Matthew Curtis Fleischer > Quotes

“The only violence God sanctioned in the OT was for nationalistic purposes. That’s because nations require violence. To exist, they need criminal laws, warfare policies, and armed men to enforce them. By their nature, they have order to maintain, territory to defend, national sovereignty to preserve, and history to control. But transnational, interethnic, nongovernmental, geographically dispersed organizations (like the church) do not.”
― Matthew Curtis Fleischer, The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence

“The Law of Moses served an indispensable but temporary purpose: to point the way to Jesus. The Law of Jesus, on the other hand, serves an eternal purpose: to teach us how to embody God’s kingdom on earth.”
― Matthew Curtis Fleischer, The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence

“Occasionally, you may not like to be restricted by such laws, but I bet you’re always glad others are.”
― Matthew Curtis Fleischer, The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence

“God doesn’t want us to make America into a Christian nation. He wants us to be the church.”
― Matthew Curtis Fleischer, The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence

“If you choose to act unlovingly, he kicks you out of his kingdom (to protect others from your unloving behavior).”
― Matthew Curtis Fleischer, The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence

“the next time someone asks you why God couldn’t have designed a world in which violence wasn’t necessary, you can say he did, but humans introduced it anyway.”
― Matthew Curtis Fleischer, The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence

“the Bible’s ethical arc clearly bends toward total nonviolence. It heads in that direction the entire time, from creation all the way to the end of the NT. It’s the story of God creating a nonviolent world, humans corrupting it with violence, and God beginning to work with humankind to return it to its originally intended nonviolent state.”
― Matthew Curtis Fleischer, The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence

“when God intervenes to stop injustice, they call him vindictive, bloodthirsty, and imperialistic, and when he fails to intervene, they call him weak, uncaring, and unbelievable. He is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.”
― Matthew Curtis Fleischer, The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence

“it’s the epitome of tragic when Christians kill other Christians on behalf of their nation.”
― Matthew Curtis Fleischer, The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence

“A war initiated by human hands is not holy, so we shouldn’t presume to fight in the many unholy wars of our world.”
― Matthew Curtis Fleischer, The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence

“the conquest battles were much more about God fighting for Israel than Israel fighting for God. They involved Israel waiting for God to work on its behalf instead of taking matters into its own hands on God’s behalf. That alone should caution us against attempting to wage “just” wars on God’s behalf today. The real irony is not only that many American Christians cite OT Israel’s God-run wars to support America’s non-God-run wars but that we cite God’s OT efforts to destroy militarism to advance our own militarism. We reference God’s OT violence to justify what it was trying to combat. We cite Israel’s actions against Canaan to justify acting like Canaan. That’s ironic. And tragic. Simply put, nothing about Israel’s conquest of Canaan, not its means or its ends, justifies our use of militaristic violence against our national enemies today.”
― Matthew Curtis Fleischer, The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence

“This is the foundation of all sin: the lie that God is untrustworthy, the lie that God is not altogether loving and that he doesn't have our best interests in mind.”
― Matthew Curtis Fleischer, The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence

“Jesus denationalized God’s followers. He turned them from a nation into the church, from a typical earthly kingdom into the transnational, interethnic, nongovernmental, nonviolent, geographically dispersed organization we call the universal church.”
― Matthew Curtis Fleischer, The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence

“Therefore, to the extent Israel’s wars have something to say about the ethics of violence, killing, and war, they send a clear antiviolence message. Do not trust in violence. Do not rely on it for your safety or prosperity. Do not put your hope in it. It cannot save you. It only leads to pain, suffering, death, and destruction. The irony is that people today cite the OT holy wars for the precise opposite purpose: to justify their use of and trust in violence, killing, and war, instead of God.”
― Matthew Curtis Fleischer, The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence