Posted on 09/27/2012 3:22:08 AM PDT by marktwain
Christians are redeemed, but they can be hypocritical and self serving. They aren’t perfect. Furthermore, while Christians can be (though they are not always) sweet and loving, they have always impressed me as perhaps the most pitiful, naive, stolid simpletons on the planet. Sheep is a perfect description.
I can say those things because I am a Christian, and not in the sense of ”God is love let’s all hold hands and sing kumbaya while we sway and dance ourselves into ethereal bliss,” but in the orthodox sense (e.g., belief in the trinity, the vicarious atonement, the deity of Christ, etc.). God is love alright, but as professor John Frame discusses, to say that that’s all He is amounts to an exclusive reduction. It’s wrong. It’s acceptable to emphasize one attribute for pedagogical purposes, but not to define God. God is a lot of things besides love, like justice, righteousness, jealously, and so on. Also, I do not accept the hemeneutical and other pronouncements of the 19th and 20th century form, source and redaction critics any more than I accept the kumbaya movement. They are equally vapid and vacuous, and not deserving of my time.
One sheep-like attribute of Christians is the tendency to be pacifist both nationally and individually. Don’t be fooled about the magnitude of the problem. It’s sweeping, comprehensive and ubiquitous throughout the Christian community. Thus, the second amendment to many Christians who haven’t thought about it a great deal seems to be some sort of “last resort, sin if you must, it’s better to perish like Christ” acquiescence than it is a right, privilege or duty.
(Excerpt) Read more at captainsjournal.com ...
This is a good subject, and one I have struggled with.
The scripture that sealed the deal for me was Nehemiah 4, when the Jews were experiencing violent opposition (as they were rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem)...
They were ordered to place guards...with weapons, to protect themselves.
IOW, self-defense is “ok” from a Biblical perspective.
Neh 4:13 Therefore set I in the lower places behind the wall, [and] on the higher places, I even set the people after their families with their swords, their spears, and their bows.
Don’t struggle. Bonhoeffer was right about this much, “To do nothing in the face of evil IS evil.”
The Bible and self-defense
http://www.wnd.com/2001/11/11783/
He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.”
-Luke 22:36
Thank you!
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