less guilt and panic - especially given the potential problem with Hell, you better be damn clear what you are saying to people.
Again, I could not possibly have been reading it literally or it would have been a quote about agriculture, or permaculture, and while problematic on that level, I wouldn’t care and it wouldn’t lead to guilt but possibly to the throwing away of good fruit. Reading too much in it. Well, that’s the thing. I know humans and I know how many of them will take such quotes, and history is littered with people, good people, who tried to live up to scriptures, panicked regularly about the coming of hell based on scriptures, and had a hateful voice in their heads empowered by scripture. Telling me not to read too much into it - which I think is an ironic suggestion about a religious text that requires reading a lot into it - is missing the point. People read stuff in these things and if you don’t want people to plague themselves with ideas, there are simply ways to modify texts to make them more nuanced.
Bruce Lee sure as shit did not, as a rule, turn the other cheek. He fought people all the time for all sorts of things. Heck, he did it in the streets just to learn. And again, I have seen what the language of the Bible does to basically good people. Also the language of secular moralities that have similar naive presentations. The point is precisely that humans will try to navigate using these things and terrible things will result from navigating following the advice of people who are cut off from their emotions to various degrees. Jesus, if he said this, had stuff to learn. Which is fine, who doesn’t? He did his best.
Well, I didn’t know how you were defining stealing. It seems like your definitions is stealing is when you think you are stealing. I thought you meant when it is breaking the law. Property and things move around in all societies. My only point was that what is considered stealing in that society by the people in power, even by the majority may not be stealing and hence not immoral. I don’t think there would have been anything wrong about a slave going into the house and taking a piano or all the horses in the barn or whatever. Perhaps he should share with other slaves, but no possible property crime could be committed against a master by a slave in my view. He could burn down the master’s house for all I care.
Conscience and practical fear of consequences is the the guide for all of us, though many might not word it that way. The potential committers of what some might consider crime. I just wanted to make it clear that just because you follow your conscience you have not even the slightest guarantee this is meaningful, even to you in the long term, unless you have really gone deep into yourself.
OH, sure, there are practical issues I always take into consideration. That’s what I meant by at least TRYING to not offer the other cheek.
