God never intended for us to have human kings & therefore never intended to find our enemies outside of us. He allowed & continues to allow these in our worlds so that, just like allowing sin & free will, the choice to follow Him would be guttural & meaningful. The real battle to fight, the real violence is against our one true enemy but it isn’t to redemptive, God has thrown the idea of his redemption out of heaven. He is a forever enemy & will be forever after the one thing that he can not have…our hearts.
How we navigate the rest of God’s children, Bin Laden, Hitler, Mao, etc is to be dictated by Jesus’s love for us. This is what we are allowed to debate & test methods & ideas all under the authority of Christ. Killing one to save many may be what that looks like, or it may not be.
We must never forget that our enemy isn’t the one next to us it’s the one not seen. Our real enemy has his dwelling place in our minds & the minds of God’s children.
Foreign policy under Democratic Presidents tends to be almost as violent as it is under Republicans. Obama had his drone strikes, greenlighted the Saudi war in Yemen, and there were some major outbreaks of violence between Israel and Hamas, with the U.S. invariably arming Israel and proclaiming its right to defend itself even as it caused the vast majority of civilian deaths. I know people who would nod their heads in agreement if you criticized Bush’s foreign policy in very harsh terms, but would reflexively become defensive or start rationalizing if someone criticized Obama on similar grounds.
I vote for Democrats myself, but people are far too prone to let partisan politics dictate what issues matter to them. So it isn’t a great surprise that this is true of Christians, both left and right.
I believe Tolkien doesn't believe in redemptive violence. Violence can even have his place in a broken world and be wielded by the good powerfull caracteres to non nefarious ends. However, especially in the Silmarillion, violence is almost always in the benefit of Morgoth, and the good side wins by other means, especially by singing.
Ironically, I just finished a novel last night that saved the world, or at least America, with "redemptive" violence. I read it out of curiosity because the author is someone I find to have a clear-headed, balanced and sound perspective on the political and cultural mess America is in right now. And since I am also about to begin the Interlude chapter of "The Slavery of Death", I am reminded that violence of some sort or another is never far from the human heart without true Redemption. My appetite for the former sort of literature has been seriously dulled. I appreciate you, Professor Beck!
What movies/novels would you recommend to show an alternative narrative?
-The Hidden Life (Terrence Malik)
And strangely enough, as far as popular shows, I think these all call the myth of redemptive violence into question…
-The Batman (Mat Reeves)
-Arrival (Denis Villeneuve)
-World War Z (Marc Forster)
God never intended for us to have human kings & therefore never intended to find our enemies outside of us. He allowed & continues to allow these in our worlds so that, just like allowing sin & free will, the choice to follow Him would be guttural & meaningful. The real battle to fight, the real violence is against our one true enemy but it isn’t to redemptive, God has thrown the idea of his redemption out of heaven. He is a forever enemy & will be forever after the one thing that he can not have…our hearts.
How we navigate the rest of God’s children, Bin Laden, Hitler, Mao, etc is to be dictated by Jesus’s love for us. This is what we are allowed to debate & test methods & ideas all under the authority of Christ. Killing one to save many may be what that looks like, or it may not be.
We must never forget that our enemy isn’t the one next to us it’s the one not seen. Our real enemy has his dwelling place in our minds & the minds of God’s children.
Foreign policy under Democratic Presidents tends to be almost as violent as it is under Republicans. Obama had his drone strikes, greenlighted the Saudi war in Yemen, and there were some major outbreaks of violence between Israel and Hamas, with the U.S. invariably arming Israel and proclaiming its right to defend itself even as it caused the vast majority of civilian deaths. I know people who would nod their heads in agreement if you criticized Bush’s foreign policy in very harsh terms, but would reflexively become defensive or start rationalizing if someone criticized Obama on similar grounds.
I vote for Democrats myself, but people are far too prone to let partisan politics dictate what issues matter to them. So it isn’t a great surprise that this is true of Christians, both left and right.
Would the penal substitutionary atonement model qualify as redemptive violence?
Do Tolkien and Lewis also draw from the streams of redemptive violence? Where are they also misguided, and where are they showing an alternative myth?
I believe Tolkien doesn't believe in redemptive violence. Violence can even have his place in a broken world and be wielded by the good powerfull caracteres to non nefarious ends. However, especially in the Silmarillion, violence is almost always in the benefit of Morgoth, and the good side wins by other means, especially by singing.
Ironically, I just finished a novel last night that saved the world, or at least America, with "redemptive" violence. I read it out of curiosity because the author is someone I find to have a clear-headed, balanced and sound perspective on the political and cultural mess America is in right now. And since I am also about to begin the Interlude chapter of "The Slavery of Death", I am reminded that violence of some sort or another is never far from the human heart without true Redemption. My appetite for the former sort of literature has been seriously dulled. I appreciate you, Professor Beck!