{"id":1098,"date":"2012-07-30T14:38:28","date_gmt":"2012-07-30T18:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/?p=1098"},"modified":"2012-08-07T14:46:53","modified_gmt":"2012-08-07T18:46:53","slug":"the-colorado-shootings-and-the-right-to-self-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/2012\/07\/the-colorado-shootings-and-the-right-to-self-defense\/","title":{"rendered":"The Colorado Shootings and the Right to Self Defense"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Much ink has been spilled and air time\u00a0(radio and TV) dedicated to the recent mass shootings at the Century movie theater in Aurora, Colorado on July 20, 2012.\u00a0 The gun control crowd has used the occasion to push their agenda of limited availability of guns in our country.\u00a0 They want certain guns (and perhaps all guns) banned for purchase by the average citizen.\u00a0 Debate over where to draw the line on what kind of guns are to be banned is strong and heated.\u00a0 All of this is in spite of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution which gives citizens the right to bear arms in self-defense.\u00a0 The Colorado tragedy is an event made for politicians to take advantage.\u00a0 Such hay-making by political types almost has a surreal quality to it.\u00a0 But it is to be expected.\u00a0 However, those of us who believe in the right to self-defense need to push back and make our feelings known as well.\u00a0 I personally believe that it is a spiritual action to defend one\u2019s self or one\u2019s family from harm.\u00a0 If a man broke into my house to try to kill my wife and kids, it would be a spiritual thing for me to kill him if necessary for their defense.\u00a0 Of course, no genuine believer should seek such an occurrence.\u00a0 It would be a tragic event even if done for right reasons.\u00a0 Christians would mourn the occasion.\u00a0 Nonetheless, it is possible to justify self-defense and family-defense from the Bible.\u00a0 I believe that this teaching is in the same category as the issue of just war theory.\u00a0 The ones who have authority to defend would be different of course, but in principle self-defense is a miniature version of just war \u2013 it would be a just killing action.\u00a0 I hope if such an occasion came into my life, God forbid, I would have the courage to do the right thing and protect my family.
\n
\nI have given in print a summary of my views on just war theory in the Baptist Bible Seminary journal — \u201cA Biblical Defense of Just War Theory,\u201d The Journal of Ministry and Theology<\/em> 6 (Spring 2002): 21-43.\u00a0 This was written in response to the terrorist attacks on 9-11. \u00a0I have dealt with it as a sub-topic in a different article \u2013 \u201cThe Tendency to Softness in Postmodern Attitudes about God, War, and Man,\u201d The Journal of Ministry and Theology<\/em> 10 (2006): 92-114.\u00a0 I would recommend two other sources to you to help you think through these issues.\u00a0 One is the recent article \u201cLessons from Colorado\u201d by Kevin Bauder.\u00a0 It can be found at his blog site \u201cIn the Nick of Time\u201d —\u00a0 http:\/\/www.centralseminary.edu\/resources\/nick-of-time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The second source I would like you to consider is a book which eerily deals with a Christian response to a similar event to the movie theater carnage —\u00a0 Charl van Wyk, Shooting Back: The Right and Duty of Self Defense<\/em>. This is the story of the so-called St. James Church Massacre which happened on July 25, 1993 in South Africa.\u00a0 Terrorists, using AK-47s and grenades, broke into the church\u00a0killing 11 people and wounding 58.\u00a0 Van Wyk was present in the church when the butchery began.\u00a0 The bloodshed would have been much worse if it had not been for van Wyk.\u00a0 For that day, he carried a .38 revolver with him to church due to the unsettled times in the country.\u00a0 In self-defense and in defense of his church body, he killed one of the terrorists and caused the others to leave.\u00a0 Van Wyk, in his book, goes beyond a historical record of the event.\u00a0 He deals with some of the major questions biblically and theologically for Christians to wrestle with in such a circumstance.\u00a0 I share his conclusion and hope that I and my family never experience what he experienced.\u00a0 If there had been one person in the theater in Colorado who had a gun for self-defense, maybe the bloodshed would have been less.\u00a0 But those who strongly support gun control believe that guns are the problem, when, in fact, it is people who are the problem.\u00a0 What events like the Colorado shootings prove is that sin is real.\u00a0 Evil cannot be ignored.\u00a0 Gun control advocates start with the ideal and try to work their way back toward the real.\u00a0 But people die along the way.\u00a0 Those who believe in arming ourselves for self-defense start with realism and try to work toward an ideal that can permeate our society.\u00a0 Less people die in that scenario.\u00a0 Evil will be with us until Jesus comes to begin to make all things right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much ink has been spilled and air time\u00a0(radio and TV) dedicated to the recent mass shootings at the Century movie theater in Aurora, Colorado on July 20, 2012.\u00a0 The gun control crowd has used the occasion to push their agenda of limited availability of guns in our country.\u00a0 They want certain guns (and perhaps all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[46],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1098"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1120,"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098\/revisions\/1120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}