How does the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence? mt11:11-15

[Della]

Hello Della.

Thanks for the supportive chat. 80/20 sounds like a good idea. Actually on a spiritual plane if this Scripture passage is read in a penitential way, it really is pertinent to dieting and fighting the sin of gluttony. If I want to do as one of the interpretations of this passage suggest and “violently” address my chubbiness, I’ll see not only my waistline decrease, but my sinful eating for comfort when my comfort should be found in God alone, will also decrease. Perhaps the thought of perfecting myself in abstinence and fasting and temperance by doing “violence” to my thoughts and actions, well, actually come to think on it, it really is relevant to the Scripture passage. If I really apply the virtue of Temperance to all aspects of my life, then I too may find myself taking the Kingdom by violence. But on a personal level, I have a hard time thinking of the word violence as a positive word, so that is a little bump in the road.

Enough from me. I’m intemperate in my use of words.

Glenda

Temperance is definitively one of the virtues. That’s why 80/20 works, IMHO–because it is eating all food in moderation not abstainance (which is either hard or impossible). Making ourselves feel guilty for every bite of food we eat is not only discouraging, but self-defeating because when we make ourselves feel bad it encourages many of us to run to the cookie jar–it’s an emotional set-up for failure, you see. So, if you eliminate false guilt you eliminate another source of temptation.

Violence in this context means passionately. Those who long for heaven more than anything else will obtain it. Of course, this doesn’t mean depriving ourselves unduly or not loving family and friends. Jesus said we are to hate our loved ones, for example, a bit of hyperbole by which he means that God comes first, but not in the sense that no one else matters beside God and me. We are members of Christ’s body, the Church, which is the witness to the larger community. So what it all means is getting our priorities straight. God, Church, family, country, others, our own interests is one way of putting it. C. S. Lewis described it as putting what we ought to do ahead of what we should do and both before what we want to do. Our salvation ought to be a top priority in that we don’t let the world, the flesh and the devil deprive us of it.