16 You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death.
17 All men will hate you because of me.
2 weeks ago, in a RE class we learned about the 3 times denials of Peter. One of the question discussed was that why can't Peter admit his identity before people? Our answer was that when he was asked, he might be shocked by suddenly becoming the focus in the yard and might be blank in his mind. So that he just first replied out of his reflex, and then couldn't but insist what he have said.
I also thought of another possibility that, maybe they just never imagined that the real situation of Jesus's leave should be in this violent, illegal and shameful way. I thought that even though they were forecasted by Jesus that he would die and then revive, they had not yet any psychological preparation to become illegal citizens. Actually, the illegalness, the prison and the death penalty, how far away it is to a normal citizen, even to a group of norm who even dared not to escape a tax. So I thought that the occurrence of the arrest was totally out of the expectation and the imagination of all disciples, including Peter. That's why they ran away. HOWEVER, not only here, but also in other citations, Jesus DID forcast them their confliction with the government, even his death penalty on the cross.
So, there are two possibilities of my wrong deduction: 1) Peter's dinals and the disciples' escape were not out of their fear of illegalness. They knew that they would be against the government but still ran becuase of other reasons; 2) they were afraid of, or unable to, accept the stigma of illegalness because they forgot and unprepared for what Jesus has forecasted. I think both of them are possible and meaningful to us. I will think about it further. And how do you think about it?
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment