Originally posted by Blaine91555
No real Christian has ever harmed anyone other than in the act of defending themselves, family or country unless they have since repented for the act.
No real Christian has ever given a hateful speech for which they have not later repented for their sinful behavior. I'll leave it to God to judge.
Not exactly true my friend...
I agree with your general opinion, but, just to be clarified, because i think this is very important also:
- In The Crusades: A History; Second Edition, Jonathan Riley-Smith writes:
"For most of the last two thousand years Christian justifications of violence have rested on two premises. The first was that violence — defined
crudely as as an act of physical force which threatens, deliberately or as a side-effect, homicide or injury to the human body — was not
intrinsically evil. It was morally neutral until qualified by the intention of the perpetrator. If his intention was altruistic, like that of a
surgeon who, even against wishes of his patient, amputated a limb — a measure which for most of history endangered the patient’s life — then the
violence could be regarded as being positively good.
The second premise was that Christ’s wishes for mankind were associated with a political system or course of political events in this world. For the
crusaders his intentions were embodied in a political conception, the Christian Republic, a single, universal, transcendental state ruled by him,
whose agents on earth were popes, bishops, emperors and kings. A personal commitment to its defence was believed to be a moral imperative for those
qualified to fight. Propagandists gave this theory expression in terms the faithful could understand: within the earthly extension to Christ’s
universal empire the Holy Land was his royal domain or patrimony; Livonia (approx. Latvia) on the Baltic was the Blessed Virgin Mary’s private
estate, a kind of queen mother’s dowery. "
Crusades
Also, we can't forget what the holly inquisition have done in the past..also in the name of Christ... ...
How many died from the inquisition?
In this case the inquisition was in fact state ministry, not papal organization! But it was authorized by the papacy and thereafter used by monarchs
.
Is indeed curious that even the church don't always have followed the "You shall not kill" !!...
[edit on 27/8/09 by Umbra Sideralis]