UI MEME OF THE DAY, a Daily Series…

Back in paralegal school, our professor -a practicing lawyer- walked into the classroom without taking one single glance at his overly-anxious raring to go student body.

He took a casual stroll to the chalkboard at the front of the classroom and picked up a piece of chalk and began to write – what else? His name on the board.

He dusted off his hands, turned to the class and announced in a very stalwart manner and without a single emotion in his tone of voice, “Some people need killing.”

We were all shocked, of course. We were youthful of mind, spirit, and heart, all excited about this new course of life and the new connections we had just made, and we were easily shocked and overwrought with emotion at his opening statement, which he didn’t even bother to lay a premise for before just coming out cold.

We held our corporate breath waiting to see if he was going to explain that. It was a class in Contract Law, so we couldn’t figure out if he was going to talk about contracts, or about putting a contract out on someone’s life.

He started talking about a case of the use of lethal force that he was in the process of handling, and in which he was the attorney for the defense. No names, no specific details, just the nature of the case and why he chose to defend the person who did the killing. By the time he was done, the naivete of his listening audience had dropped down about 15 notches.

What he said was perfectly justifiable and there was no argument that we could put up for it, try as we might. If he was using us as a “mock jury” to try his case, he won the argument hands down. However, we were in a tizzy for a full hour trying to explain to him why no one ever “deserved” to be killed, no matter what.

A word of wisdom has since walked in through the breezeway. There is a difference between killing and murder.

The Sixth Commandment of the Official 10 is “Thou Shalt Not Murder,” not “thou shalt not kill.”

 

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There are people who try to throw off the conversation on taking a life or some lives by asking how it is that God can say “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shall not kill” and then order the Children of Israel, Judah, to run all over the place pillaging and killing people? It appears, at the outset, to be thoroughly hypocritical.

The easiest answer is that God can do anything He pleases. It’s His world and we are all just a bunch of squirrels trying to get at a nut.

However, killing with godly justification and vindication with the ultimate purpose of purging a necessary evil from the land, and to prepare the way for manifest righteousness is one thing. Outright vicious cold-blooded murder just to fulfill a selfish and vain need or to prove an unnecessary point is a whole ‘nother thing all together.

Murder is unrighteous, it is unjust, and it has an ultimate ending that requires vengeance to come about full circle. The world is formed to be cyclical for a reason.

Murder is for the establishment of something that is far outside the realm of the mandates of God and rightful justification. Murder just to seep a man’s lifeblood for fun, murder for money, murder for hire, murder for jealousy, murder to obtain something with which you have no legal god-ordained right, murder for bloodlust, or murder for the purpose of making something come about that was not meant to be and with no righteous ending in sight — that is the ultimate meaning of the sixth commandment, THOU SHALT NOT MURDER.

Cain actually murdered his younger brother, Abel, out of jealousy, or for other reasons that caused his “countenance” to fall.

King David slew, or killed, many many invaders in the land that was given to him and his people Israel as an inheritance. He was under orders from God to purge the land and to prepare the way for the Lord Most High. There were people who had to be purged because they had nothing to offer God’s people except pure evil.

Proverbs 6: King James Version (KJV)

¹⁶ These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:

¹⁷ A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,

¹⁸ An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,

¹⁹ A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.

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Never jump to conclusions; all is not as it appears to be.

God is still the Ultimate Authority above and beyond those who believe themselves beyond His reach and jurisdiction.