Christians are now complaining that "turning the other cheek" is nothing more than liberal talking points...

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/3377375

I read an essay by a christian a while ago that pointed out that the separation of church and state wasn’t about protecting the state from religion - it was about protecting religion from the state.

The gist of the argument was that religion should be concentrating on the eternal, and politics, by necessity, concentrates on the immediate. The author was concerned that welding religion and politics together would make religion itself political, meaning it would have to conform to the secular moment rather than looking to saving souls or whatever.

The mind meld of evangelical christianity and right wing politics happened in the mid to late 70s when the US was trying to racially integrate christian universities, which had been severely limiting or excluding black students. Since then, republicans and christians have been in bed together. The southern baptist convention, in fact, originally endorsed the Roe decision because it helped the cause of women. It was only after they decided to go all in on social conservatism that it became a sin.

Christians today are growing concerned about a falloff in attendance and membership. This article concentrates on how conservatism has become a call for people to publicly identify as evangelical while not actually being religious, because it’s an our team thing.

Evangelicals made an ironically Faustian bargain and are starting to realize it.

  • randon31415@lemmy.world
    177·
    1 year ago

    Technically, it is turn the ‘left’ cheek. The way I remember it being explained to me is that Jewish law was clear: you strike your slave, you have to let them go. Now many slave owners still wanted to beat up their slaves, so they found a loophole. If you backhanded a slave, it wasn’t considered striking. How could someone tell it was backhanding? If the mark was on the ‘right’ cheek, since everyone was right-handed. Bunch of slaves asked Jesus what to do about it and he said

    “When he goes to hit you, hold out your left cheek. If he hits you, you are free, and if he doesn’t, well, problem solved.”

    • SCB@lemmy.world
      171·
      1 year ago

      This is not where this comes from. It comes from Christianity being a pacifist religion, not some weird pretend loophole about hitting your slave properly.

      It’s a really simple concept - absolute nonviolence. There’s nothing “secret” about it at all. Whoever “explained” this to you was just perverting the religion, which is exactly what this article is about.

      In general, if an explanation sounds like “slave masters hate this one neat trick” or an email forward from 1996, you should probably not buy into it.

        • SCB@lemmy.world
          4·
          1 year ago

          I’m sure Quakers believe all sorts of interesting things, but that doesn’t make them or this ahistorical explanation correct biblical scholarship.

            • SCB@lemmy.world
              2·
              1 year ago

              The entire left-handed thing is made up after the fact. Riches, for instance, were seen as being borne by the left hand, far from the left hand being taboo.

              There was no “slapping culture” among equals/non-equals.

              More to the point, the line directly processing the “turn the other cheek” bit is literally a command to not resist evil people, and the whole being slapped thing is a metaphor.

      • pinkdrunkenelephants@sopuli.xyz
        41·
        1 year ago

        That’s just how it’s interpreted nowadays. In no way is Christianity absolutely pacificist. Jesus himself whipped the lenders at the temple.

      • randon31415@lemmy.world
        31·
        1 year ago

        Some of the absolute nonviolence stuff got put in to the King James version of the Bible because King James wanted a passive population.

        One of my favorite bits from the Gandhi speechs on the sermon on the mount is about the “impossible” question Jesus got asked. The Roman army would randomly kidnap people and force them to hall there stuff. Israel was under occupation at the time and people wanted to resist that occupation. Also, hauling stuff on the sabbath was against the religious law. So Jesus got asked if he would hall stuff for the Roman army on a sabbath. If he said no, they were going to turn him in as a rebel. If he said yes, well, what religious leader says ignore the sabbath?

        However, Jesus knew the rules on hauling for the Roman’s. They would only force you to haul until the next marker. If a Roman soldier forced you to do more than that, they would be whipped for disobeying the rules. So he simply stated: “If someone asked you to haul for one mile, haul for two. Then call out ’ I have hauled for two miles, how many more do I have to do?’ Then the solder who asked you to do this will be whipped. If all Jews did this, the army would stop asking jews to haul - thus preserving the sabbath.”

      • randon31415@lemmy.world
        4·
        1 year ago

        This was a methodist pastor summarizing a speech given by Gandhi on Jesus’s sermon on the mount which in of itself was a reinterpretation ancient Jewish law - so someone down the line might have got something wrong.

    • madcaesar@lemmy.world
      7·
      1 year ago

      Slave in the back: Umm… Jesus? Isn’t…isn’t God against slavery? Can’t you just tell these assholes slavery is immoral and free us, instead of this gotchya cheek slapping shit?

      Jesus: 🤣 stfu and obey your masters, even the cruel ones!

    • Rob T Firefly@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      The origins of “turn the other cheek” may be even more mind-blowing than that.

      An old friend of mine who was a Quaker taught the following cultural context for the saying:

      • For the Pharisees in biblical times, the left hand was considered unclean and it was taboo to use it for anything “good.” You did all your hero moves strictly with your right hand.
      • The backhanded slap was intended as an insult, given to a person one considers inferior.
      • The foreslap (slapping with the open palm of the hand) was a slap reserved for one’s acknowledged equals.

      If, back there and then, someone who considered you their inferior slapped you they would be using their right hand (because of the taboo against using the left) to strike your right cheek backhanded (because fuck you.) If, instead of slapping the attacker back, you turn and present them your LEFT cheek, you force them to either break the taboo of using their left hand in order to slap you again, change their right-handed slap from backhand to forehand for the next slap and thereby acknowledge your equality, or simply stop slapping you. By turning the other cheek, the victim shifts around the entire power dynamic of the situation.

      Interpreted this way the biblical “turn the other cheek” routine becomes less the saintly martyrdom-flavored nonviolence response people generally understand it as nowadays, and more taking back some control over the situation by rebuking the attempted insult.