Hopewit

  Moscow skyline Do we all have shackled streaks of cruelty lurking in our deepest selves? Is war capable of breaking the chains that hold the tiger down in peace time? A friend who did some prison chaplaincy before becoming a pastor remarked to me that what struck him was how similar the murderers were to himself, or "there but for the grace of circumstance, go I."      In the Russian Revolution and through WWII, innocents were made to suffer grievously at the hands of Russian soldiers: in Ukraine, in Germany in its retreat. The pattern is being repeated; some of the most virulent victimizing being reserved for Ukrainian cousins. Why has that been the case? Why is it the case again? There's a considerable body of opinion that NATO--the West--is responsible for the current debacle, and certainly their mistakes vis-e-vis Russia must be called out. But to excuse Russia's destruction of Ukraine on the West's failure to do what it should have is playground, &

      But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. I’m working on an essay called, “The Imperative Jesus.” In it, I intend to list all those of his sayings recorded in Matthew that have the sense of a command. In English classes, I learned that there are four types of sentences: declarative, interrogative, imperative and exclamatory, as follows: Declarative: The door is open. (statement) Interrogative: Is the door open? (question) Imperative: Open the door. (command) Exclamatory: That darn door is open, again! (exclamation) I stopped for a minute or so to contemplate the “you have heard it said … but I say unto you” passages in in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 5:28: “Don’t even look at a woman wrongly,” in the translation I was using right then. “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” in the NIV. This as an echo of the seventh commandment, “Thou