Cruelty Justified

I’ve been the target of violence, anger, hate, and people wanting to take me down a peg in response to personal insecurities. We’ve all been there.

Justifications for such actions are myriad, yet the same. They are assertions of power, privilege, dominance, position, right, superiority, or personal worth. The violent deem their actions justified—they are self-defense.

"I'm just defending" my land, people, family, position, authority, self-worth, superiority, ownership, understanding of reality, place in the world. "You are a threat" to my sense of worth and all the things on which I build my sense of security, value, or belonging.

It's how we justify rape. It's how we justify war. It's how we justify business decisions, slavery, human-trafficking, subsistence wages, imprisonment, profits, borders, tariffs, the Second Amendment, armored police vehicles, nuclear weapons, murder, capital punishment, and condemning people who challenge us. It's behind our distrust of experts, science, church organizations, and animus to all things communist, socialist, liberal, conservative, or foreign.

The existence of the queer community is not a threat to the larger community. A child’s gender identity or developing sexual orientation are not threatened by reading queer literature any more than by exposure to Biblical narratives of heterosexuality, rape, incest, polygamy, adultery, and monogamy.

If we want to build a strong community based on Biblical values, we should try making it look the way Jesus cared for the hungry, poor, vulnerable, sick, marginalized, vilified, blind, lame, and foreigners.

Love is always justified. It is its own justification.

Try as we will, justifications for cruelty always fall flat. They are always misdirected and short-sighted.

There are no witches in the woods causing our crops to fail. God sends rain upon the just and unjust alike. We could learn from that. We could err on the side of mercy, grace, and compassion. It would make us more like Jesus, if serving God is really what we are concerned with. It would make us more like Jesus, even if that is not our actual goal. My atheist friends want us to be more like Jesus. Can we make that our goal?



— ©Copyright 2025, Christopher B. Harbin 



http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/

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