ICE agents try to murder the father of three patriotic Marines. He did nothing wrong.
Watch yourselves, ICE agents, real and fake
I grew up in the rural south. If anyone or anyones had ever brutalized our father, or any father, the community would quietly make sure family members would know who the thugs were under their masks, and within a few days, those thugs would awaken in an ICU in another state without trace of how they got there.
It is not Christian to sit passively by while innocent people, nonviolent people have the life nearly beaten out of them and then suffer separation from their loved ones.
Let me tell anyone who cares to hear what a retired liberal pastor and theologian has to say about this. I speak on behalf of myself.
It is not American to brutalize any other human beings directly or indirectly. It is not Christian, however, to sit passively by while innocent people, nonviolent people have the life nearly beaten out of them and then suffer separation from their loved ones.
When Jesus taught his turn-the-other-cheek ethic, he was addressing a particular Roman practice, and the advice he offered his fellow Jews was to combat the injustice.
In short, no offense to Krash Patel, the Roman occupying forces in Jesus’ day could direct the Jewish citizens over whom they watched to do certain tasks for them. One example, if you’re familiar with other teachings in Christian scripture, would be carrying a Roman soldier’s heavy military pack two kilometers instead of just one if they’d asked you to carry it just one. That was legal. The Jewish citizen was supposed to agree to do what was asked in this kind of way without giving attitude or lip. Generally, the Roman occupying forces, the soldiers, were ordered not to enact violence upon those whose land they had taken, and whose customs they were trying to Romanize in various ways.
Were a Roman military person to get fed up with a Jew whom, he said, refused to carry the pack or gave him attitude the soldier was legally entitled to hit the Jewish citizen, but only under these circumstances.
The Roman soldier drew back his right hand across his chest, and he backhanded the Jew across the face, making contact with the Jew’s right cheek. This was a way of emphasizing the Jew’s subservience to Rome. If a Roman soldier got angrier and tried to brawl with a Jew and started hitting him or her with fists, not that the Roman Emperor would care in every instance, the soldier could get in trouble for stirring a Jewish uprising.
The Emperor was concerned with keeping the peace among the non-Romans over whom they ruled. It simply made more sense not to stir people up over things that didn’t matter.
When Jesus brings up with his followers the scenario of somebody striking you across the face, he’s referring to a Roman soldier’s backhand.
What if a Jew after having been hit wanted to retaliate but wouldn’t dare hit the ICE agent back? Well, and you go Jesus for not advising your sister and brother Jews to take abuse without recourse, you offer the soldier your left cheek as well.
There was a reason for that. If the Roman in his anger, hit the Jew a second time, on the other left cheek, his hand would be coming back in the other direction palm first. Culturally to hit someone with an open hand palm made the one you hit your equal!
There are more stories than any of us would care to live through of women in particular and children, I think not so many men, tolerating physical abuse specifically because of a misunderstanding of this teaching of Jesus.
In this moment I cannot take on a Roman legion, but culturally I can affirm my dignity.
Furthermore, Jesus didn’t say, sit passively by while ICE thug Roman soldiers beat the hell out of your loved ones.
It’s a severe misunderstanding of Jesus to think that the masked ICE thugs who beat up a good man, good citizen, proud father to three extraordinarily patriotic sons active in the Marine Corps could go on as if their evil never occurred. What we would say around here, and I happen to be living again back where I grew up in the rural south, is simply this: Watch yourself.
(I believe I first learned this from brilliant Christian scripture scholars, Dr Marcus Borg and Dr John Dominic Crossan.)