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I recently saw the film, The End of the Spear, the story of Nate Saint and Jim Eliot's mission to Ecuador. After the tribe spears the missionaries, one of the women from the tribe, who had left to live with the missionaries some years before, returns home to announce that God does not want them to spear each other. Some of the tribesmen respond, and begin living peaceful, productive lives. As the film depicts it, this is before any of the tribesman hears about Jesus or comes to explicit faith in the gospel.
Yet, in this context, the command comes as good news, not only to the tribesmen who respond but to the whole tribe. Spearing is, almost comically, an instinctive reaction among the men of the tribe, but the law tells them they don't have to live by vendetta; they don't any longer have to live by the end of the spear. Soon, the tribesmen who refuse to hear the law begin to look silly, trotting around the jungle with spears that are slowly being rendered impotent.
So, not only in its first use, but in its second and third uses, the law can, at least in extreme circumstances, be heard as gospel.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, February 15, 2007 at 12:55 PM
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