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Wiki MarkupNiebuhr says, "\[T\]he ethic of Jesus is an absolute and uncompromising ethic. It is, in the phrase of Ernst Troeltsch, an ethic of 'love universalism and love perfectionism. The injunctions 'resist not evil,' 'love your enemies,' 'if ye love them that love you what thanks have you?' 'be not anxious for your life,' and 'be ye therefore perfect even as your father in heaven is perfect,' are all of one piece, and they are all uncompromising and absolute....unmigrated-wiki-markup

"\[The\] total ethic can be summarized most succinctly in the two injunctions 'Be not anxious for your life' and 'love thy neighbor as thyself.'unmigrated-wiki-markup

"In the first of these, attention is called to the fact that the root and source of all undue self-assertion lies in the anxiety which all men have in regard to their existence. The ideal possibility is that perfect trust in God's providence (,for your heavenly father knoweth what things ye have need of') and perfect unconcern for the physical life ('fear not them which are able to kill the body') would create a state of serenity in which one life would not seek to take advantage of another life. But the fact is that anxiety is an inevitable concomitant of human freedom, and is the root of the inevitable sin which expresses itself in every human activity and creativity.... There is no \ [_sc._ human\] life which does not violate the injunction 'Be not anxious.' That is the tragedy of human sin. It is the tragedy of man who is dependent upon God, but seeks to make himself independent and self-sufficing.

 "In the same way there is no life which is not involved in a violation of the injunction, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' No one is so blind as the idealist who tells us that war would be unnecessary 'if only' nations obeyed the law of Christ, but who remains unconscious of the fact that even the most saintly life is involved in some measure of contradiction of this law" (Christianity and Power Politics: 11 ff.).

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