Jesus Causes Division

Well I am not sure if it is Christian to say this but I wasn’t particularly inspired by anything that I read today. One thing that did stand out to me however was the title of the last section of Luke 12. In the NLT translation they title this section “Jesus Causes Division”. That’s a quote you won’t read or hear very often. We spend so much time being incredibly careful to not cause division, yet Jesus was the one separating families, and causing unrest. One of my favorite stories in all of scripture is when Jesus tipped over the tables in the temple. That caused division, but it was a sort of Holy Division, a Holy Anger. I have always wondered how he got away with that. How did he do something like that in remain sinless? Let me state clearly that I am not questioning Jesus sinlessness, but just how we label that event. I have often wondered if there would be a circumstance where I could go to a mega church and tip over all their shelves in their book store and have that not be considered a sin? Believe me I have had that thought before. One look at the prayer of jabez door mat and my heart starts burning. I don’t want to get carried away but let me say this: Jesus has been at the center of more division than any person in the history of humankind. I guess that the thought that this all wraps up into is that maybe sin isn’t quite as black and white as we evangelicals make it out to be. It is painfully rare but maybe there is a right time to leave your family and follow God. Maybe there is a right time to destroy private property. Maybe a righteous understanding of the Lord and his laws could lead to breaking the “laws of the land”. I realize I need to be careful with this kind of speech, and to anyone who is reading this, do not take this as a license to break laws, I am just processing my thoughts on paper (e-paper that is). Here is another thought that I have had. You may think that I am totally crazy to say this, and maybe I am, but I respect the convictions of those people who have killed abortion doctors. Now before you pick up your stones to kill me think this through. If you truly believed a fetus to be a living human being, isn’t this the right thing to do? I went to the museum of tolerance in LA a few years ago. Contrary to its name the place is ninety percent about the holocaust. I found a huge contradiction in their principle of tolerance there. One of their saying was that all that needed to happen to spawn another holocaust was for good people to do nothing. With that logic and a fundamental belief that an abortion is murder, how can we not act? I distinctly remember our tour guide walking us through the hall of intolerance. There was one section on the killing of abortion doctors, simply because I was intolerant of their belief in the right to choose. Do you see the contradiction I am left with? Luckily for the abortion doctors, I am not particularly passionate about the issue because I am intellectually hones and admit that I am not sure at what point human life begins. Please know that I would never so much as consider killing anyone, because I believe so wholeheartedly that there can be redemption for all and I don’t want to steal that from anybody. This title and the passage it refers to just got me thinking. I think you should comment on this, let me know where I go wrong, and why. I hope this sparks a bit of a discussion. I think the church needs a discussion on this, not just the abortion issue, but how we relate to the laws of the land in general. So please comment. Let the criticism flow.