We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

Anabaptist Response to the Attacks in Paris and Beirut

Anabaptist Response to the Attacks in Paris and Beirut

https://youtube.com/watch?v=paUtIl-oRpM&feature=youtu.be

Our friend Bruxy Cavey, the pastor at The Meeting House in Toronto shares some thoughts on how to respond to the violence that is going on in the world. He writes:

The Meeting House is a Historic Peace Church. In responding to terrorism, we don’t presume to tell governments what they should do, for they bear the sword (Romans 13). However Jesus and the early Church leaders were clear – the Church should not bear the sword, in action or in attitude (Matt 5; Luke 6; Romans 12; etc). We fight a different kind of war.

Related Reading

Is Having the “Right” Theology the Core of Christianity?

Last week, we posted a piece by Greg that challenges the practice being violent “in the name of Jesus” toward others who err theologically. (Click here to read this post.) Being that this piece got a lot of attention, we thought it worthwhile to provide some further explication to this point, especially in the light…

How Revelation Uses Violent Images in an Anti-Violent Way

All the violent scenes in Revelation are symbols for the battle of truth and deception.  They never involve literal violence. In fact, they symbolize ANTI-VIOLENCE. The ingenious way John helps us get free of deception of trust in violent power is by taking a standard violent symbol and juxtaposing it with a symbol that undermines…

The Final Battle in Revelation

I will conclude this series on the violent imagery in Revelation by addressing the infamous eschatological battle scene found in 19:11-21, for it is this graphically violent section of Revelation that is most frequently appealed to by those who argue against the claim that Jesus reveals an enemy-loving, non-violent God that is unconditionally opposed to…

Would God Kill a Baby To Teach Parents a Lesson?

Question: We have a group of guys that are going through your book “Is God to Blame” and a question came up that I would be curious how you would look at it. In the beginning of the book you ask the question “do you really think that God kills babies to teach parents a lesson?”…

Responding to Critics On A Pacifist View of the Syrian Crisis

On September 3rd, I wrote a post entitled What I – a Pacifist – Would Say to Obama About the Syrian Crisis in response to a number of questions I was getting, and judging from the “shares” and Twitter activity, this essay seems to have struck a chord. Not surprisingly, it also generated some criticism, for…

True Serenity

Andrew Sullivan pointed readers today to this meditation on two sources of spiritual serenity. Rather than relying on the absence of conflict or our own privilege, the writer asks us to go deeper to the source of all real peace. From the article: Such reliance knows God to be a rock that enables us to…

Tags: