Years ago while my brother and I lived with our parents, he and I would get into spats over clothing. It’s funny to laugh about now, but back then it felt like it was going to ruin our friendship as brothers. He would “borrow” my clothes, jackets, socks, you name it. I would become furious each time I looked for a t-shirt and couldn’t find it. Anytime I couldn’t find something I assumed my brother was borrowing it. I’d look through his dresser drawers and find clothes I thought went missing months prior. I would take my complaints to my parents, they would speak to him, and the cycle would start all over again. I was exasperated. I went to my pastor, Dr. Steve Schell, and explained the situation, hoping for some sage advice to help resolve this. He told me for the sake of our relationship, it would be better to just give up being frustrated over the clothes and focus on maintaining a healthy relationship with him as I moved out. I was honestly surprised at his answer. I wasn’t expecting him to give me the green light to turn my brother into a punching bag, but I felt I was entitled to something! At the end of it all, it was better for me to just let it go. Belongings have no comparison to our relationships with other people, especially our family. I desperately wanted to engage in some form of retaliation, but I received godly advice, applied it to my situation, and it paid off. Today, I can laugh about it with my brother as a comical joke of our brotherhood. Had I tried to retaliate, I don’t know what our relationship would be like today. Maybe our relationship would have deteriorated into nothing. In the moment I felt real frustration and anger, despite being able to laugh about it today. I didn’t tell my brother what I was choosing to do (just in case he wanted to borrow more clothes). I just did it. It was one of the most valuable lessons I learned in letting go of offenses, and keeping the big picture in mind with God’s redemptive plans for humanity. Although this story pales in comparison with others’ pain at being mistreated in life, I know what it is to feel frustrated at being mistreated, and there be no recourse. At the micro level with this story, I want to show on the macro level what God is calling His church to in all forms of forgiveness, reconciliation, and non-retaliation.

The Merriam-Webster’s definition of retaliation is: to return like for like especially: to get revenge, to repay in kind.

The title of this book, Retaliation and Our Neighbor, came to me amid my encounter with retaliation online. I read an article from The Christian Post1 about a prominent San Diego church threatening to bring a lawsuit against an orchestra claiming religious discrimination. The church had requested a date for renting a venue at the orchestra. The orchestra sent the church available dates, but the church didn’t respond quickly enough so they told the church that they were not allowing them a date at the venue. There was also talk of the orchestra not wanting to rent out to religious institutions, which may have led to their decision as well. The church then threatened to bring a lawsuit against the orchestra for religious discrimination. There are a lot of details to the story, and it’s a contentious argument as to whether the church or the orchestra was in the wrong. My comment on the Facebook post was that I believed Christians should avoid retaliatory lawsuits and suing if at all possible. It was short and sweet, with no attacking, no name calling, just a quick comment that I thought using the courts and lawsuits in retaliation to those who have reviled us was not an effective way of moving the Gospel forward. Wow, I was shocked by the responses I received! You can always expect criticism online when you publicly post your opinions, but all I got were personal attacks. I was floored, dumbfounded, not so much at the attacks but by who the attacks came from—Christians, or at least professing Christians. I admit I snooped on their profiles. I received personal attacks and condescending comments about my opinion that I thought it better that we, as Christians, didn’t retaliate when we were persecuted. And the very people that retaliated against me were Christians! I’m thick-skinned. I didn’t lose sleep over the derogatory comments. However, I was more bothered by the fact that many professing Christians not only verbally retaliated against me, but they defended the position that Christians are permitted to retaliate against non-Christians. How is it that Christians not only believed in retaliation but encouraged retaliation toward our neighbor? I believe this mindset stems from multiple factors:

Anger toward the many changes we have seen in recent decades in the United States, both politically and spiritually.

Lack of faith in Jesus’ teachings about the Kingdom of God.

Improper biblical interpretation from many pulpits and from personal readings of Scripture.

I want to address these three issues as I believe they get to the heart of why many Christians believe retaliation towards our neighbor is permitted by Scripture.

It is my belief, based on what Scripture has said, that what the church in San Diego did in threatening to sue the orchestra was unbiblical. Did they have the legal right to sue? Yes. But should Christians threaten to sue if they believe they are being discriminated against? No. It would have been better for the church to apologize for not getting back to the orchestra sooner. Or politely ask them to reconsider, and if they didn’t, move on. Or offer to send a team of volunteers to clean up at the orchestra as a gesture of goodwill. But threatening to sue gives a bad name for Christianity, that church, and any future work that Christians might attempt with that orchestra in the future. What’s more important? To be right and to get what we are entitled to? Or keep the 40,000ft perspective on earthly matters and remember that we are ambassadors of Heaven?

The premise of this book is to show that Christians are held to a higher standard than the examples we are seeing in our country right now. The mega-church in San Diego is not what Jesus had in mind when He gave His Sermon on the Mount. What I ask of you, as the reader, is to have an open heart, humble spirit, and ears to hear what God has said to us through Scripture and through the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit.

Anger

You might say, “How is our anger connected to a belief that retaliation is permitted?” I would say that anger is a powerful emotion. Anger clouds our judgment; it can cause division in families, churches, and friendships. Anger used in its proper abode is fuel for accomplishing God’s tasks in fighting wickedness. In its natural habitat of the flesh, it is a flaming sword that pummels hermeneutics, forgets about faith, and sees one object, an object of retaliation. When we become unrighteous in our anger, we lose our sense of the Spirit; we become more like Cain than we do Jesus. When we’ve been hurt, humiliated, and offended, anger becomes the means to blind ourselves to what we’re about to do.

I was driving home from work one night, and I made a left turn at a green light and ensured I had enough time to not cut anyone off as others across from me were turning right from across the intersection. As I made my way down the road, a car that had made that right-hand turn came up behind me, and as we slowed down at a red light, I saw his seething eyes and clenched mouth as he held up two middle fingers at me. He felt that I had made my turn too close to his turning; he, in response, had blown a head gasket (figuratively) and wanted to make sure I knew that he hated me. I’ll admit, my first mental response was anger, and I quickly imagined myself getting out of my truck and beating him to a pulp. I thought to myself, I lift weights, know how to fight, and could destroy this guy. I then imagined myself sitting in a jail cell, ruining my life, and that thought quickly faded. I then thought to myself, I should flip him off too! I didn’t do anything wrong; I gave myself plenty of space! Then the Holy Spirit spoke to me, condemning my wicked thoughts, reminding me that this man was an image bearer of the Creator just as I was. I immediately felt guilt and shame for thinking such evil thoughts about a fellow human who God loved very much. I began to imagine this man and how broken he must be to be so angry and cut off from God. I didn’t see myself as superior to him but rather an equal who had merely experienced God’s grace and now lived in the Spirit and not in the flesh. I repented of my wicked thoughts and began to pray for the man. To retaliate would be to violate God’s command to turn the other cheek, violate His decrees of how His Kingdom operates, and break our human-to-human relationship as God had intended in Eden. Peace, not violence.

I tell that story as an example of how blinding anger can become. We have become immune to our rage and allow our emotions to rule us. As Christians, we do not have the right to live in unrighteous anger. We can only be angry about injustice and wickedness. Our anger must not be in retaliation but in agreement with God’s wrath toward evil.

Lack of Faith

The question of faith goes beyond belief. Faith in the Messiah Jesus is made known through allegiance. Even the demons “believe” in Jesus and that He is the Son of God. However, they are not faithful to Him and do not submit to His authority willingly. In Matthew Bates’s book Salvation By Allegiance Alone and Teresa Morgan’s book Roman Faith And Christian Faith, they propose and defend the position that faith, or “pistis” in Greek, means much more than belief. Pistis’ meaning is rich in themes, such as fidelity, allegiance, faithfulness, and trustworthiness. When we, as Christians, are commanded to have faith in the Messiah, we are commanded to give our allegiance to Him as our reigning King. Allegiance to a higher authority in 1st-century Jewish history meant public openness and obedience to the authority’s decrees. To disobey the higher power was to be unfaithful and shameful. I bring this up as an introduction to the idea that many evangelical Christians in the United States today are closet Christians and lack legitimate allegiance to Jesus and his Kingdom decrees. I don’t think this statement is a shocker, as it’s well known that many professing Christians in America have been lacking faithful obedience to Jesus. The lack of faith, though, becomes pertinent to our discussion as there are real-world effects of this. When a Christian reads the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:38-40, where He says,

“You have heard that it was said, ‘AN EYE FOR AN EYE, AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also.”

Jesus is taking the abusive nature of retaliation and flipping it upside down. He expects that His people will live by a new standard. Once, it was an eye for an eye, but now, it is to show love in the face of antagonism. Jesus has ushered in a new way of being human in the inauguration of His established Kingdom on earth. We privately claim our salvation by faith in Jesus while publicly giving allegiance to the abusive nature of retaliation. It is a lack of trust because we know the truth in that there’s a better way to be human and that the fruit of the Spirit ought to sprout from our lives, but we often instead, choose to ignore our King’s decrees and submit our will to our flesh. I don’t say this as a condemnation of those that fail (as we all do) but as a lack of spiritual maturity. The deeper we go into our obedience to the Messiah, and the more authentic our allegiance to Him becomes, the more we take the Sermon on the Mount as the creed of our life. The Sermon on the Mount is the Christian law of ethical behavior. It is Jesus’ Magnum Opus, if you will, for His intended purposes of human living. The Sermon on the Mount is a reversal of Eden, a reversal of Cain, a reversal of abusive and dark thinking.

As the church, the unified (or maybe not so unified) church, we are supposed to help fulfill the promise from God to Abraham that his covenant family would be a blessing to the nations of the earth. Are we that blessing? When we curse our brother, slap our enemy, withhold forgiveness, kill with our heart, and speak words of death online, do we not hold back God’s plans of blessing the nations? If we have faith in the Messiah, then we obey His decrees. We view His Kingdom as superior and of the highest order in mission for our lives. And this is why I decry a lack of faith because we, the church, lack it. I don’t say this with a victim mentality or to say all is lost, but rather that we must acknowledge our lack of obedience to Jesus’ commands and commit ourselves to the higher order of Jesus’ Kingdom on earth.

Improper Biblical Interpretation

Many of the issues we have in differing church doctrines in the United States come from a lack of sound biblical interpretation. For example, a Christian reads Jeremiah 29:11,

“For I know the plans I have for you”, declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

and only expects God’s prosperity and blessing, and when disasters such as divorce or sickness happen, there’s frustration at why God hasn’t come through. Though we do believe that God does have hope and a future for us, we can’t take a single verse and base an entire theology of prosperity on it. One of the problems is Christians are getting sound-bite theology from Hobby Lobby decorations or Facebook memes. Sound biblical interpretation comes from a multi-faceted approach to understanding history, context, rhetoric, authorial intent, and other vital tools for understanding Scripture.

The issue I see with many Christians’ poor understanding of retaliation comes from misunderstanding the Apostle Paul’s stance on lawsuits in 1 Corinthians 6, in that they believe Paul only prohibited lawsuits among the brethren in his admonishment in 1 Corinthians 6:1,

“Does anyone of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints?”

Further in his argument, he addresses brethren bringing lawsuits against brethren and encourages the church to be wronged and defrauded rather than retaliate. Going back to v1, Paul addresses the “heteron”, which is the Greek word for “the other, one’s neighbor”. A brethren can be a neighbor, but so can a stranger. Paul breaches the subject of suing in this chapter as a negative and shameful action. If suing is shameful in general, how much more so against a fellow brother or sister in the house of God? A proper hermeneutic reveals that this principle for avoiding suing is not singularly tied to the circle of believers but is a principle that believers should embrace for their neighbor and especially their family in Christ.

It is true, in the context of this passage, Paul is addressing specifically two believers that are neighbors, and as the context unfolds, we see that Paul is dealing with Corinthian believers bringing lawsuits against one another in secular courts. His admonishment is to avoid suing (as they are retaliatory) and bring disputes before the church. It is degrading and shameful to retaliate against a fellow believer in the secular courts. All disputes ought to be resolved under the authority of the church if at all possible. It would be nearly impossible to bring an unbeliever before the church with a dispute, hence the encouragement in many passages to overlook and let go of trespasses against us.

And this leads us to the question of whether or not retaliatory lawsuits against unbelievers are permitted. The answer is no. Even though the specific context of this passage is dealing with two believers, the overarching principle of non-retaliation extends to the unbeliever through Peter’s words in 1 Peter 3:9,

“Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.”

Or Paul’s own words in Romans 12:17-18,

“Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”

Again in 1 Thessalonians 5:15,

“Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.”

In all of these passages from Peter and Paul, they begin their exhortations with believers in their behavior towards other believers, but then as the passages continue the stream of thought, it includes non-believers as well. With this principle of non-retaliation being extended beyond our brethren unto the unbeliever, how do we discern what methods of the use of law are appropriate in the 21st century compared to the 1st century?

1st-century Roman law was not in favor of the Jew or Christian. Retaliation against a Roman soldier for example, would have been illegal and with dire consequences. Hence, Jesus’ words in Matthew 5 compelled the Jews to resist oppression through love and forgiveness rather than through violence and revolution.

1st-century Roman laws favored Roman citizens, which Paul was. Paul had legal protection, which he used in Acts 22 to protect himself from further physical and political harm, but refrained from taking retaliatory revenge.

21st-century law in the United States protects religious freedom and speech but there are still instances of discrimination towards religious institutions and people.

21st-century Christians should use the law as a means of protecting themselves but not as a way of “getting back” at someone just because they have the legal right. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should.

The law is meant to protect us, not to fight back against others. The blur of these two statements often becomes hard to differentiate in the heat of challenging issues.

Forgetting Paul’s caution in v1 could lead someone to think that Paul is only talking about avoiding lawsuits with fellow brothers, but Paul says,

“Do you dare take these matters with your neighbor before the unrighteous?”

Paul also uses the phrase “the neighbor” in Romans 13:8, where he says,

“Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.”

In Paul’s eyes, loving our neighbor (including the unbeliever) is the pinnacle of fulfilling God’s law. There is no more excellent aim in life than to love God and our neighbor. Paul’s choice of words is always intentional. In 1 Corinthians 6, if he only meant avoiding lawsuits with the brethren, but the unbelievers were fair game, he would have used the word “hagios” for saint v1, or he would have used “adelphos” for a member of the same religious community v5. The fact that he uses the phrase “the neighbor” in the first verse, along with a rhetorical dare, indicates that Paul assumes a believer would and should avoid a lawsuit with brethren and unbelieving neighbors. To think that Paul means a fellow brother in Christ when he says “the other, or neighbor”, we must then assume that Paul also indicates that fulfilling the law of love (Romans 13:8-10) means that we only have to love the brethren and not the unbeliever to fulfill that law. Nonsense! Does Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 mean nothing, then? The Samaritan and the Jew were “heteron” (the neighbor) to each other. The last thing they saw themselves as were “adelphos” (of the same religious community). Are Jesus’ words meaningless when he asks,

“Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands”?

Of course, we know the answer. The one who was a friend and neighbor to the beaten man was also his religious and cultural adversary, the Samaritan. The heart of Jesus’ message, spilled into Paul’s Gospel message, speaks volumes of loving the stranger and being willing to forgive our enemy despite their undeserved hatred.

Let’s play devil’s advocate for a moment. Let’s say Paul doesn’t extend the command to avoid lawsuits with unbelievers in 1 Corinthians 6:1. Does that change the overarching hermeneutic of Jesus’ command that we love our enemies and turn the other cheek when struck? A theologically sound interpretation of Paul results in a harmony of both Jesus’ message and Paul’s. If Jesus says not to retaliate against our enemies, but Paul allows it, do we not have two different Kingdom messages? With the harmony of Paul’s message and Jesus’ and the correct usage of “the neighbor” in v1, it is evident that Paul intends that the Corinthians should not engage in retaliatory lawsuits with brethren or neighbors. This is because God’s covenant people do not retaliate, they instead pray for their enemy and are willing to forgive. As painful and frustrating as it may be at times, the way of Jesus and His Kingdom is peace, forgiveness, and love. There are cases where a lawsuit is permitted for the purpose of protecting the innocent but not for the purpose of retaliation. The law is good and should be used but only for the purposes of building up and not tearing down. This concept will be unpacked further in the following chapter.

Returning to my thoughts on the Facebook comment I posted and the retaliation I received. There was a lot of anger towards my position of refraining from retaliating with a lawsuit. I believe the anger stems from frustration at the state of our nation, politically, spiritually, and culturally. Frustration is at an all-time high at laws being broken with no repercussions, frustration at men and women not standing up for what’s right, and frustration about changing our nation and looking less and less like what we’ve had in the past. I completely understand these frustrations, and many of them are valid. My comment must have seemed as if I were some hippy peace guy who wouldn’t stop evil if it inconvenienced me. President Trump just had his home raided by the FBI the day before, and I noticed that everyone who retaliated against me was a conservative Christian. I think they saw what felt like an injustice to the law, and here’s a young guy saying we should turn the other cheek when we are under persecution.

Little did they know that I enlisted in the Air Force when I was nineteen and am a politically conservative, Constitutional, Spirit-filled Christian. But I was the enemy because I believed we should not retaliate against those who discriminated against us. I believe in the law and upholding the law, but there are better ways than a church threatening to sue. Anger clouds our judgment, and many angry Christians reacted towards me with clouded judgment in how they spoke. I must reiterate that I wasn’t bothered by what was said to me; instead, I was disturbed by the anger from Christians directed at a fellow brother. Some might argue that we are too soft in our speech as it is and that we need more direct speech. I agree that direct speech is rare in our culture, where truth has become irrelevant, and people can’t stand up for their beliefs. However, Christians must be charitable, loving, and compassionate and emulate Christ in all behavior. Jesus was generous and spoke with truth and love. He also called Pharisees children of the devil. There is a time and a place for robust and direct speech for heretics and hypocrites. But is powerful, angry speech needed for those with whom you disagree? I would argue no. Better to save harsh words for heretics and let compassionate words flow toward our spiritual family and neighbors.

These three ideas of anger, lack of faith, and improper biblical interpretation are what I believe fuel the fire of retaliation in the Christian community. For us as Christians to advance the Kingdom of God, we must understand what Jesus says about revenge, non-retaliation, self-defense, the law, submission to civil authority, submission to biblical law, and living a Spirit-filled, Spirit-led life. All of this won’t come about from a short book, but my purposes are to shed light on some of the dark acceptances of western Christianity. What hinders the Gospel of Jesus’ Kingship on earth is His covenant people breaking His laws and indulging in the flesh rather than the Spirit. If we desire to be a people that bring about world-changing, Kingdom-living ethics to our society, then we need to be people who trust in Jesus’ way of doing things. I think a lot of the fear is that if we don’t retaliate, we look foolish, weak, and ripe for pillage. But what if the ways of prayer and mercy are the ways of spiritual combat? What if our war isn’t about getting even but showing a higher form of being human? If we lead the way and show the better way, we will see a good and powerful change in our society. However, if we continue to be ruthless, unmerciful, retaliatory, and spiteful just like them, why would they want to follow Jesus?