Hi all!
I am finding this thread to be quite fascinating, totally divorced from reality for the most part, but quite fascinating nevertheless.
I am very glad that there are very, very few people in my country who espouse the complete pacifism & absolute dedication to non-violence that Mother Vashti and others espouse (that we have too many 'Dirty Harry' types here is another issue). One year ago, on the first night of Passover, on March 27 2002, a Palestinian terrorist walked into the Park Hotel in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya and blew himself up in the middle of the dining room where Jews were celebrating Passover, butchering 29 people(all civilians, with more than a few elderly) and wounding 140 others (20 of them seriously; see
http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0le00). What a pity that nobody managed to blow his brains out before he could detonate his infernal device! If more of my people espoused the complete pacifism & absolute dedication to non-violence that Mother Vashti and others espouse, more of my people would be murdered.
Pete5 posted:
Sorry euphoric, I assumes you were a christian, because you are not a christian I would never recommend that you try to live like one.
Well, I'm glad that I do
not belong to faith that would require me to passively allow my neck to be stretched across a chopping block if ever an evil person wished to cut my head off. Ugh! No thanks! Here, Pete5, you have raised willful suicide to the status of a religious precept!
If I was attacked, I would not defend myself.
I suppose that this is your choice.
If my child was attacked, I would attempt to stop the attacker without hurting them.
Are you a parent?
Someone is attacking your child (God forbid!) and you'll do what, exactly? Offer an eloquent soliloquy on the virtues of non-violence? Ask the attacker nicely? Your child could very well be dead by then (God forbid!) and you would be his attacker's
de facto accomplice and aider-and-abetter.
I know people who have seen their children murdered. I work with a woman whose toddler daughter and elderly mother were blown to pieces by a suicide-terrorist on a bus here in Jerusalem last year. Would that someone could have managed to kill the bomber before he acted!
Our Sages comment on Leviticus 18:5.
You shall, therefore, keep My statutes and My ordinances, which if a person do, he shall live by them; I am the Lord.
Our Sages note that it says "
live by them" and
not "
die by them". We believe that all of the Torah's precepts (except for 3; murder, adultery/incest, and idolatry) must be set aside to save life.
Our Sages also comment on Leviticus 19:16.
Neither shall you stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.
Our Sages cite this verse and teach that if we do nothing to halt the shedding of our neighbor's blood, it is as if we were shedding it! (Pete5 and mother Vashti, what is your take on this verse?)
Please do not accuse me of delighting in the killing of someone in self-defense, God forbid! It is a cause for sorrow and grief that someone who was created in the Divine Image could have used the gifts that God gave him to perpetrate evil; we do
not rejoice over the death of such a one. See Proverbs 24:17-18.
Do not rejoice when your enemy falls and let your heart be not glad when he stumbles.
(BTW, I find the scenes in the USA of people cheering outside a prison or penitentiary when someone has been executed to be vulgar in the extreme.)
Mother Vashti and Pete5, I hope & pray that you never have to put your ideals to the test!
Pete5, you also posted:
I am not saying that God would not direct me to defend someone with violence, but rage is not a gift from God...
Rage has NOTHING to do with it! Whatever gave you the idea that it does?
You also posted:
As Mother Vashti says: we must rely on God. For EVERYTHING.
Hmm, does He rain manna from Heaven down on you or do you buy/grow your own food?
Does He stitch fig leaves together for you or do you buy/make your own clothes?
Spiritual passivity certainly has no place in my faith; we also believe that God helps those who help themselves.
Be well!
ssv