What nonsense. Christians here do show love but we are also people of JUSTICE and God will wreak havoc on those who continually spit in his face or turn away from him. We don't want to see that happen but we know it will. Nobody minds pissing US off but if we get mad, it's considered to be against God's law. Well, he says we can be angry but sin not. Righteous anger is what Jesus had when he threw the moneychangers out of the Temple. Wait until you see what God does when He pours His wrath out on this world.
Mary, I say this with utmost repect, and with an open mind.
Of course nobody minds pissing off Christians, or killing them or degrading them. Jesus said exactly that. He didnt say that it would ever not be so in this world. He said it would always be so. And he said it because Christians had a radically different pov in this world, a pov which excited envy and hatred, because the mass of men could not bear to endure the utter goodness of Christians -- their love and forgiveness -- which the mass of men rightly took as an implicit rebuke to their despicable behaviour ... not loving, and not forgiving.
Jesus said, it was consistent to suffer much, even death, to possess the integrity of what God wanted from us. Jesus said, it was for the benefit of one and all, immediately and ultimately, and everywhere in between, to suffer what one needed, to love and forgive.
As a man, Jesus overturned tables. As a man, Jesus made a demonstration. The sale of doves and its purpose proved the humanity of Jesus. Jesus was condemning the trivialization, the pettiness, the deception and the mockery of any possible meaning life implied.
Here is the most fascinating thing about the tables Jesus overturned, and his anger: the lesson learned by his followers and regarders. Was he a hypocrite? Or was he saying Righteous Anger was ok, as ok as love and forgiveness?
The ultimate fact about Jesus, was that he was a man, and acted like a man. Put aside his divinity. Jesus was telling us, as men, that we were all capable of acting like him, we could be extraordinary in our ordinary love.
But by turning over the tables, he never meant that we should be bigots, jackasses, narrow-minded boors, hateful jerks and egotists.