Anti-Christans Telling Christians What Their Scripture Means

Michael Brown has a piece over at Townhall.com today about the moral equivalence being created in social media between Islamic terrorism and so called Christian Terrorism. The article entitled Planned Parenthood Shooting and Anti-Christian Hysteria illustrates once again (sigh) there is no lie these people will not tell with apparently straight faces in order to support their agenda.

To the best of their abilities, the police have determined shooter was not associated either with a Christian group or denomination, or with a pro-life group.  The shooter in fact appears to be a nut job who once again slipped through the cracks of our mental health system.  Like others, as a Christian, I pray for the families of those killed, as well as for the shooter (who I will not name here) and his family.

Brown, though, asks his social media tormentors to read the Bible in context and show him where the Bible supports this kind of behavior.  After all, you can find all sorts of texts in the Koran supporting Islamic terrorism.  These texts are in turn modeled in the life of the Prophet and throughout Muslim history.  Brown:

So, I have a challenge for everyone who wants to brand the tragic Planned Parenthood shooting an act of Christian terrorism: Find one verse in the New Testament, in context, or one example from the early Church, or one statement from a recognized pro-life organization that supports these murderous acts.

Before somebody comes out with supposed "quotes' which allegedly "prove" something, I would remind them of the fact that the Bible must be read as it was intended to be read by those who wrote it. The way in which it tells the story of Jesus is often allegorical, and would have been instantly understood by ancient readers. It is not a newspaper, and one has to dig into it to get the message. Jesus said, for example, to pluck out your eyes if they offend you, but he didn't mean to literally pluck out your eyes. If he did, we would have a lot of blind Christians running around.  He also didn't literally mean we could handle snakes without getting bitten.  Such ostentatious shows of "faith" come under the heading of "thou shall not tempt the Lord..."  Rather, he was referring in the case of plucking eyes to thoughts which come between you and God, and prevent one from having a perfect relationship with Him. Reading the Bible in this manner, one will not find even in the Old Testament, anything that supports the notion of Christian terrorism.

Frankly, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when I hear that an anti-Christian is trying to tell us what our own scripture and experience says.  I have to remember that Jesus asked for forgiveness for the very people who crucified him while on the cross!  With that as an example, I can surely find it in my heart to forgive these people, and hope they eventually do not suffer the consequences of their present ways.