Sorry, but I find your example flawed. “Turning the other cheek” is irrelevant; “Give them what they ask, and do not expect them to return it”, in your example, is. Your example is also irrelevant to the question at hand. And the scripture os also very clear as to what you should do in your example.
Besides, these are not just mere “scriptures”, these are the only “direct” teachings we have of Jesus himself. This is not about some touchy-feely feel good thing, this is radical social re-engineering that Christ is calling us all to. It is also not the guess or development of later fathers and theologians. It is about putting you life in God’s hands; not the Lawyers’, Governments’, or Society’s.
Do you think modern America has a more litigious society than Pharasaic Judaism? Are Christs’ words only important when they back us up, or at Mass? Is Christ’s teachings regarding a different legal system make them exempt from our own?
While I cannot answer to others’ choices, and have no desire to “judge” them, I can say that when my first child was damaged due to an unecessarily stressful birth, due to the less than stellar performance of the medical personnel on hand, we made the choice NOT to sue after prayerful consideration. Even under the biblical Law of Justice, only an eye can pay for eye; should we give the children of these persons a labotomy to appease Justice? The doctor perhaps?
Will suing the errant docter really protect others? not in this world; they just pay their damages, and take it out on their remaining patients. If the well dries up, they relocate. Perhaps it is just my negative opinion of people, or just my personal experiences; but when you punish someone more interested in money than others by taking away their money, you do not correct their behaviors, but rather give them cause to increase them as they become desperate. Will this “hypothetical” case discussed on this thread actually remove the doctor/nurse in question liscense to practice? or is this a hopeful response to taking him to the proverbial cleaners? Is yours the only known case, or has this person a history of negligence? Has pursuing a criminal case been looked at? Once the complication was discovered, did they respond accordingly, or is it just the natural distress of the parents that insists that more could have been done?
Don’t mistake me for a touchy-feely, love-em-all-with-puppies type; in general, my “Natural Man” is the “Kill 'em all and let God sort them out” type. However, I do try and listen occasionaly to what Christ has to say on the matter.
Such dichotomy is frustrating to be sure, but when I get moments of clarity through the grace of God, I stick to them. Though my wife did not always agree, I do not now, nor have since it happened, regretted or reconsidered the descision to not sue. Neither was the descision an isolated one.
However, God each calls us to specfic tasks, some of which do not meet with the general rule; thus in this hypothetical case below, I find it entirely possible that the parents are called to sue, in fulfillment to God’s own design; therefore I cannot really say they are “wrong” to chose as they have, but only that when I was in a similar situation, I was “told” to do something different. I can also opine, as this thread has asked, as to what the general “rule” is on the subject. I have done so.
