An honest question for you: do you see a “middle ground”? That is, should “joyfully endure” be viewed as the only righteous option, or should non-lethal measures of protecting our means of provision be employed?
It seems to me that the legal environment and the actions of the magistrate matter a great deal here. If the police/national guard/etc. have said please stay off the street, especially with firearms, and they are doing their best to manage the situation, I think we should generally comply. But if law and order has truly broken down and lawlessness reigns, then that may require a different response (I’m not sure what, I don’t have this thought through). It is also unclear to me what standard we should use to judge the government response.
In Kenosha, for instance, the police certainly weren’t acting as vigorously as I would prefer to clamp down on the lawlessness. But I don’t think they had totally abdicated. The reason Rittenhouse left the car lot he was at earlier in the evening and went wandering around (heading to another car lot) was because the police secured the one he was at initially. And I don’t think we should make too much of an officer or two handing him and his fellows water and saying they were appreciated. The officers on the street don’t make policy for good reason, and there was a curfew set in Kenosha. What ended up happening is exactly what the magistrate wanted to avoid. Is this a case where the state has abdicated and men of good will must take enforcement of law and community norms into their own hands? What are the principles and points of decisions that you would use to decide?
1 Like
Sorry…I’m at home on isolation from covid, making shrimp and grits (trying to include the kids in the cooking!), taking care of a pregnant wife…and trying to engage in a blog conversation! Probably not doing too great at any one of them. And Sanityville just gave me a notification telling me I’m talking too much…
The judgments in Judges, to cite one example, were often material rather than physical (I know those two are closely linked). Foreign raiding parties spoiling/stealing Israel’s crops, etc. When God raised up a deliverer, that deliverer usually went to war rather than just acting defensively. Over the ‘theft’ of crops and goods. Granting that OT narrative is, at best, instructive rather than prescriptive, do you see any relevance to how we think about defence and rioting from Judges? I agree that not everything in that period is paradigmatic. But does it have anything to say to us today?
@CWD, excellent questions, and not ones I have definitive answers on. I agree with the all the points you’ve raised, and while I lean towards police being overwhelmed as being a de facto request for men of good will (and sound ethics!) to stand up, and I see that as categorically different to vigilante-ism, I’m happy to have others differ with me on that.
Aaaaand…I just burned my roux. Fortunately that’s as far as I was in the process. So I’m going to bow out for the night.
1 Like
And fire is the very picture of volatile (French “volant”, flying). Whatever an arsonist’s intent may be, fire has a way of seeking its own counsel in the matter.
Arson of an occupied structure is specifically listed as a crime that justifies the use of deadly force in my state, and I think that’s very justified, if a bit narrow for a mob violence situation where things could get out of control very quickly with the fire department’s ability to respond inhibited by the mob.
1 Like
As an aside, Saul Cornell was my senior thesis advisor at Ohio State. After much wrangling, he eventually supported my thesis that the original intention of the establishment clause of the First Amendment was to forbid a national or federal church. He was a good (and very young) professor, but at the time he was intellectually honest which was a surprise to me as he was an outspoken New York liberal.
2 Likes
This definitely makes sense to me. Arson of an occupied structure seems like a pretty clear argument for attempted murder.
I believe Scripture instructs us concerning the middle ground. I believe the Hebrews passage does teach us that Christians are to be of a disposition that is willing to joyfully endure the plundering of our property, if that is the suffering that God has providentially appointed us to. But Jesus also tells his disciples that if they are persecuted in one town, they may flee to the next (Matthew 10:23). When persecution broke out in Jerusalem, the disciples didn’t all stay there to grin and bear it. The church was largely scattered (Acts 8:1-2, 11:19), and they went about continuing the work of the gospel.
At least two principles can be found there. First, it isn’t sinful to seek to avoid the suffering of persecution (which would include plundering of our property). If you have the opportunity to escape the suffering in such a way that does not involve sinning, then you are free to avail yourself of that opportunity. I think this may surely include types of “non-lethal, but active” deterrence. Isn’t this what we’re doing when we lock our doors at night? Is it wrong for a Christian shopkeeper shouting, “Stop!” at a shoplifter? Is it wrong to stand in front of your store entrance, creating a physical, personal barrier between would-be thieves and your property? I don’t think so.
But notice another principle from this text. The Christian response to persecution was not to get out their “Don’t tread on me,” T-shirts and start threatening to shoot people. Rather than seeking to vindicate themselves through violence, they fled to avoid the suffering, and continued the work of the gospel. The Christian’s heart is to be bent toward the work of saving lost sinners from the judgment of God.
This passage doesn’t speak directly to every notion of civil rights to self defense, but I do find it instructive. We’ve already discussed the charge that we have as fathers and husbands to protect our families; but we also have a charge to be about my business of our Lord who came to seek and save the loss. These two responsibilities ought not be pitted against one another, as though they were mutually exclusive.
Jesus came that sinners may be saved from destruction; that they might repent and believe and have eternal life. The man who invades my home in the night is probably dead in his sin and on his way to hell. I believe my heart as a Christian should be to want to give him every reasonable opportunity to flee from my home before he meets the end of my shotgun barrel. I want this man to repent and believe on Christ. Where his opportunity to flee ends is when it becomes reasonably clear that he is intent on doing physical harm to my family. At that point, my responsibility to protect is forced to exceed my care for this man’s soul. It may sound weird to state it this way, but I must in faith be willing to shoot the man, knowing that my conscience may be clear before the Lord, knowing that I am not responsible for this man’s reaping of what he has sown.
What does “every reasonable opportunity” mean? I think it will vary by situation. It’s one thing to be stirred out of bed when you hear the front door creaking open, and another to be stirred out of bed with an intruder hovering over your face. And I would be very slow to judge a man on what he does in any scenario like that. But here’s a useful thought exercise.
If my wife wakes me up in the night, telling me that she hears the front door creak open, my response will be to arm myself, and tell my wife to be ready to call the police. I will turn lights on. I will begin moving to the stairs. I will listen. If it becomes clear to me that there is an intruder downstairs, I will tell my wife to call the police. I will proceed to shout down the stairs, something to the effect, “We know you’re down there. We are armed, and the police have been called. You must leave immediately.”
My desired outcome in this situation is not that I get the opportunity to shoot someone. My desired outcome is that a sinner would come to his senses and leave. But if he does not leave, what he has now done is given me the reason to believe he is here to do harm. At this point, my conscience has been cleared in the event that I have to defend my family.
Now, I want you to contrast what I’ve just described with another possible response.
Imagine the same scenario. Front door creaks in the night. Wife wakes you up. You arm yourself. You quietly put on your MOLLE vest, and your nightvision goggles. You leave all the lights off. You quietly tell your wife to grab the cell phone in case she needs to call 911. You stealthily work your way down the stairs and find a man with a flashlight going through your kitchen drawers. You open fire, and he falls to the floor.
Now, assume that in both scenarios, the intruder is shot and killed. Question: In which of the two responses that I’ve outlined will the home defender be found civilly justified? Answer: Both of them.
But did both men act according to the mind of Christ, as informed by the Scriptures?
EDIT: I am not meaning to imply that there’s something wrong with nightvision goggles and MOLLE vests… but I think you got my point.
1 Like
You mean as opposed to forbidding a federal religion?
I know this has been widely disputed among scholars. Darrell Todd Maurina wrote an excellent piece on the subject back around the time where Escondido theology was front-and-center to much discussion.
I’m tracking with you.
Regardless of whether or not I agree with your application of Scripture for each scenario, taking a life under any circumstance is no light thing. We shouldn’t operate with an attitude of “this is finally my chance” when confronted with a potential opportunity to use lethal force righteously.
1 Like
Thank, Ken. That’s very good to know. When you are trusting someone to sift through a huge body of historical documentation and artifacts and report a representative sample it is important to know they are honest. Reading a few of his papers he appears to try hard to represent things fairly, but without knowing the actual distribution of his sources its hard to tell.
Jackson - Good question, and I should have clarified. As opposed to allowing the individual states to form their own state churches. I use “church” here interchangeably with “religion” because in the late 18th century, some sort of established Christianity (as opposed to Islam, Judaism, etc.) was the only viable option.
My thesis was that the debates centered on the establishment of a federal religion, not whether or not states could establish churches - which several had done and continued to support well into the 19th century - which was completely in keeping with the intent of the first amendment.
As I recall (it was 30 years ago), the adjectives “federal” and “national” were excised from early drafts of the first amendment as an effort to reinforce state prerogatives over the federal.
2 Likes
A few years before the most recent cycle of looting, I recall reading a news story about a man in Chicago who parked his truck at the curb and left the keys in the ignition as he stood in line at a hot dog stand. When a 17-year-old jumped in the truck and started driving away, the man ran back, took out a handgun, and shot the thief through the open window of the truck. The teenager then stumbled out of the truck, collapsed on the street, and died in front of many onlookers. The truck owner was never arrested by police nor charged by the DA, apparently because he was a lieutenant in the Chicago fire department, and this caused an outburst among the usual suspects in the national media.
Was it right for the truck owner to kill to prevent his property from being stolen? I suppose not. But the conundrum is that a society in which thieves can brazenly steal trucks with impunity is much less livable than a society in which thieves caught in the attempt are immediately extrajudicially killed.
When it comes to Ex. 22:3 and Heb. 10:34, I think these verses must be understood in the context of whether there is a functioning justice system or not, and whether it is carrying out state persecution of Christians. So sure, if the state is going to try to track down the truck thief and make him pay back fourfold, don’t shoot. Or if the state wishes to persecute Christians and does so by explicitly not protecting them from criminals, then let yourself be plundered. But if the state is unable or unwilling to protect citizens from criminality, then use of violence by individuals to protect property might be viewed as a lesser (or least?) magistrate taking up the sword of Rom. 13:4 that was voluntarily relinquished by the higher magistrate.
2 Likes
Reminds me of the story of the Quaker who came upon an intruder in his house. He’s reported to have said, “Friend, I would not harm thee for all the world; but thou standest where I am about to shoot.”
Love,
8 Likes
Now THAT’S funny. “I’m about to put a hole in the wall behind you.”
2 Likes