On Twitter last week in the aftermath of the whole Porter situation someone mentioned the issue of turning the other cheek. Now first off I don’t think in any<\/i> legitimate interpretation of turning the cheek it means submitting to abuse particularly spousal abuse. I know there is sadly a strong thread in the Jewish, Christian, & Islamic tradition that doesn’t see this as horrific as it is. That is men who justify running a home like a corrupt totalitarian government on the basis of a few scriptures. However that’s clearly not what Christ taught and certainly isn’t what turning the cheek means. Fortunately I got into an interesting discussion on the issue with Zina Peterson. She brought up an interpretation I’d honestly never seen before.[1]<\/p>\n
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The normal interpretation of Jesus’ remarks is that he’s trying to get people past retributive justice. The idea is that we are to want the best even for our enemies. From a contemporary gospel perspective we recognize that they are our brothers and sisters who have forgotten who they were. While they are doing evil, often violent things, this is in part because they haven’t been touched by the truth.<\/p>\n
Tied to this is a notion of not valuing the self. Not in the way an abused person often comes to feel worthless. Rather in the sense that saving others is more important than our own feelings of justice due to wrongs against us. It’s almost a Buddhist sense of focusing on others with love from a position of strength where we lose the self in that love. Christ’s own sacrifice where he freely submitted to the authorities and allowed himself to suffer egregious violence and death is the archetype of this view. As such Matthew 5 and Luke 6 are a kind of foreshadowing of what is to come as Christ puts this in practice to save even those who wrong him.<\/p>\n
An obvious problem with this approach is the old problem of when one should stop wrongs and when one should submit to them. The New Testament isn’t very clear on that point. (IMO)<\/p>\n
Zina’s interpretation is slightly different. It sees non-violence as an act of defiance. For those familiar with Ghandi’s non-violent methods to gain Indian independence, this is somewhat similar. Non-violence almost becomes a quasi-violent way of reacting to violence. It’s hard not to think of bad Rocky movies where Rocky is saying, “not so tough. Hit me again.” That’s the general idea. Someone slaps you and you turn the cheek to say, try it again.<\/p>\n