[greymule]

"An eye for an eye" was an admonition to keep the punishment proportionate to the crime. Unfortunately, many people looking for something to attack in our Judeo-Christian heritage delight in spouting the nonsense that it was encouragement to poke out people's eyes, to react with violence. We heard this from the crowd that after September 11 wanted the U.S. to look within itself for why we got the terrorists mad at us. These were the people saying, "If we bomb them, that will only perpetuate the cycle of violence. Be nice to terrorists and they'll be nice to us. We're so rich and we don't share enough. An eye for an eye and everybody will be blind, etc."

In fact, in Matthew 5:38 and 39, Jesus referred to "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" mainly to preach, "Don't operate that way in your personal life"!

[Edited by greymule on May 31st, 2002 at 03:36 PM]