LEPIDOPTERYX: i grieve with you for your negative experiences, & with you find repulsive the aggressive religious advances made upon you. / As for your idea that self-defense violates Jesus' "Love your enemies," that's an over-reading that no intelligent Christian would agree with. "Love your enemies" is a directive to steady goodwill & the use of smarts to outwit whatever defeats the freeing of the human potential. / How easy, & self-defensive in an unflattering sense, for you to claim that because I disagree with you, I don't understand you! Of course no outsider can understand any POV in the way insiders can. But in teaching the world's religions, I tried to help my students suspend their disbelief long enough to imagine themselves insiders to each sucessive religion as we studied it. Of course I am, as a Christian, Christocentric; but U.Hawaii did not hire me to teach religions with, as one of my qualifications, "inability to see any viewpoint other than" my own. / Finally, I must comment on this sentence of yours: "The Bible and its exhortations and prohibitions are only binding for Christians and Jews." It's true within those two communities. But both religions, as monotheistic, worship a deity who creates & addresses ALL.