To me, the point of the saying is that if someone attacks you, by either a) ignoring them entirely or b) doing the minimum required to end the attack and nothing more, then in every way you retain the moral high-ground.
Nonsensical RANT
I think of violence as a force, a sort of energy. That sounds silly, but bear with me. When someone throws a punch unprovoked, what they do in my model is create "new violence". The way to negate this new violence is to respond with as equal a response as possible. If someone slaps you camp-ly on the right cheek, if you want to respond you should slap them camp-ly on the right cheek in return as this maintains an equal amount of violence used by each side. If you do no more than match them blow-for-blow nobody can reasonably call you the aggressive one. If you react with more violence than was used against you, you create more new violent energy and lose your status as the fair man, the innocent victim. If your aim is to eliminate violence then you should avoid creating new violence whenever possible.
Obviously this is dependent on people acting purely rationally and without emotion, like a Vulcan. Which we're not.
/RANT
To me the saying means "don't let your emotions take over to create violence, don't over-react".
I think one of the advantages - in terms of longevity - of anything that takes it's roots from the bible is that they're very open to interpretation in a modern day setting :P
What does the teaching "Turn the other cheek" really mean?
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To me, the point of the saying is that if someone attacks you, by either a) ignoring them entirely or b) doing the minimum required to end the attack and nothing more, then in every way you retain the moral high-ground.
Nonsensical RANT
I think of violence as a force, a sort of energy. That sounds silly, but bear with me. When someone throws a punch unprovoked, what they do in my model is create "new violence". The way to negate this new violence is to respond with as equal a response as possible. If someone slaps you camp-ly on the right cheek, if you want to respond you should slap them camp-ly on the right cheek in return as this maintains an equal amount of violence used by each side. If you do no more than match them blow-for-blow nobody can reasonably call you the aggressive one. If you react with more violence than was used against you, you create more new violent energy and lose your status as the fair man, the innocent victim. If your aim is to eliminate violence then you should avoid creating new violence whenever possible.
Obviously this is dependent on people acting purely rationally and without emotion, like a Vulcan. Which we're not.
/RANT
To me the saying means "don't let your emotions take over to create violence, don't over-react".
I think one of the advantages - in terms of longevity - of anything that takes it's roots from the bible is that they're very open to interpretation in a modern day setting :P