A Right To Defense
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INTRODUCTION: DESCRIBING THE PROBLEM
Civil wars occur like pots of boiling water. They are not instantaneous and certainly not accidental. For instance, if you walked into a steam filled room, with a soaking wet floor, and a scalded kettle, sitting red hot atop a blistering stove, you would be wrong to conclude that these events caused themselves. You would know with little mental effort that an intelligent agent had grabbed a pot, poured the water, turned on the burner, placed the liquid above the flame, letting it’s temperature sore, and for some reason abandoning their post, unleashing the entire mess upon the floor.
Sadly, this is where we are in America today and the Kyle Rittenhouse fiasco demonstrates it perfectly. And while my goal in this post is not to recount all of the details of that awful night, it is clear that a decades old pot of well stirred racism was filled with the noxious rhetoric of the left, placed on the media’s gaslit oven, and was left to agitate the mobs until they boiled out onto the streets setting the city to flame.
In the wake of that tragedy, young men like Kyle Rittenhouse felt emboldened to enter that war zone of a city, to protect private property, administer first aid, and was nearly killed by the mobs for his efforts. Rittenhouse shot and wounded one attacker and killed two, successfully proving in court that his shots were fired in textbook self-defense.
And that is what got me thinking. What is a Biblical view of self defense? What does the Bible actually say about it? Because there are a lot of verses that seem to be pointing in the opposite direction of what Mr. Rittenhouse chose to do. Verses that tell us not to murder or to turn the other cheek. Passages that extol peacemakers as God’s true children and tell us how the meek will inherit the earth.
So, instead of looking at all of the details of the Rittenhouse trial, the night that the shootings occurred, or things that others have already covered, I would like to take this occasion to look at what the Bible says. Is self-defense Biblical? Let us begin with God’s design for what a human is.
DEFINING PERSONHOOD
The Bible begins with our creator fashioning human beings with dignity, value, and worth (Gn. 1:26). That value was not intrinsic to our nature, but extrinsic to His.. He ascribed value upon us because we were made in His image and in His likeness (Gen. 1:28). This means, whatever value we possess, it is a value that derives entirely from Him. We have sacredness, dignity, value, and worth, because He says that we do. That is it.
And because God, as the creator, ascribes value to human life, we are not in the position to take human life, regardless of our opinion about it. To bring an untimely end to any life of any person - regardless of their developmental phase - is not just killing, it is cold blooded murder. Cain faced the awful and covenantal fury of God for just such a discovery.
But, what happens when someone is threatening our life or the life of someone we love? It seems quite clear, Biblically speaking, that we must not unjustly kill upon another person. But what should we do, if we are in Rittenhouse’s shoes, staring down the barrel of a gun? Or being pursued by violent attackers? What should we do if the life of someone we love is being legitimately threatened? Should we close our eyes and wish for the best? Should we stand idly by permitting evil? Or, is the image God endowed upon us worth protecting?
Let us look at a couple of Biblical examples.
DEFENDING PROPERTY
In Ex 22:2-3, the law of God states:
2 “If the thief is caught while breaking in and is struck so that he dies, there will be no bloodguiltiness on his account. 3 But if the sun has risen on him, there will be bloodguiltiness on his account. He shall surely make restitution; if he owns nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft.”
In this situation, God grants a homeowner the allowance to not only defend himself from a thief but to also fatally wound an intruder if the event happens at night. This is because there is no way for a homeowner to perform a risk assessment in pitch black darkness. He would not be able to see whether the intruder was armed, and would need to make a decision without the aid of light.
Remember, when this text was written, a man could not simply flip the light switch on, or dawn his night vision goggles - if he was cool like that - and determine whether a thief was armed. He would have to assume the worst case scenario, taking the criminals' life, because to assume the best about the criminal could end up in tragedy. Not just for him, but also for his family.
Imagine the criminal really did have weapons. And imagine that the homeowner froze in some moral quandary, pondering about the morality of killing a potentially unarmed man. While that sheepish fool quibbled over his flawed moral reasonings, the thief could move swiftly past him, killing his entire family. That would obviously be a great tragedy and a significant loss of human life! Wouldn’t that homeowner be guilty, in that situation, for letting such a man live?
To protect against so grave an outcome, God allowed all Israelite homeowners to exercise the maximum level of self-defense at night, when they could not make a risk analysis, but would hold the home owner guilty if they unjustly struck the criminal dead by day. Unjust is the key word there. You see, during the day, a proper assessment could be made and a decision with better information could be undertaken. If the burglar proved under the midday sun to be unarmed, the homeowner could not just kill him guiltlessly. This is where the thief has rights because his life is also worth protecting. Yet, if the robbers were armed and threatening the home owner’s life or the life of his family, the homeowner would have the right, whether by day or by night, to defend himself and the ones he loves.
This example clearly demonstrates that there are some occasions where God allows human beings to defend themselves, even taking another human life in so doing. We may not face the same exact situation today, with the invention of flashlights and cell phones, but the principle remains the same. If we are in a situation where adequate risk assessment is impossible, and if we sincerely fear our lives are in imminent danger, we may exert the force necessary to end the threat and spare our life. We are not only morally obligated to protect what God has called valuable, we would be held morally culpable if we cowardly allowed precious human blood to be needlessly shed.
DEFENDING PERSONHOOD
Before we set forward a positive argument for defending human life, let us endeavor after a thought experiment for just a moment. Imagine Cain lifts his stone in the air in order to murder his brother, Abel, just as the Scripture tell us. But, and now we are deviating here, imagine Abel suspects that there is fowl play afoot. And instead of receiving a deadly blow upon his crown, he leaps out of the way, in the knick of time, avoiding certain calamity. Now, it is here that Abel is faced with some important decisions.
First, and most importantly, Abel will need to decide if he is morally obligated to allow his brother to kill him? Would God want Him to be peaceful to the end… Literally. Because, odds are that Cain is not coming to his senses anytime soon and it will only be a moment or two before he grabs another jagged stone and is lunging forward again. Should Abel dawn some misguided philosophy of “do gooder” pacifism and let Cain do his wicked worst? That would be absurd! Once Abel turns around in our little thought world, now capable of making an assessment, he notices his brother’s murderous intent. At that moment, he has a moral obligation to protect his own life and any innocent life around him. If Cain were to relent, Abel would need to forgive him, make peace with him, and sleep with one eye open because of him. But if Cain kept on charging at him like a rabid dog, Abel would be responsible to put him down. He would have to defend himself and protect the image that God had bestowed upon Him. This is consistent with the heart of God
Consider what God in the flesh says to His disciples in Luke 22:35-38:
35 And he said to them, “When I sent you out with no money bag or knapsack or sandals, did you lack anything?” They said, “Nothing.” 36 He said to them, “But now let the one who has a moneybag take it, and likewise a knapsack. And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one. 37 For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors.’ For what is written about me has its fulfillment.” 38 And they said, “Look, Lord, here are two swords.” And he said to them, “It is enough.”
On the night that Jesus died, he sanctioned His disciples to go out and buy swords so that they could open carry. The reason Jesus told them to purchase those swords can be for no other reason than to defend themselves. Many wicked and unscrupulous people were already seeking to kill Jesus and His disciples, so Jesus instructs them to purchase the first century equivalent of a firearm. Further, had Jesus wanted to absolutely forbid self-defense, here would have been a good time to do it. He doesn’t. He affirms the value of human life and the responsibility humans have for defending it.
Also recall how Jesus handles Peter in the Gospel of Matthew. Peter cuts off the ear of Malchus, the high priest's soldier, which causes Jesus to rebuke Peter sharply. But notice what Jesus does not say in Matthew 26:52
“52 Then Jesus *said to him, “Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword.”
It is clear that Jesus is not happy with the way that Peter used the sword, but let us be clear that He does not forbid the sword. Jesus does not create a scenario where it is always wrong to wear the sword or perform self-defense. He does not tell Peter to discard his weapon as a thoroughly irredeemable tool, but he does tell him to put it back in its sheath, perhaps for future use. It seems whenever Jesus had a viable opportunity to condemn self-defense, He either affirmed it’s validity or admonished its abuses as with Peter. With that, let us draw our thoughts together in a helpful paradigm.
DETERMINING A PARADIGM
First, as we have seen, humans have been made in the image of God and have a clear right to defend themselves from being murdered. As Exodus 22 clarifies, the right to protect oneself is predicated upon an accurate assessment of a situation. If a person feels legitimately threatened and that their life is in danger, they have met the Biblical qualification for self defense and may employ it.
Second, when employing self defense, it is important to consider the least deadly method available for saving a life and ending the threat. Sometimes that will involve shooting the aggressors as Kyle Rittenhouse did in Kenosha. In that case, you are Biblically justified to defend yourself with lethal force because the threat to your life is imminent. But, in many of the cases, less deadly options are available and will end the threat. Our goal shouldn’t be to become trigger happy vigilantes. We do not seek to employ full measures when lesser measures will accomplish the same result. So, with that assessment of threat, we must also assess our response.
Third, the time to respond with self-defense is during the moment your life is in imminent danger. That is it. If you escape the threat, and the danger level subsides, you may not go about planning a coordinated response from the safety of your home. That is called vengeance and Christians are not allowed to participate in that (Ro. 12:19). Lethal self-defense is reserved for immediate and imminent life saving measures when no other option is available.
Fourth, we must remember that God does not look on the outward appearances but on the heart. Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted because of the physical evidence shown in court. He was given the not guilty verdict on all five counts because his outward actions were consistent with how the state of Wisconsin defined self-defense. But God does not look at us this way, He looks internally. You may be doing everything right on the outside, but God looks inside at the heart (1 Sm. 16:7; Jer. 17:10). This means, when you employ self-defense as a Christian, your emotions can just as easily condemn you as your body. If you respond to an attack with anger, revenge, malice, jealousy, pride, or any other sinful motivation, your self-defense was employed in sin and needing to be repented of.
Fifth, as a Christian, we also have the right to exercise whatever additional rights our states have conferred upon us and be limited by any rights our states have taken from us, so long as those laws and privileges do not permit what the Bible forbids, or forbid what the Bible permits. This is because secular governments were established by God and for God (Ro. 13:1) so that God’s people would live peaceable lives in the world (1 Tim. 2:2). If a government gives us an additional right or limits a particular right to self defense that the Bible does not condemn and our conscience does not forbid (Rom. 14:23) then we would do well to understand the law and live within its bounds when thinking of self-defense.
Sixth, self-defense does not just apply to us as individuals. Our self-defense is meant to defend all the selves, who are made in God’s image. Think about it this way, if we stand by watching an abortion and make no effort to stop it, we share in the guilt of that murder. If we notice a gang beating a man in the streets without calling the police, we share in culpability. If we know that someone is abusing another person, we have an obligation to come to their aid. The Biblical vision of self-defense is that we would protect all image-bearing humans from all senseless attacks upon God’s image. That applies to us and to the people around us because the image of God is worth protecting.
CONCLUSION
There is no way to cover everything on this topic without writing a book. Yet, I am sure that if I did set out to write such a book, I would be faced with the same problem and would need to apologize for it in the preface. My goal in writing this was not to be exhaustive. My goal was to demonstrate, from the Bible, that self-defense is Biblically appropriate under certain conditions.
Human life has God wrought value and God expects us to protect it. He expects us to protect our life, protect the life of victims, and He expects us to do everything possible to spare the life of the oppressor so long as that is possible. In some situations, God expects us to wield the sword in the defense of life. We do not look for those opportunities nor do we not shy away from them either. In other situations, when totally defenseless, God has called His beloved people to make the ultimate sacrifice for their faith, submitting to the will of God, joyfully facing death, dying to be with Christ.
Whatever station the Lord calls you unto, live with courage, love, compassion, conviction, and faith in Christ. The world that we live in is changing. Politicians are calling for police departments to be defunded and for all the prison cells to be emptied. Violent crime is on the rise and this apparent era of “Pax Americana” may soon be coming to an end. The world that we and our children occupy is more dangerous that in pervious generations, growing more unkind to Christians, and will sadly present more opportunities for Biblical self-defense. With that, I do not write to you about something you will never face, but concerning something you may need to wrestle through, as you prepare to navigate this “brave new world”.
