Posted on 05/04/2011 4:04:12 PM PDT by nickcarraway
ike the phrase "turn the other cheek" in Christianity, there's a central tenet in Buddhism that teaches forgiveness. It's in the Dhammapada, a book thought to come from the Buddha himself, in which he teaches: "'He abused me, he struck me, he overcame me, he robbed me' — in those who harbour such thoughts hatred will never cease."
But what about killing someone like Osama bin Laden — someone who in obituaries has been compared to Hitler and Stalin? Should the U.S. have turned the other cheek?
At an appearance at the University of Southern California, yesterday, a student posed that question to the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader known for his unyielding compassion. But the Dalai Lama, reports the Los Angeles Times, confounded expectations with his answer:
As a human being, Bin Laden may have deserved compassion and even forgiveness, the Dalai Lama said in answer to a question about the assassination of the Al Qaeda leader. But, he said, "Forgiveness doesn't mean forget what happened. ... If something is serious and it is necessary to take counter-measures, you have to take counter-measures."
This, reports the Times, comes from a man who also said he tries to avoid swatting mosquitoes. "When my mood is good and there is no danger of malaria," he said, he watches as mosquitoes swell with his blood.
The apparent religious contradiction was also at the center of a piece by James Martin of America, a Catholic weekly magazine, who writes that he saw the smoldering towers and the evil bin Laden brought upon the world first hand:
Yet Christians are in the midst of the Easter Season, when Jesus, the innocent one, not only triumphantly rose from the dead but, in his earthly life, forgave his executioners from the cross, in the midst of excruciating pain.
So, should we forgive a serial killer? Martin says if he'd lost a loved one to one's hands, he probably couldn't. But, he says, the scripture is as clear as it gets:
The Christian is not simply in favor of life for the unborn, for the innocent, for those we care for, for our families and friends, for our fellow citizens, for our fellow church members or even for those whom we consider good, but for all. All life is sacred because God created all life. This is what lies behind Jesus's most difficult command: "I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
The Vatican, however, took a more balanced approach. In a short statement released after bin Laden's killing, the Vatican did not codemn the killing of bin Laden. Instead Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi acknowledged bin Laden's responsibility for "spreading hatred and division," but:
Faced with the death of a man, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibility of everyone before God and man, and hopes and pledges that every event is not an opportunity for a further growth of hatred, but of peace."
The third guy on the recently published Reuters’ photos of the inside of the campound (photos leaked by a Pakistani official) is definitely the dead body of Khaled Bin Laden, Osama’s son, that being the first visual and undeniable proof that Bin Laden was at that campound that night.
SEE THIS OTHER POST for more details :
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2715062/posts?page=58#58
When it comes to pukes like Osama, kill them all. God will know His own!
I couldn’t possibly care less what the Dalai Lama thinks about anything.
I'm glad the Dalai Lama has more sense than the average NPR listener.
Christianity forbids revenge killing. It does not forbid the killing of someone who is actively working to deliberately murder innocent people.
That’s exactly right. I have seen no indication whatsoever that the Catholic Church would consider the killing of UBL to be murder. According to the Catechism, which interprets the meaning of the moral law (ibncluding the Commandment “Thou shalt not kill,”) the killing a unrepentant deadly aggressor is a just act of war, quite different (the opposite, in fact) from killing a blameless noncombatant.
Folks, if we all take Christianity to heart, then we are all sheep to be shorn and any good we could give to our famillies, our communities, our states, our counties, our world - would never happen. To me the question is simple: If you saw a killer shooting at innocent people and you were armed, would you shoot the killer and stop the killings, or sit there and let the killer keep killing? If you shoot the killer, you are a killer. Literally, you have killed someone, so you are a killer; you have taken a life. But what about the lives you saved? It seems to me so many Christians are confused by “turn the other cheek” and doing what is right. Even Christ condemned the fig tree for not bearing fruit — in fact he killed it. So let’s stop confusing doing good with being Christian. I say act to stamp out evil first, and ask questions later. IMHO.
“It seems to me so many Christians are confused by “turn the other cheek” and doing what is right.”
“Turn the other cheek” doesn’t mean turn the other one so you can get that one slapped, too. That’s what most people think it means, but it really means to, if possible, ignore the insult. IOW, just let it got if possible.
Sometimes it’s not possible to just let it go. War is an extreme example of that.
“Is there a cultural reference for that interpretation? “
If Jesus were saying that we should never fight back then it would be in opposition to many OT passages. Had he been changing a doctrine like that then it would need to be stated more specifically as such.
There are numerous times in the OT where the nation of Israel was attacked and they fought back. There are instances where their wives and children were captured and taken into slavery and the Israelites battled the enemy to recover them.
Someone being slapped on the right cheek would either have to be slapped by the palm of the left hand (not likely what he meant, as the left hand was ‘unclean’, and there were serious penalties by the authorities for this), or slapped by the back of the right hand (i.e., a backhand). The backhand to someone’s face was done by a person to an inferior, such as when a slave owner backhanded a slave, or a man backhanded his wife or child (sadly not illegal back then).
A backhand is an insult, meant to put an inferior in his place. Just as when Jesus told slaves not to resist their masters he meant they should not respond to an insult from a superior but just let it go. This would apply to the Jews as subjects of the state of Rome, also.
This is separate from responding to an attack upon one’s family, which can be found in Exodus 22:2-3. This passage says that if a thief breaks into your house in the middle of the night and you defend yourself then there is no punishment for that. Men are told to take care of their families in the NT, too. Also, at one point Jesus said that if you had no sword, to sell your garment and buy one. He expected that some of them would need to defend themselves.
People equate the teaching of Jesus on self-defense as equal to the pacifism of the Dalai Lama and others but there is a big difference.
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