Violent Jesus and the Robber's Den pt. 1

For those of you that follow my blog, I wrote on peace and violence a while back (click here to read the post that started the series). During that four part series a few questions were raised: God's "violence" in the First Testament, Jesus mostly nonviolence, etc. Since then, I have been trying to work through those issues with friends and mentors, and although I do not have all the answers I would like to propose my own thoughts on Jesus' nonviolence. Whenever I push nonviolence as a means to fight evil, as Jesus did, someone usually says, "What about that scene in the Temple, he didn't seem very nonviolent there" referring to what we call "the Temple cleansing" passage in Matt. 21:12-14, Mark 11:16-18, and Luke 19:45-47.

When looking at these passages I asked a few questions: What is the context and why did the author choose to put this story where he did? What did Jesus and his contemporaries think of his actions? Can we take this story at face value or is there some deeper meaning? Do we simply use this proof-text as a way to justify "righteous anger", not selling things at church, or to say that Jesus really was violent? Finally, if Jesus was violent in his message why is this the only violent recording of his life?

I am sure there are more questions, but those are the ones that I think about when the church tells me their different responses to the passages stated above. I am not satisfied with what I have been told and so I feel compelled to respond to those questions and I challenge you as you read through this blog and hopefully through the passages in question that you will come up with some questions of your own and that you will not be afraid to ask them, nor be afraid of the answers you might receive.

I started out with the intention of answering these questions in one blog, but I realize now that it will be far to long for me to do that and for the sake of mine and your sanity, I will break these questions up into a few manageable portions over the next week or two.