> > > Deut. 32:35 says "Vengeance is mine" but it refers to the notion that
God,
> > > not humanity, has the right to take vengeance.
> >
> > Therefore God is vengeful.
>
> Not really, Shan (see my other post as well.) We use that passage
> as a "reinforcement" of the better-known Gospel admonition not to
> return evil with evil: when someone insists on the need for revenge,
> we use that passage to say more-or-less: "If God feels it is good to
> take vengeance, He will - you don't need to (and shouldn't)." There
> is no implication that God WILL make use of His privilege of
> revenge.
Thank you. We have a parallel teaching that a witch has no need of revenge
because by heris practices s/he tunes to the sacred body intimacyof the Web,
which will inevitably work out heris pain for her.
Secondly we are charged to use our growing power to our utmost limits to
create creative delight pleasure etc for ourselves, and healing from damage
calls on too much power to leave much for retaliation for its own sake.
(Retaliation as a rebuke designed to teach respect is different.)
For those who feel a stubborn and very human need to use magic to hit back
out of agony we are calmly told that we may, providing we accept threefold
return, ie whatever we direct to another by magic returns threefold upon us.
This is an efficient deterrent!
But it still says that this God can and does take revenge. In some of the
traditional stories he quite clearly does so, destroying cities and peoples
directly or smiting enemies of his chosen. I cannot see that he is not
vengeful. To escape this characterisation he needs to be either remote Tao
transcendent beyond such trivia, or engaged but utterly forgiving as Christ
tried to be and almost was.
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