The Power to Kill and Restore to Life (Part Two)

The previous post ended on a false note. It is not strictly true that rabbis and pastors and Jews and Christians in general no longer have the power of the keys. They only wish they didn’t.

The power to kill and to save go hand in hand today as they always have. Every doctor knows it. Every police officer knows it. Every honest human being knows it. Every rabbi, every pastor knows it, even if we sometimes prefer to imagine ourselves as being powerless.

Even if we remake God into our own weak image in order to placate our fears, exorcise our demons, and justify our cowardice.

Then reality sets in, unless we are completely inane, and we realize we have the power to kill and to save, whether we like it or not.

Try as we might to take a ship to Tarshish, the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. Salvation and judgment continue to be filtered through human beings, some of whom know themselves to be under a divine charge.

Elisha tarnishes himself by cursing the children who mocked him. Rabbi Jochanan knew this, which is why he comments:

ורבי יוחנן אמר

ראה שלא היתה בהן לחלוחית של מצוה

ודלמא בזרעייהו ניהוה הוה

Rabbi Jochanan said:
[Elisha] saw that the lifeblood of the Imperative [a term for Torah] was not in them,
but why would there not be in their offspring? (Talmud Bavli, Sotah 46b)

Jochanan’s honest question was not shared by some of his peers, as the passage in the Talmud in which his words are recorded makes clear. Many exegetes, both Jewish and Christian, have looked for ways to excuse Elisha’s curse. Excuse my suspicion, but who are they protecting?

Peter tarnishes himself by his role in the death of Ananias and Sapphira (for the narrative, see the preceding post). He could have interceded for them, as Moses interceded time and again for the people of Israel, and prevailed. But Peter does not. He might have prayed, as did the one who would be his Savior, “forgive them, for they know not what they do.” But he did not.  

Not that anyone except a fool would claim to be morally superior to Elisha or Peter. We live in a different world, but there is more killing, not less, for which we are co-responsible. It’s just that we don’t wait for the Spirit of God to come upon us to do it. That’s too hit-and-miss. That’s hardly efficient.

We send an unmanned drone from afar to spy our enemy and then we let loose with a bunker-busting bomb from high altitude. If a few innocents are killed in the process, what the hay.¹

We tarnish ourselves in the process. At least I feel tarnished. This is our version of binding (not forgiving) or loosing (forgiving) the sins of others. The power of the keys. We pursue our enemies implacably in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we are tolerant and accepting of genocidal murderers who rule in Sudan and Zimbabwe. We forgive them 70 x 7. They are not our enemies. So we love them.

If a ruthless despot detains one of our own, we intervene, as we did in the case of Laura Ling. As for North Koreans under the same despot’s boot: let them starve. Let them die. Once again, this is our version of binding (not forgiving) and loosing (forgiving) the sins of others.

The Scriptures, if we hold them up carefully in front of our faces, are a mirror. If you do not see a reflection of yourself in Elisha and Peter at your best, fully equipped by the Spirit of God and in full pursuit of your calling if you are a believer, then I consider you a morally untrustworthy human being.

I realize, however, that we don’t read the Scriptures for the sole purpose of finding out that Elisha and Peter are simul iustus et peccator, that is, simultaneously in the right and sometimes even doing the right but also lacking something, messing up even big time. We read it to attain full confidence that, as Paul put it, where sin abounds, grace abounds even more. There, precisely there.

¹ I realize, of course, that when the Obama administration recently sent an unmanned drone to take out Baitullah Mehsud, we were simply following Jesus. We all remember the passage, “When Jesus’ disciples saw this, they said, ‘Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” He turned around and praised them and said, ‘You are the light of the world. Light the night sky with fire from heaven. You are the salt of the earth. Salt the fields of our enemies forever and ever.’”

Doug Magnum queries David’s proposal that Elijah’s curse and the bear’s meal are coincidental. Go here. 

Comments

[terri]

I don't know about the whole "tarnishing themselves" concept.

It's not as if we don't have stories of the prophets and patriarchs completely messing up both within their personal lives and in their ministries...e.g. Moses, Jonah. Yet...within those stories of mistakes, there is usually a clue that God was displeased. Whether it's his direct revelation of displeasure, or the plain speaking of one of his prophets, like Nathan, we frequently hear about it.

This story seems to have no counter-balance to it. I'm not sure that I would think that the author of 2nd Kings had the view that Elisha somehow did something wrong. In fact, it frequently seems to be the case that we have stories with a similar theme in the Old Testament in which people who slight the appointed authority figure of God have really bad things happen to them...Miriam and Aaron, the sons of Korah, etc.

As someone who does think that certain things have changed in the New Testament, I guess I would ask...how does this relate to Christian living now? Should we have that same fear of authority? Should we fear God's bears coming to maul us if we have acted as badly as those youths?

Obviously...let's not make fun of bald people.....just to be sure.

[JohnFH]

Hi Terri,

Thanks for the conversation.

You're right of course that sometimes specific acts are condemned within the biblical narrative, by figures such as Nathan, by an oracle from God to Moses, etc.

But you seem to downplay the many cases in which the Primary History recounts gruesome events without tipping the hand one way or the other about how and in what measure to pass judgment on particular acts and characters.

I would suggest that it is a common practice for the biblical narrator to presume that we will be horrified at appropriate times and junctures in the narrative, without feeling the need to point the matter out on a case-by-case basis. The author sometimes seems very deliberate about this, and very good at it, too, like Chekhov in his fabulous short stories.

Furthermore, it is typical of many biblical narrative that there are no Mr. Rights, or Mrs. Rights, but everyone in some sense or another is portrayed in their full humanity. No one comes out smelling like a rose, not even Moses and Samuel. In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the narrative makes this clear. If this last sentence is unclear to you, let me know.

For example, there are the repeated occasions in which a patriarch tries to pass off his wife as his sister, and all the trouble it causes. The plot itself confirms that the actions are unjustifiable, so that's easy. But when Sarah mistreats Hagar and rolls over Abraham, who himself looks like a dimwit, the plot and ending do not overwhelm the reader such that the misdeeds are labeled as such by the results they bring within the narrative.

One's own moral compass must be activated in order to come to conclusions in that sense. It is the case that conniving Abraham and Sarah are also recipients of the most glorious promises. Finally, if there ever was a saint and sinner rolled into one, indeed, a sinner saved by the grace of God alone over and again, it is Jacob.

Or reread Genesis 34: everyone messes up, just in different ways. Or what about Jephthah, his vow, and his daughter?

In all these cases, the narrator does not spell out for his readers a path through the moral complexities. The fact that later interpretation has often tended to interpret the narrative in such a way that the biblical lead characters are made out to be morally blameless says nothing about what the narrator might have reasonably imagined in terms of moral reactions from his original audience.

The original audience would have been relatively unencumbered by the need to "defend" their forebears from the damning implications of the text itself. At least I think that's a reasonable working hypothesis.

I think you're right that we are meant to take away from the story a fear of mistreating one of God's representatives. Not only because they possess unusual powers, I would add, but also because they sometimes abuse the power they are given.

This is an excellent rule to apply, not just to pastors and such, but also, doctors, lawyers, and professors.

[Doug Chaplin]

Or possibly the narrator isn't as interested in moral questions as his readers would like to think the Bible ought to be.

[terri]

"In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the narrative makes this clear."

Sometimes the narrator makes things clear. The book of Judges recounts all kinds of crazy stories....but it also frequently repeats that the children of Israel did "what was right in their own eyes."

As far as the story of Jephthah is concerned...He certainly had time to reconsider sacrificing his daughter. He waited two months so that she could mourn. Yet, the story almost seems to honor Jephthah's daughter as heroic, noting that the people commemorate her sacrifice.

As far as "defending" their forebears...is it at all possible that in certain cases they offer no defense, because they think there is nothing to defend? I just have a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea the author of 2 Kings really thought Elisha had done something wrong. Isn't it possible that you are reading into that particular story an ethic from a thoroughly Christian and New-Testament-informed perspective?

While there are glimmers of "love your enemies" in the OT, they are merely glimmers. Israel had no problem conceiving of physical, human enemies who needed to be destroyed.

Please don't misunderstand...I am not trying to say that somehow we in the Christian era are somehow more evolved and virtuous than the Israelites. However, we have benefited from thousands of years of history and accumulated Scripture and Christ. We're not "better" or "smarter".....just lucky enough to live in an era where we need not fear marauding bears. :-)

[JohnFH]

Doug,

The possibility you raise is interesting, but I am hesitant about it.

Here's an analogy. In the history of modern literature up to the present, it has often happened that someone who writes in an "amoral" style has been accused of being amoral.

Maybe it's true that Tarantino is amoral, or even immoral. It's possible. (I doubt it.) In the case of Chekhov, such an accusation, though it was made, is absurd.

The fact that the Primary History is, globally speaking, a highly moralistic reading of the past, though not always at the episode level, militates against the assumption that the narrator was, to misuse a term, "post-modern" in his morality.

For sure, of course, he had a morality out of sync with contemporary trends. But I see no reason to assume that he saw no moral issues involved in Elisha getting 42 children ripped to pieces. I would assume that he thought that even the positive characters in his narrative were far from perfect and could and did commit sins of omission and commission.

[JohnFH]

Hi Terri,

Excellent conversation.

Jephthah knew that if we went back on his vow, he put his own life in danger. He preferred to sacrifice his daughter rather than himself. He tarnishes himself in the process, even though, on another level, Israel needed Jephthah at the time, so that his daughter was expendable, and he was not. The result is that Jephthah's daughter is a tragic hero in the narrative.

It's a grim, miserable tale. The problem with the narrative is that it is realistic on so many levels. We don't want that in the Bible. If we look for escape literature in its pages, a nice chick flick or a tale of gratuitous violence, tragic or tragic with a happy ending, we will be disappointed. The narrative of the Bible grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go.

You say:

"I just have a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea the author of 2 Kings really thought Elisha had done something wrong."

My own sense is that the author of the Primary History does not traffic in black-and-white judgments of that sort when it comes to the "positive" characters in its narrative.

In several instances, the narrator seems incredibly aware of the moral complexities of life, far more so than readers on average today, who, you say, have "benefited from thousands of years of history and accumulated Scripture and Christ" (history completely belies that statement if you ask me. No century in human history was bloodier and darker than the 20th century).

The best book I know of on this subject is by Jacques Ellul, a French Reformed lay theologian, entitled "The Politics of God and the Politics of Man," translated by Geoffrey Bromiley, whose loss we now mourn.

I realize most people don't do this when they read the Old Testament, but if you read the following passages from the point of view of an ancient Israelite (insofar our historical imagination allows us to do so), the moral complexities treated therein are absolutely remarkable:

2 Kings 5:1-19; 6:24-7:17; 8:7-15: 9:1-10:36; 13:14-25; 16:1-20; 18:17-37; and 19:1-37.

Ellul treats them all.

[terri]

"In several instances, the narrator seems incredibly aware of the moral complexities of life, far more so than readers on average today, who, you say, have "benefited from thousands of years of history and accumulated Scripture and Christ" (history completely belies that statement if you ask me. No century in human history was bloodier and darker than the 20th century)."

I wasn't thinking of the world at large when I said that. I was intending it to be understood in terms of "believers" in the Judeo -Christian tradition.

[JohnFH]

I don't think that helps, Terri.

Those who fomented World War I, more or less on all sides, were believers in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Those who fought it were, for the most part, believers in the Judeo-Christian tradition. That was the first modern war, dwarfing all previous wars in bloodiness, death, and plain idiocy. A lot of good thousands of years of history and accumulated Scripture and Christ did them.

In some quarters, the natural result was a revulsion from engaging in war and a strategy of appeasement. Thus, when Hitler and Mussolini, who were not believers but who enjoyed the overwhelming support of believers in their respective countries, armed, killed and conquered, the reaction was meek to begin with, such that the eventual toll of carnage and destruction that occurred in order to stop them was correspondingly enormous.

Roosevelt and Churchill eventually turned the tide, and made use of the full resources of civil religion (a relatively strong phenomenon at the time) to do so. In the face of the horrors of the war, there were incredible acts of moral courage, but they were rare, and unbelievers, statistically speaking, outshined believers (I just read Diane Ackerman's The Zookeeper's Wife, a splendid account of the Polish resistance).

However you slice and dice it, it is not obvious from the way WWII was carried out that believers in the Judeo-Christian brought anything distinctive to the prosecution of the war, or took away from the war any important lessons, except perhaps Jewish believers, who learned to fight for and defend themselves once again, with sweet but also bitter results (the foundation of the state of Israel, and the constant wars Israel has fought ever since), except perhaps the Marshall Plan, the choice to rebuild the economies and infrastructures of the defeated.

I could go on. If you think you can prove how much progress believers in the Judeo-Christian tradition have made "from thousands of years of history and accumulated Scripture and Christ" by means of their prosecution of the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars, be my guest. I don't see it.

There was a time, it is true, in which people thought of the 20th century as one of moral progress. There is still a periodical, liberal of course, entitled "The Christian Century." But after all that has happened, and continues to happen, few in our lifetimes have the courage of that kind of optimism, if courage is the right word.

[terri]

John

wow..I feel like you took the ball and ran with that one...but it was in a direction I wasn't going.

I wasn't thinking in terms of geo-political intrigue, but more in terms of what individual people see as right and wrong....meaning that most Christians wouldn't think that cursing your enemies and having them mauled by bears is an acceptable way of handling insults.

20th century=bloodbath...I won't really argue with that. While certainly Christians have taken part in probably all major wars to some degree...the bodies piled up in Germany, Russia, and Cambodia were by no means put there by inherently Christian regimes....or caused by Christians committing war in the name of God.

I guess I'm perplexed by the idea that there wasn't a change in perspective with Christ's coming and the way of following God put forth by the New Testament....which is not to say that there is no value in the Old Testament, but certain attitudes that were acceptable then, aren't acceptable now....and vice versa...things that would have shocked the Israelites are considered not only normative, but essential to living the Christian life with liberty.

[JohnFH]

Terri,

I'm glad we are having this conversation online. It's the kind of discussion I've had over and over again with people verbally. If we had eye contact and I heard your heart through the tone of your voice, my guess is that I would find it easier to keep on track with your own particular concerns.

It sounds as if you think the way Christians and Jews have handled the wars they've been involved in or undertaken in the last 100 years doesn't look so bad compared to what anti-Christians and anti-Semites like Hitler and Stalin did. I suppose. I still do not see evidence of progress among believers in this area.

Do you really think that this passage from 2 Kgs teaches that having street urchins mauled by bears is an acceptable way of handling insults? I remain unconvinced that this is the correct understanding.

But if it is, are you willing to interpret the parallel passage in the book of Acts, the episode of Ananias and Sapphira, in the same way? If not, why not?

I pointed out a passage in Revelation in which the slain martyrs pray for redress. What do you think of this prayer? Is it sub-Christian in your eyes? I think people are way too quick to answer in the affirmative.

I'm wondering what "changes in attitudes" you have in mind.

It's true, for example, that Jesus is very restrictive about the conditions under which divorce is justified. This is a clear change of attitude. Of course, there were other strands of Judaism that also tightened up the loopholes in the same direction.

However, believers in the Judeo-Christian tradition tend to be in the permissive camp today, in practice if not quite in theory. The position which was dominant among the Pharisees, and became the consensus view in Judaism, has prevailed. Not the position of Jesus.

Perhaps you are thinking of attitudes toward the poor, toward women outside of the question of divorce (which continues to cause great suffering among women in particular, though that does not mean the solution is to keep marriages together in which respect is lacking), toward children, toward domestic servants.

I would suggest that, on the one hand, what we find in the New Testament is generally on a clear trajectory with what we find in biblical and post-biblical Judaism; that is, there are changes with respect to the surrounding culture, modest usually, toward an amelioration of the situation.

On the other hand, it is very easy to overdo the differences. In the New Testament, it is expected that slaves obey their masters, that wives submit to their husbands in all things, that children obey their parents, and so on.

It is also true that the gold standard in all of these relationships is the love that Christ exemplified. But that is not as different from the Old Testament as some people apparently think. The gold standard in the Torah in all interpersonal relationships is the love that God showed Israel in redeeming them from slavery. If anything, the emphasis on liberation is more brilliantly foregrounded.

Can you give examples of what you mean by attitudes an ancient Israelite would have found shocking, that Jesus had and taught?

I find it easy to think of things in both the Old and New Testaments that modern day people find shocking or unacceptable, but not so easy to think of things found in the Old Testament that the New Testament clearly does not condone, which modern people find shocking or unacceptable.

My basic thesis is that people tend to project onto the Old Testament attitudes they find objectionable, not to mention their own, less presentable selves, and project onto the New Testament their more presentable selves, and the "enlightened" opinions they have, whether or nor they are actually there in the New Testament.

The end result is an attained sense of moral superiority, and an uncritical attitude toward the "enlightened" opinions one has.

[terri]

I have several thoughts swimming in my head about this...some of which may seem slightly off-topic.

1. Getting back to Jephthah and his daughter. This is actually a good example to discuss. Going back and re-reading the story, I'm struck by a couple things. Jephthah makes his vow soon after the author says that the Spirit of the LORD came upon him. I have heard some people explain that Jephthah's vow wasn't as rash as it seemed, because animals frequently lived in a part of the "house" that Israelites dwelt in. I don't know if that is factual...or a stretch. Jephthah seems surprised and dismayed when his daughter comes out....which gives one the impression that this was not what he was expecting. Yet Jephthah, even in his surprise, moves forward with his vow.

Why? Because he was afraid of not fulfilling it? Because of his pride?

Is it possible that Jephthah goes through with it because he believes that God has willed this to happen? I have recently been thinking about the Jewish attitude in the Old Testament concerning fate/circumstances. Is it fair to say that Israelites attributed completed events/actions as being God's will simply because they occurred? In other words....Jephthah's daughter comes out first because God willed it that way, the bears mauled the youths because God willed it that way. There are no "coincidences" in this view.

It explains why some parts of Scripture portray God as using the Babylonians and Assyrians as his instrument of judgement, by His divine decree, and other parts portray God as angry and vengeful towards the Babylonians and Assyrians for the destruction they wrought on Israel.

So God made them conquer Israel, and then He was mad that they did.

We could try and say that's God's prerogative, but if we're not Calvinistic in our thinking, then we have a puzzle to work out.

When I am reading through these stories, that I readily admit leave me faint and scratching my head, trying to figure out how we got from there to Jesus, I am leaning heavily toward progressive revelation.

In the same way that the Mosaic code forbids marrying two sisters is a progression, possibly based on the results of Jacob's life story, I see the New Testament building on what had come before.

The Israelites and God honored Jacob, despite later generations living under laws that the patriarchs did not keep/were not held accountable to.

That is how I am looking back at the Old Testament, with respect for the faith of those found there, but also with the knowledge that more is expected from me living through Christ....just as more was expected from the Israelites under Moses, than was expected from the Patriarchs.

Does that make sense?

I've already written a lot and I have to do other things. I might try to come back and address the political aspects of our conversation later on.

[JohnFH]

Lots of excellent questions.

I don't think there is a convincing reading of the Jephthah passage that gets him off the hook. It's possible to talk about mitigating factors, like the one you mentioned, that the changes of a goat coming out the door of the house were relatively high. If you ask me, if that was his reasoning, he would be twice the scoundrel.

It is true that if you made a vow, you bound yourself to fulfill it, and you bound God to punish you if you didn't. It's called a self-imprecation formula. That was the standard.

But it does not follow that Jephthah could claim that it was God's immutable will for his daughter to die. That's because God's will, in the Bible, is not immutable, *by definition.*

That's why God can state his (mutable) will, and a human being can plead that it change, even offer to be the victim in place of the one God has designated.

Abraham and Moses respond to statements of God's will with intercession. They don't take it lying down. They take it standing up. They challenge God's express will.

In the most compelling examples, they offer to pay the price for someone else (who does that remind you of?).

Jephthah, if he were a type of Christ in the full sense, would have broken his own vow and taken the penalty of doing so on himself.

By the way, I am a Calvinist. But I bend my Calvinism so as to be faithful to Scripture, not the other way around. In brief, I accept the teaching of Job 28, that God's ways are not entirely intelligible to us, but I also accept that express teachings of scripture which describe God's ways are to be taken seriously, and understood to be, in principle, in non-self-contradiction.

Assyria and Babylonia were, in their heyday, merciless war machines, always on the lookout for new lands to conquer. As such they were destined for destruction, according to rule, what goes around, comes around. In specific situations, they were vessels of God's wrath, instruments of God's opus alienum (alien work, a term of Luther taken from Isa 28:21, for a short explanation, go to that entry under "theological word of the day* [I am not always happy with the quality of the entries]). If you wish, you can think of God's use of the Assyrians and the Babylonians as though they were guilty pawns in a complex sting operation in which God also takes down, through the A's and B's, his own people.

I don't think it is quite true, but if God set the A's and B's up, just as the police and FBI will do when they take down organized crime syndicates, it can be seen as an efficient use of resources. On the other hand, it's all a bloody mess, which is why a prophet like Habakkuk remonstrates with God about this very method. H's questions are allowed to stand in Scripture. God never answers them per se. The fierce honesty of the Bible in such matters is one of the reasons I always go back to it. The Bible's approach is the exact opposite of Christians today, who have an answer for everything. They are not credible for that very reason.

For the rest, I think one has to be careful about how one applies the principle of progressive revelation. For one thing, there is no such thing as linear progress, in the Bible or in real life.

For example, perhaps the high point of the life of the Church was its birth, the first part of the book of Acts. It was downhill after that.

Is it true that we have progressed in comparison to a previous generation, such that quality of Christian life today is an improvement over what is was in the third generation of Christians, or the 33rd? I don't see that at all.

[Praying with Lior 2]

“The power to kill and to save go hand in hand today as they always have.” This is true for the examples that were given when people were actually killed. It is also valid in cases where people are not literally killed, but a part of them is and someone allows it to happen. For instance, when someone gets taken advantage of by the opposite sex, a part of them disappears the day that happens. There are even simpler instances such as when someone is getting bullied and no one stands up for them. These examples and others that are like it take away a part of the person that it happens to and it is very hard for that part to come back. It is almost like it was killed. A bystander could save that part of them that was killed if they would find the courage to intervene.

[shawshank redemption 5]

The power to kill and save is actually something I think about quite often. I’m a lifeguard and love the fact that I can save lives. The power to save is a feeling I like, but the power to kill is not. I would never ever use that power on purpose, but it’s very possible for someone to die while I’m giving them CPR. You’re almost guaranteed to crack an elderly person’s ribs while performing CPR and you also have a pretty good chance of killing them. In this sense, the power to kill is more like the power to let die. It’s pretty scary.

[The Mission]

Since you are counter dicting yourself I would just like to state that I agreed with your previous stamen. I have yet experience congregations were they believe that their pastor/ minister can save or ruin their lives. Today people have the government, medial data, and other ups and down of life to leading them to ether success or failure. They no long relying on their pastors words to save their live, but on what are government gives us and what they can then turn around a produce with their knowledge. The government like, Scott Walk, dictates to use the fruits of are life weather they are rotten or vibrant with life.
Regarding to this post alone however I would like to state the following….
“Salvation and judgment continue to be filtered through human beings, some of whom know themselves to be under a divine charge.” This statement is so true every day we roll out of our beds we have the choice to make with our judgment we have built throughout are life expirees. Though these choices we create either a positive or negative input on someone else life. These positive impute we have on people can maybe lead them to salvation. So though out the Bible we may have these stories of words so powerful that the can create or destroy a life but in this day of age other words like those of a bully can destroy a life or those of a teacher can save a life. We don’t just have the Church body official as educators but all who have live though life’s hardships.

[True Grit 1]

In the beginning of the blog post, it is right away stated all of the professions that go hand in hand with saving lives. What a powerful career path to choose for all of those listed, and more! My interest peaked because I am planning on applying to nursing school soon and will have to deal with life and death on a hourly basis. Doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals will do their darned best when it comes to dealing with human lives. They will do all it takes before they give up. However, what is more on my mind is another hot issue right now, euthanasia. “Salvation and judgment continue to be filtered through human beings, some of whom know themselves to be under a divine charge.” While some families, patients, and advocates request for the treatment, how do health care professionals react to this? What about those who hold strong to their faith? Already I know it is none of my business to get involved with a situation unless I see something wrong taking place. Nurses are told to respect and accept all decisions and do it judgement free. As I would expect the same with my own doctors and nurses. This thought just crossed my mind while reading this blog.

[Pulp Fiction 3]

It takes a certain kind of person to be able to hold a job where you may witness many deaths on a regular basis. On one end of the spectrum the person can be happy about saving a life, but then again on the other end, they could be a part of watching a death take place. People holding jobs such as nurses, and surgeons have a lot of responsibility put on them. Some of these jobs can be hard for a very religious person because where is the line between right and wrong according to the person's faith?

[The Mission 3]

The power to kill and the power to save do go hand in hand. I think that we have that decision everyday and it’s one of the many tests that God is sending down to us to see if we are worthy enough for His kingdom; as Praying with Lior 2 said, maybe not in a literal sense of killing but maybe killing someone’s self-esteem or some other emotional part of them. We need to look out not only for ourselves but our brothers and sisters, as well. God wants us to love one another.

[Pulp Fiction 5]

The power to kill or save a person is something that only a select few are able to deal with on a daily basis. Although it may seem that only certain professions, such as those listed at the beginning of this post, deal with saving or killing people we all deal with it. Take the prophet Elisha for example. He cursed the boys that had poked fun at him and as a result the boys were maimed by two bears. God sent the bears because Elisha had the power of God inside him. We all have this power and whether we realize it or not, we influence people on a daily basis. I agree with The Mission 3 when they say that it might not be literally killing or saving someone that we deal with on a daily basis, but we are influencing their self-esteem. I know that a simple compliment or insult could be all someone needs to save their day or ruin their day.

[Shawshank Redemption3]

I too like my peers feel that the power to kill and the power to save go hand in hand with each other. As someone who wants to go into the medical field as a profession I feel that they are closer than some people know, as PulpFiction5 said. I feel that doctors and nurses and EMT’s are faced with this conflict every day. One thing could be the difference in a person’s life and death. But these professions are not the only ones. At the beginning of this post it is said that people do not want this responsibility, but who would. In reality we really all do you make choices every day, like am I going to text and drive or drink and drive or am I going to put the guns out of the reach of children. All these choices can be the difference between life and death. So I agree even though some may not want the Key as a Gift. We really do all have it, it’s how we choose to use it that counts.

[The Mission 5]

I work as a caregiver and deal with this issue a lot with the elderly. The doctors and families have to decide whether to treat a very old patient. Most of the time they don't because the treatment, especially surgery, is too risky. The majority with cancer are kept comfortable and cared for by hospice. Yes these patients are at their end of life, but it is still sad to watch. No amount of money could make me become a doctor, and have to make those kinds of decisions. They are very strong to deal with life or death decisions every day.

[Chariots of Fire 2]

I would have to say that I agree with Shaw shank Redemption 3. Certain types of professionals are put in those kinds of situations every day, but we are too. The choices we make can affect many as well. Like the idea of drinking and driving or texting and driving. Although these types of drivers do not mean to hurt someone, they sometimes do and it is a terrible thing. I think that at least once in everyone’s life they will come across some kind of encounter like this and it will really test the person. I know for a fact that there would be no way I could be a professional that had to deal with these issues on a regular basis. Sometimes I even feel that God might be put in this situation whether or not to save someone. Although he created us, I think he might be in this situation as well.

[breaker morant 6]

The power to kill and restore life should be in God alone. I mean this is the reason why Peter did not pray for the two people who are dead and Elisha did not pray for forgiveness. They would have had to forgive as Christ forgave his enemies, however, the Spirit of God told them the other decision. Looking back to these passage, we would have thought that they were disobeying God by not loving their enemies or forgiving them as God forgave us. We would have condemned them for doing such insensitive, unloving actions! But the Spirit of God acted upon them and that we cannot understand WHY. God has the power to take life and gave life. He hold the key to life and death so we should trust in him who knows all things.

[Dead Man Walking 5]

The power to save life and kill go together as they have forever. This statement is true for instances where people were actually killed and in instances where people were not literally killed but a part of that person is lost and another person allows it to happen. One example is that when a person is taken advantage by the opposite sex, that person loses a part of themselves in the process. This is an example of when a person in not literally killed. These types of actions could be easily stopped by any person in the surrounding area.

[Praying with Lior 2]

Everyday we put faith in others that they will do the right thing. Doctors, police, and firefighters are one the front lines every day and they determine who lives and dies. We put a tremendous amount of faith in doctors. They proscribe people many different kinds of medicines that if wrongly prescribed could kill someone. They determine what is wrong and the correct way to fix it. When it comes to who dies, a lot of pressure is put on the president, military leaders, and even judges. The President and military leaders determine who needs to be eliminated in order to protect the United States. Judges have the power to sentence people to death. We trust that these people will do the right thing.