Jesus For President

Ok, so it's been a while...a long while. And this post is probably going to be fairly brief.

We all face conflict at some point. For most of us, it is an everyday occurrence that defines daily life. In Claiborne's book, Jesus For President, he talks about how Christ dealt with conflict. While it was very enlightening, I can't say that it stuck with me. The book is put together in an almost journal-like fashion, which made it interesting to the eye, but for an ADD person like myself, it is distracting.

Some of the points that did stick with me: Jesus would never run for president. In many places in the Bible, kings, rulers and governments were referred to as evil. To prove that point further, the author describes how God freed the Israelites from Pharaoh and had this essentially Utopian society all set up and waiting for them. But what did they do? They begged for a king! God was not pleased because he had just freed them from tyranny, and here they were asking for it again. It took a brief look at the way of life that God had planned out for His people, and I have to say, it was a pretty sweet deal. And I now blame the Israelites for Obama. They wanted to be ruled, and they got it. I'm just sayin'. Another point that really got me was the passage where Jesus tells us to 'turn the other cheek'. I always misunderstood that verse. Instead of telling us to be doormats and take the constant beating of others, Claiborne points out that in Jewish custom, one could only strike another with the right hand. And Jesus specifically says, 'if a man strikes you on the left cheek, turn and offer him your right'. Well, for a man to strike someone in an inferior way, it would be a back hand, which is what Jesus is describing. But when you turn and offer him your right cheek, you are offering to let him strike you with his pen hand or fist, which you would only do to an equal. So, I'm not quite sure how that helps the situation, I'm sure that Christ had meaning for that, and it will come to me when He wants it to. I'm not sure I am the person to be telling anyone else how to handle conflict management. Can't teach what you haven't mastered.

Ok, so the two points above aside, I can't think of any part of that book that just jumped out at me. So, I'll just move on to something else. :)