Tomorrow’s Lectionary<\/a> includes a passage from Romans – beautiful and inspiring, but also hard to put into action – especially this forgiveness thing…<\/p>\n\n\n\n“12:19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
12:20 No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.”
12:21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nBut how are you to forgive, when someone else vulnerable has been hurt by a bully? The need for justice also demands action from us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How can an enemy ‘burn’ with shame if they have no idea that what they are doing is wrong, because (for instance) they come out of a culture that’s deeply messed up? After all, speed limits are for sissies, aren’t they? There’s still a need to assert what’s right and what’s wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even so, the idea of contrary engagement can be powerful – like Jesus’ coat\/shirt thing (Luke 6:27-30)<\/em> – it is like the more recent idea of non-violent direct action. I think someone pointed out though, that the latter depends on things being fairly reported in the media. If the press are forced to be unfair, then we’re all in trouble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fair day today, but chilly; lovely for walking. Tomorrow’s Lectionary includes a passage from Romans – beautiful and inspiring, but also hard to put into action – especially this forgiveness thing… “12:19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Fair”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1544"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1545,"href":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1544\/revisions\/1545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobjanet.org.uk\/bobsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}