There are two sayings regarding how to respond to someone hurting you that it seems like almost everyone knows.
One is, “An eye for an eye.” It’s one of those things that it seems like almost everyone knows. It’s in the Old Testament (and the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi), Exodus 21:23-27. The idea is for reciprocal justice; whatever someone does to you, you do the same to him.
The other is, “Turn the other cheek.” That’s also from the Bible, words spoken by Jesus, recorded in Matthew (5:40) which says, “… If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”
The first is easy. It seems only fair. It fits our sense of justice. A child intuitively understands that idea.
The other is much harder.
I started thinking about this in regard to protests, and that somehow the expectation of so many protestors today is that they should be protected, not subject to any repercussions for their protests, even when they break the law or disrupt civil order. This is not the way protestors in the 1960s – at least those led by Dr. Martin Luther King – thought. The power of that movement really was in the fact that these protestors fully expected repercussions and accepted them peacefully which, in the end, is what turned the tide of American sentiment in their favor.
But as I thought about it, it became more personal. So much of my thinking, as I’ve gotten older, is less about the great “out there” – my community, culture, the world, whatever – and more “in here,” as in, what does my life reflect?
Does my life reflect “turn the other cheek?” We just passed the greatest day in history, what we often call Resurrection Sunday. It’s a direct contrast to the worst day in history – not the crucifixion, but rather that day when Eve, then Adam, disobeyed God’s direct command and sin entered the world. Everything that is wrong with the world started in that moment back in the Garden; everything was made right with the world on that Sunday morning when Jesus rose from the dead.
It was really an act of love. Isn’t that what “turn the other cheek” really means? That’s what the message is even in the Old Testament. Leviticus 19:18: “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people but love your neighbor as yourself. I Am the Lord.”
Turning the other cheek was not a new commandment given by Jesus. Like so much of his teaching, it was a clarification of the OG’s – original commandments – that, over time, had become so convoluted that people didn’t really understand the original intent of it all. It’s how 600-something commandments (did you really think there were only 10?) became the thousands of “clarifications” that were supposed to provide context and guidance for people to follow the Law, but over time those clarifications more often became confusions.
It’s why the Apostle John, in his old age, says (I John 2) “I do not write to you because you do not know the truth …” John says they do know the truth. A little later in that chapter he writes, “See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you.” Or, in essence, “You know this. You’ve always known this. What I’m telling you is not really a new command, but an old one that you’ve had from the beginning.”
But to “know” to turn the other cheek? No, that is something a person must willfully do. It goes against human nature. It’s not natural. But it’s Biblical. It’s what Jesus commanded.
How do we do that?
Let me ask another question: how do you know if you’re a follower of Christ?
John says it here, in 2:4, “Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person.”
John is often thought of as this kindly Apostle, “the one whom Jesus loved,’’ who speaks in such a loving, almost grandfatherly way. Yet here he is pretty blunt: he says if you do not do what Jesus commands, you’re a liar. The truth is not in you. Some people get so caught up in the love aspect of Jesus’ words that they forget what usually follows any such declaration of love: live differently. “Go and sin no more.”
It’s what Jesus said, as recorded in the Gospel of John (chapter 14): “If you love me, you will obey what I command” and “Whoever has my commands and obeys them is the one who loves me.” Later, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching.”
And I do that. Sometimes. That’s the problem, isn’t it? I don’t follow this all the time. Does that make me a liar and an un-truthful person?
Well, to a degree, yes. What it really points out is that, even as a Christ-follower, I’m a sinner. But then John isn’t saying that we, as Christians, will be perfect 100 percent of the time. There was a time, when I was a young Christian, that I thought that one day I could achieve perfection in this life, that if I followed Christ’s words long enough, studied hard enough, prayed like Jesus prayed, allowed myself to be completely taken over by the Holy Spirit, that at some point I could achieve living a perfect life.
I was wrong. At least, I was wrong about me.
Maybe there were moments. But only moments.
John covers that. He starts this letter by saying, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”
So, which is it?
It’s both. We seek to know Jesus’ commands and follow them with the help of the indwelling Holy Spirit and yet know that we still carry that old strain of humanity within us that we’re constantly at war with. As Paul famously said in Romans (7:15), “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” Or, as Eugene Peterson paraphrases in The Message, “What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise.”
Someone put it this way: if you hear Beethoven being performed horribly, you don’t blame Beethoven. If you see a Christian behaving badly, you don’t blame Christ.
Have you ever wondered about your salvation because of your sin? I’m not so sure that’s not a good sign. Shouldn’t the new nature that is trying to take over your old nature be telling you something is wrong when the old nature has its way? It’s like when I know something is wrong with me physically; it’s a sign I need to go to the doctor – to someone who will help me get healthy. As a Christian, I go to Jesus – through prayer, confession of my sin, repentance (committing to living a different way), and then get up and go on.
Which, hopefully, brings us back to the beginning. An eye for an eye? Or turn the other cheek?
The unbelieving world understands conflict. They understand revenge. They get “an eye for an eye.” What the world doesn’t understand is true reconciliation. Making it right. What the world doesn’t get is what your mother might have called “hugging it out” after a disagreement or even a hurt. Or as a guy I knew once said about another guy he was having a problem with, “He’s a friend of mine that I don’t like very much.”
Someone does something. You’re offended, perhaps rightfully and justifiably so. You point it out. Then you forgive. You “turn the other cheek” and risk whatever it was that happened, happening again.
Because that’s how they will know we are Jesus’ followers: by our love.
Love is kind and gentle and all those things. But love also knows how to speak the truth, and truth often causes storms. Love knows how to survive the disagreements, how to not seek vengeance, but to … love.
Jesus, as always, is the example. He was silent before his accusers and did not call down revenge from heaven on those who assaulted him. He was tried and executed even though he was never convicted.
Instead, he prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Not that what was happening wasn’t unjust, unfair, just plain wrong on so many levels. But forgive them, because they didn’t know any better.
If they knew who they were crucifying, chances are they wouldn’t have done it.
It’s my responsibility to show them who that was.
