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Creative, non-violent assertion of our God-given image.

Theologians and thinkers have called it the Third Way.

Not violence.

Not passivity and submission to domination.

But active, creative, non-violent assertion of your God given humanity and dignity in the face of oppression. 

In Jesus’s great Sermon (see Matthew 5-7), he addresses the issues of retaliation. Moses had given the Jews “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Far from being a mandate to become self-made surgeons, the Mosaic intention was to curb retaliation as a counter-cultural mandate in the midst of societies that ravaged homes and families to exact revenge. 

Jesus, realizing that the Mosaic law sometimes kept actions in check but failed to keep to transform the heart, gives three examples of what it may look like for a Christian to observe the heart of this law. These three suggested practices were directly related to cultural situations in the Ancient Near East. And just as the intention of the Mosaic Law was to form a community of people who were transformed into the living, breathing Image of God in the midst of Humanity, Jesus takes this law a step further to instigate his Community (the Kingdom of God) into practicing upholding, restoring, and honoring that very Image of God. 

Someone slaps you on the right cheek with a backhand the way they’d slap a servant or a slave? Make them, or atleast offer them the chance, to punch you in the face open-handed the way they would hit an equal. 

A tenant-farm owner continues to go after you for money and possessions they already know you don’t have? Embarrass them. Give them your shirt and your overcoat, which are likely the only things you are wearing. They want to embarrass you? That will embarrass them (the shame in Jewish culture was on the person viewing nudity, not the nude person).

A Roman soldier by law could force a subject of the empire (a common folk) to walk ONE mile with their pack, but no more. By walking two miles you could actually get them in trouble and force them to have to beg you to stop. Imagine that—a high and mighty Roman soldier begging for something from a Jewish peasant…

Creative, Bold, Active.

You are made in the image of God, stop letting people strip you of that.

The Kingdom of God will be found where people are subversively asserting their God-given humanity when the surrounding culture denies it.