Monday of Holy Week — “Fight Like Jesus” review part 3

You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

As we move into Monday of Holy Week, Porterfield looks at one of the most controversial aspects of Monday of Holy Week — the whip that Jesus fashioned and used as he cleansed the Temple of the animals and money changers. The simple argument is this — Jesus made a whip and used it, clearly he was fine with using violence as a means to an end. A dive into Scripture helps us to see that this is not the case and that too often we read into Scripture what isn’t there.

Or as Porterfield says, “The result of such a portrayal is that many Christians have found a convenient way to justify their own violent intentions. If Jesus hurt people with a whip, so the argument goes, then under the right conditions his followers may also use force. Of course, those conditions are rarely identified. Instead, Christians have all too often divorced Jesus’ actions from the issues that upset him, thus giving themselves free rein to respond violently in any situation. And by classifying the whip as a weapon, they’ve concluded that any weapon may be used, even ones infinitely more lethal and indiscriminate than a whip.” (Pg. 43).

Porterfield breaks the situation into different phases. The first phase is the preparation — “As Ched Myers notes, ‘Jesus’ initial visit to the temple was for reconnaissance.’ What he saw bothered him. Something was terribly wrong, and he was not going to let it go unchallenged.” (Pg. 45).