Turn the Other Cheek - Hebrew style

I have spent most of my younger child's life trying to get him to learn how to take the high road, to understand that people that tease and bully need to be prayed for and walked away from...I teach him there is a limit to how far you walk and then you no longer turn away. With his Aspergers, it has been hard at times to explain these things to him.

Now, in the last day or so, I find myself having to explain to him that he may very soon face the day where he is put to the test as a Christian. I have had to explain to my young son that within his lifetime, he may be beaten or tortured or turned out by the lost for his belief in Christ.

No matter what, it is no longer time to turn the other cheek. In the time of the Old Testament, the Jewish men and women did not turn the other cheek and offer the other in passive supplication. What a farce! You do not back away when you are threatened. You stand tall, enlightened in the Word, with the Holy Spirit within you to guide you.

Jesus was not teaching us to acquiesce. He taught us to not be oppressed. Social customs of earlier Jewish times notes historically that one would have to be backhanded by the right hand of the slapper to be slapped or struck on the right cheek. This is so, as it was considered insulting to the slapper to touch another by a left hand. Being backhanded by a slap or strike also notes a derogatory blow, rather than a strike against a social equal. Therefore, to be struck against the right cheek as Jesus describes would have been an insult to the individual being struck. The individual would have been thought by the person slapping to be beneath him socially and spiritually.

By offering the person slapping you the other cheek, you are not allowing yourself further attack. You are stating several things: I am not beneath you; I am not less than you; You are not better than me. Offering your left cheek notes you will not be humiliated and consider yourself equal to the striker.

For this, I will continue to teach my children to not insight vengeance, but to stand tall and do not falter.

The time is coming. It is near at hand. It is now. In the time constant, the time that is coming,  is near, and is past is now. The time is here. We are being tested. I will not deny my Lord.

If my Lord is at the right hand of my Father and my Lord is within me, then my Lord (literally) is no more than 3 feet from my right side. I only have to stretch out my right arm to see how close to me my Father is by my side...Forever within me and by my side.

I am saddened, but not digressing, that the time has come to teach and prepare my child to be prepared for the day when someone may battle him for his knowledge of the One True Lord. We are in a religious war and the day will soon come where you will be forced to state what you stand for...don't wait until the rooster has sounded to make your stand.