I found a new man to read....

[Willie T]

I don't know where I've been, but I only just now heard of this man.

"The God whom Jesus revealed as no longer our rival, no longer threatening and vengeful, but unconditionally loving and forgiving, who needed no satisfaction by blood - this God of infinite mercy was metamorphosed by the church into the image of a wrathful God whose demand for blood atonement leads to God's requiring of his own Son a death on behalf of us all. The nonviolent God of Jesus comes to be depicted as a God of unequaled violence, since God not only allegedly demands the blood of the victim who is closest and most precious to him, but also holds the whole of humanity accountable for a death that God both anticipated and required. *Against such an image of God the revolt of atheism is an act of pure religion*."
-Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers

 

[Willie T]

This is part of one of his books.

TURN THE OTHER CHEEK
The examples that follow confirm this reading. "If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other
also" (Matt. 5:39b). You are probably imagining a blow with the right fist. But such a blow would fall on the left
cheek. To hit the right cheek with a fist would require the left hand. But the left hand could be used only for
unclean tasks; at Qumran, a Jewish religious community of Jesus' day, to gesture with the left hand meant
exclusion from the meeting and penance for ten days. To grasp this you must physically try it: how would you
hit the other's right cheek with your right hand? If you have tried it, you will know: the only feasible blow is a
backhand.

The backhand was not a blow to injure, but to insult, humiliate, degrade. It was not administered to an
equal, but to an inferior. Masters backhanded slaves; husbands, wives; parents, children; Romans, Jews. The
whole point of the blow was to force someone who was out of line back into place.

Notice Jesus' audience: "If anyone strikes you." These are people used to being thus degraded. He is saying
to them, "Re-fuse to accept this kind of treatment anymore. If they backhand you, turn the other cheek." (Now
you really need to physically enact this to see the problem.) By turning the cheek, the servant makes it
impossible for the master to use the backhand again: his nose is in the way. And anyway, it's like telling a joke
twice; if it didn't work the first time, it simply won't work. The left cheek now offers a perfect target for a blow
with the right fist; but only equals fought with fists, as we know from Jewish sources, and the last thing the
master wishes to do is to establish this underling's equality. This act of defiance renders the master incapable
of asserting his dominance in this relationship. He can have the slave beaten, but he can no longer cow him.

By turning the cheek, then, the "inferior" is saying: "I'm a human being, just like you. I refuse to be humiliated
any longer. I am your equal. I am a child of God. I won't take it anymore."

Such defiance is no way to avoid trouble. Meek acquiescence is what the master wants. Such "cheeky"
behavior may call down a flogging, or worse. But the point has been made. The Powers That Be have lost
their power to make people submit. And when large numbers begin behaving thus (and Jesus was addressing
a crowd), you have a social revolution on your hands.

In that world of honor and shaming, the "superior" has been rendered impotent to instill shame in a
subordinate. He has been stripped of his power to dehumanize the other. As Gandhi taught, "The first principle
of nonviolent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating."

How different this is from the usual view that this passage teaches us to turn the other cheek so our
batterer can simply clobber us again! How often that interpretation has been fed to battered wives and
children. And it was never what Jesus intended in the least. To such victims he advises, "Stand up for
yourselves, defy your masters, assert your humanity; but don't answer the oppressor in kind. Find a new, third
way that is neither cowardly submission nor violent reprisal."

 

[YosefHayim]

If you look, you'll see the same graceful loving God in the Old Testament. I don't think there was really the shift that people put forth.