It’s Not Just Muslims: Christians Play the Victim Card, Too
Believer citing: Luke 11:52 – “Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in you hindered.”
First, I was commenting on lawsuits. You’re commenting on lawyers. Not quite the same thing.
Next, what is translated ‘lawyers’ in your cite is usually translated ‘scribes’. From Webster online: a member of a learned class in ancient Israel through New Testament times studying the Scriptures and serving as copyists, editors, teachers, and jurists.
These people engaged in an art known as ‘casuistry’. They basically instructed people about what to do in order to uphold their religious duties, and sometimes they engaged in dispute resolution in a fashion that has little resemblance to modern courts of law, and more closely resembling arbitration or mediation. (Are you also against arbitration and mediation?)
These were not lawyers in the modern sense, and in any event, the passage you cite has nothing to do with lawsuits, but with setting standards of behavior that they themselves cannot keep.
Jesus himself did not a priori have anything against legal action. Remember the parable of the widow and the unjust judge? And about taking the master taking the unjust foreman to court?
The definitive word remains with Paul in 1 Corinthians, who is in turn commenting on Matthew 18. Christians are not to sue each other, but to engage in dispute resolution in a series of escalating steps ending in excommunication. For matters external to the church, yes, settle out of court if you can (especially if you are culpable, as I remember now Jesus says elsewhere), but the courts aren’t necessarily to be avoided.
