The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 calls on us to avoid hypocrisy, love our neighbors as ourselves, and do not return hate for hate or blow for blow. We’re to offer hospitality even to our enemies and avoid making a show of charity. We’re to cut out things in life that cause us to stumble.
This is the concept of a Higher Exchange that operates like a supernatural marketplace, infinitely higher than our own.
Contrast this with the standard modes of human exchange. The economy is the simplest example, where goods are exchanged for goods or goods for fiat. If I give you bread, you give me some item or money. But if you give me nothing in return, then by the simple terms of exchange you’re entitled to nothing. Or you are obligated to give me something later, perhasps with interest, or convert your payment into loyalty, respect, lower status, etc. This is why we worry. How will we acquire food, water, clothing, and shelter if we don’t pay with fiat, loyalty, slavery, etc.? But the Sermon says we’re not to worry, because the birds and lilies are not in such an exchange system, and they are provided for by the Higher Exchange system. These things are already bought and paid for.
The same goes for violence, war, deterrence, and revenge. These are also systems of human exchange that operate exactly like economic markets, with lines of debits and credits frequently flowing between violence and economics. If you insult my family, I’m obligated to do the same to yours. If you hit my car, I’m obligated to sue you for damages. If you punch me, I’m obligated to pay you with a punch, or seek police to lock you away. The Sermon says not to engage in such cycles. Yes, they are real, but as humans, we are mere pawns in these exchange cycles, we can’t actually pay any of those debts down at all. All the debts do is continue running in a cycle, forcing other debts and credits. Nothing ever balances out to zero in markets. New symbols, actions, and commodities are always cropping up, demanding new payments from someone, somewhere. Bad actors and gatekeepers (rent-seekers) are also always cropping up to ensure others are contibuting to keep these cycles going. They naturally assume that the only way out of this perpetual exchange is to simply become the alpha who demands X pay Y. This changes nothing. If anything, it speeds the market cycles up.
Slowing down the market cycles is punished. Saving too much money, exiting revenge cycles, abstaining, fasting, calling wars pointless, avoiding the current culture war, etc. are all frowned upon. Such non-players are accused of turning their backs on humanity, on the community. And yet this is exactly what is called for in the Sermon on the Mount. Why heap coals as mere humans? Why cast the first stone? Those debts are already paid for in the Higher Exchange system, which has been paid for since the foundation of the world, the beginning of time.
Of course, we have to pay for our groceries. We have to pay off our car loan. Police have to arrest criminals. These are simple human obligations that nobody is above.
But we don’t have to punish bad actors if we’re not in authority. I once made the mistake of chasing a shoplifter at GameStop: zero reward, all I got was shame. I once fought back against an assailant: it haunted me for months. Personal, human vengeance networks are nothing but a ruse designed to make us think we can curse, sue, and revenge our way through life. The economy makes us think we can purchase our way to happiness and fulfillment. But these simply make us servants to those markets, which are ultimately run by people much smarter and wealthier (and less scrupulous) than ourselves. We are better always defaulting to the Higher Exchange network as detailed in the Sermon.