Change in how we see produces change in how we think. Change in how we think produces change in how we feel. Change in how we feel produces change in how we behave. The change that we long to experience in our behavior does not come through more effort. It comes through a change in how we see.

Jesus - the Scapegoat to end all scapegoats.

Salvation is healing love breaking in on us here and now, rooted deeply in a different way of seeing God, ourselves and everyone else.

If Jesus had come endorsing the OT commands he would not have been crucified. It was because he came to bring a revolution that in its ideal contradicted the concessions of the OT that those who were deeply invested in the concessions could not stomach Him.

I'm a follower of Jesus, which literally means, I see Jesus teachings as the ideal and the Old Testament commands were only for a certain time and for a certain culture.

Strip away all the concessions and accommodations of the Old Testament, and you get a God who looks like Jesus.

The only difference is that a Just War theorist believes that as a last resort we can turn to violence as means of bringing peace, even if it cost them their own life. A pacifist simply stops one step short of this final option, even if it cost them their own life.

Violence, even if found in some of the descriptions of God in the Old Testament, must give way to the nonviolent portrayal of God we see at the Cross.

Exactly! This is why the person of Jesus came to give us a radically different picture of God, SHUT DOWN religion and give us a new way of relating to Himself and each other. Many are saying we are entering a post-Christian era. I say, "Finally! Maybe now the church can once again start looking like Jesus rather simply pushing a religion that has marginalized him.

The perplexity is not how we can make an angry God loving again through appeasement, but how a loving God can make us good again through becoming the victim Himself of our violence.