Christianity and Self-Defense ...
Is It a Sin
to Kill in Self-Defense?
By Kathy Jackson
From an online dialogue: "Is it moral
to take the life of another? No. Is it moral to allow my family to be assaulted
to the threat of death? No. Do I trust God enough to protect them at the moment
of threat-to-life while I'm there with the means to protect them instead? To my
discredit, no, but I believe God will work out every severe consequence (Rom
8:28) for His Glory and testimony for those that are saved..."
My response:
I think you're not thinking quite deeply enough. Take a look at how many
times God either killed people directly or commanded that people be killed in
the Old Testament. If it is always immoral to take a human life, then God
Himself is immoral, because He commanded His people to do immoral things! Since as
Christians we believe that God is not immoral, then there must be
circumstances during which it is not immoral to kill a human being.
The question then becomes, "Under what circumstances is it moral to
kill a human being?" If there are any circumstances at all in which it is moral
to kill someone, I would say that doing so while protecting and defending the people God has
given you to protect would certainly be one of them.
What kind of a man would simply allow a rapist to rape his wife or
daughter? What kind of a mother would simply allow her child to be
kidnapped or murdered, without trying to prevent it? If defending
one's family in such circumstances is immoral, then I submit that the word
"moral" has no meaning at all.
Nor am I alone in this assessment. Here's a quote from well-known Christian
theologians, Dr. Norman Geisler and JP Moreland:
...to permit murder when one could have prevented it is morally wrong.
To allow a rape when one could have hindered it is an evil. To watch an
act of cruelty to children without trying to intervene is morally inexcusable.
In brief, not resisting evil is an evil of omission, and an evil of omission
can be just as evil as an evil of commission. Any man who refuses to protect
his wife and children against a violent intruder fails them morally.1
But is it right to defend your own life with the same tenacity you
would use when defending someone you love? I think it is. While a Christian may voluntarily decide to lay down his life
for the sake of another, God has given you a body and
He intends you to take care of it (1 Cor. 3:16-17). Because God has given you your own
body to protect, it is not a sin, but a virtue, to protect it.
But there's something else. Reading your post I kind of worried about you. I
would not want to be a Christian who thought it was a sin to
defend myself -- and yet planned to do it anyway. I'd be too afraid of freezing
up at the crucial moment, and even more afraid of facing God with blood on my
hands.
Remember, for anyone who believes something is a sin, for him it is
a sin. (Rom 14:14, 23) If you think it's morally wrong to defend yourself
with deadly force, then for you, it really is wrong.
So all of that adds up to this: I would suggest, gently but emphatically,
that you put your gun away and work out these issues in your own mind before you
ever pick it up again. You do not want to do what is wrong to you and then have to live with yourself afterward. You
really, really don't want to be standing there with your brain frozen
solid, wondering about the ethics of shooting someone when you have no time,
no time at all, to think or to consider or to pray or to change your mind
before the decision has to be made.
The time to consider such ethical dilemmas is
before you are faced with life or death peril.
Next Steps
Previous Steps
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Except where otherwise noted, all articles and images on
this web site © 2006-2008 by Kathy Jackson. For permission to quote, please
contact author.
Disclaimer: The author of this site assumes that you are an adult human being capable of making your own choices and taking
responsibility for same. If you are not an adult, or are not capable of taking
responsibility for your own choices, STOP. Do not read anything else on this
site. The author has made a reasonable, good-faith effort to assure that the
articles herein are accurate and contain good advice, but hereby advises the
reader that the author is a normal human being who makes the normal number of human mistakes. Deal with it.
If it sounds stupid to you, don't do it. The author accepts absolutely no
responsibility whatsoever for anything you might say or do as a result of
reading any material on this site. Live your own life.