My position on self-defense hasn’t substantially changed my entire adult life. Biblical self-defense requires proportionality. The same law that gives “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” to bound the magistrate’s justice also bounds the householder’s: the man who strikes a thief breaking in at night is not guilty of blood, but once the sun has risen, he is (Exodus 22:2–3). Because your ideological enemy is packing courts and changing laws doesn’t justify an armed rebellion and bashing skulls in the streets.
We are Christians. We are to always behave as Christians. Romans 12 (or the numerous other parts of Scripture demanding holy, righteous, and godly conduct) do not get suspended because our lives are threatened. We have a right to defend ourselves, our family, and our neighbors from evil. The right to do that is carefully guarded by Scripture. The circumstances and the lengths we can do it are also carefully guarded by Scripture.
“Lambs to the slaughter” is not my wording… it’s Scripture’s:
Just as it is written, “For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; We were counted as sheep for the slaughter.” (Romans 8:36 LSB)
Defending your family from a thief or a rioter and dying for Christ’s sake are not the same situation. The martyrs didn’t refuse to bar their doors against robbers. They refused to deny Christ, refused to sin to save themselves, and refused to take up the sword against the magistrate for His name. You defend against crime. You endure persecution. The error is treating persecution and political opposition as if they were crime to be repelled by force.
It has been considered throughout most of Christian history a great and glorious honor to die for Christ’s sake. Plenty want to live for Christ, but few are willing to die for Him unless it’s in a glorious battle scene. Even fewer are willing to watch their family die for Him.
Reality isn’t a Hollywood epic and it’s not historical fiction. I’m not asking you to gleefully or readily sacrifice your family. But Christ may, and if you’re unwilling to do that, Christ has already said you cannot be His disciple.
“If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.” (Luke 14:26 LSB)
While Christians rail about the evils of Islam and how the Koran teaches striking down unbelievers, some advocating Christian nationalism promote functionally the same conduct, purging unbelievers and leftist enemies, under the guise of calling it “self-defense.”
We must stop pretending like our fear of every enemy is an open license to purge and eliminate them. Pretending a Christian nation will be a framework to eliminate the enemies of God in self-defense is losing the plot.
Yes, a just nation has just laws. Just laws can only be defined objectively by God’s written law. Yes, just laws will protect you, your family, and your neighbors. But they are not proactive means by which you actively seek out and destroy ideological enemies. They are safeguards against that enemy in society, but to achieve that society first requires you to start living out the Christian life in your family, church, and community, and preaching the gospel TO your enemies.
I’m not talking about a hypothetical. Leading Nullify Abortion, I had to advocate for justice for the preborn while spending countless hours engaging men and women who had murdered their own children and were gloating about it. At the same time I was being threatened, sometimes daily, by literal child murderers, I was also petitioning legislatures to criminalize abortion as a capital crime. The role required balance.
What seems to be happening is that those advocating for justice from the magistrate cannot then recognize that when engaging with the sinner, whom Christ has called them to love and call to repentance, they continue to treat him as an enemy to be smitten.
The problem isn’t self-defense. It’s that some have redefined “enemy” and “threat” so broadly that they now justify preemptive action to eliminate people God has commanded us to live alongside. That isn’t defense. It’s disproportionate, and it’s disobedience.
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