I am so sorry that I disagree with so many people on this issue, especially Christians. I am sorry to see the Bible's message perverted to the point of isogesis as opposed to exegesis. I am sorry, and I hate to sound heretical, but to those purporting to be enlightened Christians, this is how it is going to sound. If you look at the TORTURE of Christ before His death, and are comparing that to "waterboarding" you are seriously missing the point of the sacrifice of our Lord and SAVIOUR! Wake up! He was tortured to save our souls from eternal damnation. Oh yeah, and HE was blameless. He was not a terrorist. He was not hell-bent on the destruction of human life. Quite the contrary. He was hell-bent on saving it! Why do so many Christians close their eyes to this? Why do the blinders of the church continue, in so many ways, to distort perceptions of what is and is not righteous? Right and wrong are black and white. But where they meet is the gray area. However, in the gray area we find clarity in projecting the outcome of our actions. Imagine you are asleep and a man breaks into your home. Imagine you get out of bed and sneak out to investigate. Imagine you see a man in the hallway. He doesn’t see you. He opens the door to your daughter’s room. Pop! A gun goes off. Your daughter is dead. The man then comes out of her room and goes into your son’s room. Pop! A gun goes off. Your son is dead. You have already called the police. They are on their way. The man then comes to your room. Levels the gun on your wife. You follow the advice of the Bible and turn the other cheek. Pop! Your wife is dead. Pop! You are dead. Yes, you are all in Heaven. Yes, you are with God now. But you, in your naïve misconceptions of right and wrong allowed your family to be killed. You took the sacred gift of the Father and allowed another to desecrate it! The time and place for turning the other cheek is so often misinterpreted. Loving your enemy does not mean you do nothing to stop him from bringing you harm! Some of you are probably saying, “Wait! I never said I’d let the guy kill my family and me!” Well, in not allowing torture to get information, you may already have allowed someone to kill you and your family! Imagine that! Now imagine that you are at home. You have a second chance. This time, you do things a bit differently. You hear the man break in. You wake up. You grab your gun. Your wife calls 911. You go downstairs and see him. Sneaking through your living room. He too has a gun. You realize that your family is in grave danger. This guy doesn’t want to sell you encyclopedias. Pop! He dies, your family lives. He was your enemy. You were commanded to love him. But you killed him. You broke a commandment. But you saved your family from destruction. You honored the gift that God gave you. You protected His investment in you. But you broke one of His rules to do it. Or did you? Evil does not negate evil. But there is still another side to this. You speak of revenge. You speak of vengeance being the Lord’s. And yet you forget that the book of Matthew chapter 7 says 1"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. 6"Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.” Now you may say I am taking this out of context, but the script is fairly cut and dry. Our place is not to judge. Our place is not to tell others how to live. Ours is to live according to the precepts of the Christian walk. To love one another. To take pride in our work. To take joy in our family. And to honor God in all we do. Do you honestly think that God was happy with 9/11? That would be a preposterous thought. Now here is the thing. Here is where you will really get mad at me. You say that the Bible says love your enemies. I believe that too. But in loving our enemies are we to let them go on to plot murderous plots? To keep turning our cheek? To allow more innocents to die at the hands of a “Holy War?” If you feel like that is what we should be doing, you are sadly deceived. The evil of this world flourish because the good in this world do nothing. Turning the Cheek is not my lot in life. I am a man of action. We are to be like Christ. This is a command we are all familiar with. Christ was a man of action. He acted. He did not sit by and watch. He acted. He did what needed to be done. You think He turned the other cheek? Why yes He did. But at times He did not. When He overthrew the tables. When He calmed the storm. Whenever it became apparent that the situation needed a call to action, He acted! And yet you will point out that at the end of His life, He was tortured and did nothing. Said nothing. You are correct. But at the same time you miss the point. He did this at that point in time because that was what the situation called for. He lived His entire life knowing that this day would come. Where the fate of mankind lay upon His shoulders. You could say that He did nothing. But you would be entirely wrong again. In His silence, Christ was acting. His call to action was to be strong and show mankind that the Son of God Himself came and endured a greater punishment than anyone had or would have ever gone through. His strength was directed toward the future of all mankind. As a Christian I have to believe that it is our responsibility to direct our own strength the same way. We are dealing with an enemy who neither believes in our God nor cares about the safety of His people. And yet many of you say you will turn the other cheek because you know where you are going when you die. Well, what about your unsaved neighbor? What happens to their soul when they die in a hijacked airplane? What happens to all who do not believe when an attack causes their death? We, as Christians, are called to minister to those that do not believe. What happens when our mission field disappears? You must love your enemy, not hate them. However, so many believe that the opposite of love is hate. Nothing could be further from the truth. The opposite of love and hate is indifference. When our enemy strikes us the way we have been stricken, to turn the other cheek would be indifference. We do not want it to happen again. But we do very little to prevent it because we to not want to torture. I am sorry, I love my enemies, but if torturing one saves just ten innocents, I say do it. There is no hatred involved. This is business. This is life. You make a grown-up choice you need to take your punishment like a grown up. Just remember, you never know who’s life will be saved, but a life will be saved. How much is that worth to you?
