If you're not familiar with the Psalms, there's some pretty chilling stuff in there. For example:
Psalm 149.6-9How could Jesus not read this psalm as being about the Romans? That would have been the most obvious reading of the text given the Roman occupation.
May the praise of God be in their mouths
and a double-edged sword in their hands,
to inflict vengeance on the nations
and punishment on the peoples,
to bind their kings with fetters,
their nobles with shackles of iron,
to carry out the sentence written against them—
this is the glory of all his faithful people.
Yet somehow, Jesus directs the violence of this psalm away from the Romans. "But I say to you," Jesus preaches, "to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
As I recount in Reviving Old Scratch, I think Jesus was able to accomplish this feat because he saw the Adversary as his real opponent, rather than the Romans. And I think a proper vision of spiritual warfare helps us accomplish the same thing.
