They Hated Me without a Reason; They Will Treat You the Same

They Hated Me Without a Reason; They Will Treat You the Same
Psalm 35

It’s amusing that many of the nastier parts of the Old Testament don’t seem to raise a problem for Jesus in the way they raise a problem for Western people; it helps us see that our niceness has nothing to do with our being Christian (Jews, Muslims, atheists, and other Western people are nice, too). In John 15 Jesus tells his disciples to expect people to persecute them because, after all, they persecuted him, and he comments that their resistance to him makes them guilty before God in a way they were not previously. In this context he declares that in opposing him and his Father they are fulfilling or filling out what it says in this psalm about hating someone without reason...