Episode 198: Violence in the Bible, Part 7--Conclusions and Loose Ends

After a wide survey of scenes and stories from the Bible, from the damp days after the Flood in Genesis to the tail-end of the last book of the New Testament, we've looked at a lot of the ways violence shows up in the pages of sacred scripture.  But what does it mean for any of us and how we live our lives?  How do we make the difficult decisions about what to do when we feel like violence as the least-worst option in front of us, or when we need to think of alternatives beyond fight-or-flight?  How do we think about the sometimes-not-very-helpful hypothetical situations like a surprie night-time intruder in your home, or what we would do if we lived in a time and place like Hitler's Third Reich?  And how do we consider the consequences and ripple effects of our actions far beyond what we can see, predict or imagine?  What obligation do I have to the kids of the would-be burglar who comes into my house, and how does the shape of Jesus' life affect my choices?  It seems we've got a lot more questions than we started with, but maybe that's a good place to leave things for now.  Join us for this last episode in our series as we make the move from Bible stories to our lived choices.