My view: Christianity is about belief in Christ and through this belief become a better person per his teachings. The bible is not a rule book. We as humans are born with sin, and we will commit sin in our lives. Being a Christian is to understand the act of committing the sin and ask forgiveness for that.
well shooting up a Church would probably be worse than setting up a business inside a Church. Technically, since I believe he is God, everything Jesus did in the Gospels involved God, but I know thats not what you mean To answer your question, no I don't know of any incidences. However, the only incidence that I'm aware of where Jesus backed down and let peopel have their way was when he got crucified. I do know where you're coming from, and trust me it's something that I've asked myself in the past. However, to say that one should lay his life down for no other reason than to be slaughtered for no purpose would be to ignore the entire Bible. I find Max's posts on the matter of martyrdom to be very insightful on this.
In political movements. Not when madmen were shooting folks up in a blood-bath. Non-violence has real political purpose. No doubt. I'm a huge advocate of it. But it's next to impossible to reason with someone in the chaos of an event like this.
Non-violent martyrdom -- non-violence in the sense of not making non-martyrs the victims of one's martyrdom -- is a far cry from violent martyrdom.
I'm not going to debate how Christian theology should be interpretted regarding non-violence but it does seem like there are some Christians like the Amish who do litterally interprete the New Testament to forbid violence even when they are being attacked and humiliated. Leaving aside the theological debate a very tragic situation. I don't know if this person was just sick in the head, had actually somehow been wronged by a church (I'm thinking of being molested by a clergyman) or both. Its still terrible.
yeah, I'm certainly not saying i'm right and they're wrong. i'm challenged by the Amish, to be sure. their ability to forgive so readily is awesome and inspiring to me.
He was kicked off the missionary team a few years ago (they probably saw some behavior they didn't like) and that apparently was part of the fuel for the shooting.
