OK, so I stand corrected. We have a moral obligation to defend the innocent. I see that.
That does not however, equate to a requirement that any one of us own a gun, or a knife, or to clench my fist in anger.
Never said it did and I never will. You have the right, just as I do, to decide what is proper for yourself in that regard.
Everything I read from the Church on the topic speaks of moderation and restraint and the one thing I learned from taking martial arts classes in my youth was that it is always better to walk away than it is to fight. There is a point where it has to stop.
Agreed. The best idea is to not put yourself in a bad situation to begin with. Believe me, I would much rather use my verbal judo and try to talk myself out of a situation or strap on the PF Flyers and do my best Jessie Owens impersonation than have any sort of violent confrontation. Unfortunately, that may not always be an option.
The gang has a gun so I get a gun. They get a better gun so I get a better gun. They get a bigger gun and so I get two guns and learn how to shoot with both hands. Then we get sub-machine guns. Now there are TV shows where women build guns that look like they came out of a Terminator movie and they build fantastic scenarios where some guy blows away two dozen mannequin “Bad guys”.
And that is far from the norm. The average person does not have access to weapons like that at all. It takes a special tax stamp and background check by the ATF for anyone to purchase a fully automatic weapon.
In addition, it is hardly fair to judge the average gun owner based on what Hollywood does or does not do. Nor is it fair to judge someone who responds to an escalation by those who are breaking the law. It is the gang members who are the criminals, not the other person. Making those analogies is like judging my right to free speech based on the pornography industry or someone spewing hate speech. Do you want to be lumped in as a Christian with the members of Westboro Baptist Church or The First Baptist Church in Crystal Springs, MS?
A society which glorifies weaponry and produces TV shows where people build bomb proof bunkers to protect their big screen TV seems to me to exhibit a fundamental lack of trust in God’s providence and I want to ask when we, as members of Christ’s Church, when do we stand down? When do we stop blaming Hollywood for violence and take the “Insured by Smith and Wesson” bumper sticker off our car? When do we say “Enough! I will not escalate this.”?
As I mentioned above when you made your last comment about such bumper stickers, when people stop threatening the rights of others to have a gun or carry a gun as they wish, I believe you will see less and less of those. Until then, people are going to be strident on the subject. Sort of like people have become strident about their religious freedoms lately. Seen the “we will not comply” statements around anywhere? Why is it OK for people to defend openly their rights to religious freedom but not their other guaranteed rights?
I’ll tell you something here that I never told anyone else. I pointed a gun at someone once. I pointed a gun at a guy at the end of my driveway and told him that if he took one more F-ing step I would pull the F-ing trigger. The whole time I was standing there with the gun pointed at him, a voice inside of me kept saying, “Don’t do this. The last thing in your life you need is to kill someone.” That was the voice of God.
It turns out the guy was drunk. I got rid of the gun the next day with the words of my father, a US Marine, ringing in my ears, “You want to own a gun? Who are you going to shoot?”
I answer now, nobody. I’m going to shoot nobody. And I won’t have to stand before Jesus and explain why I shot someone.
That is your decision to make and I support your right to feel that way and to live your life as you choose to live it. The situation you described would shake me also, as it appears to have shaken you. Where I have concern, is when that moral standard is pushed upon others who also have the right to make such decisions.
I can tell you from the depths of my soul, I never, ever, want to have to shoot someone. I pray it never happens. But I can also tell you that if the decision is between that and going home to see my wife at the end of the day, or between that and allowing her or another innocent to be harmed, then I will do what needs to be done.
" or an exasperated "That is enough! :dts: " Was jesus irritated that they took him literally? Or something else. Just a thought.