Taking the Sermon on the Mount Seriously

I was heading down the road the other day when a car roared around me from on my right side, cut in front of me and traveled over two lanes to get to a left turn onto the 405 (the place I was headed).  As I saw the car coming up on my right I was pretty sure what was going to happen, so I started braking immediately and laid on the horn.  Northwest Nice has not yet fully seeped into my soul.

The car stopped at the light in the turn lane and as I pulled up behind it I shook my head; immediately the occupant of the vehicle got out and began shouting and shaking her fist at me.  My temperature began to rise (it takes a while to fully purge Arizona Irritated from one’s being) when I recognized the absurdity of the situation.  I was dressed in leathers which include Kevlar (that’s the stuff bullet proof vests are made of), wearing steel toed boots and heavily padded gauntlets, and my head was protected by a DOT approved helmet which I know from personal experience can handle a 50 MPH whomp without so much as rattling your teeth.  Not many professional boxers can hit that hard, much less an average citizen.  And even if she had a gun (what a tragedy that we must consider such possibilities today) at the first sign of a weapon I was prepared to twist the throttle and it takes a heck of a good shot to hit a target moving away at high speed.  So just what threat was this woman to me, really?  None at all, unless I let my ego get pricked by whatever it was that was eating her.  So I just sat there and she finally got into her car and roared away. 

The other night Belinda and I were watching the Danish film “In A Better World.”  It is a complex movie that shows the intersection of two families whose young adolescent boys struggle with loss and act out in anger and pain.  One of the fathers in the film is a physician who works for an NGO in sub-Saharan Africa.  During a sabbatical back home he is confronted by an adult bully who slaps him several times.  The young boys are appalled and angry that the father does not strike back; to show them that he is acting out of conviction and not fear, the father visits the bully at his workplace with the children in tow.  The bully slaps him again several times, but the father never retaliates. 

Remind you of any teachings you have heard about cheeks and getting hit?

I thought for a long time about my incident in relation to the scene from the film.  It is one thing to turn the other cheek when there is no real danger; it is entirely another to turn the other cheek when there is the real possibility that you will get slapped again.  And I wondered – would I have such courage?

See you in church.

Kevin