Ask RC-Does the Bible allow deadly force to protect our homes?
When considering the glorious truth that our Lord would not extinguish a smoking wick, that He calls us to turn the other cheek we mustn’t forget this rather surprising admonition of our Lord, as He sent out His disciples, that they be certain to bring along a sword with them, that a sword was even more needful than a cloak (: 36). One of the most frequent “arguments” we hear in favor of pacifism is this emotive nugget, “I just don’t see Jesus wielding an AK-47 and blowing someone away.” Here Jesus calls on His disciples to arm themselves, even as they are sent out.
Moving from the lesser to the greater, it would seem on the surface that we ought also to have the liberty to defend ourselves in our own homes. That is, if Jesus suggests we may defend ourselves when out in public, how much more ought we to be free to defend our families while in the security of our own homes? At the very least this warning from Jesus in Luke’s gospel dispels the common myth that pacifism is, prima facie the right choice for the believer.
We are not left, however, with only an inference, no matter how sound such might be. The Bible, in fact, speaks to the issue of home defense. In , just two chapters after we are told “Thou shalt not kill,” thus demonstrating that we cannot either use the sixth commandment to defend pacifism, we read, “If the thief is found breaking in, and he is struck so that he dies, there shall be no guilt for his bloodshed” (verse 2). Notice a few things about this text. First, the conclusion isn’t merely that the guilt of the homeowner is mitigated by the intent of the intruder, but that there is no guilt at all. Second, note that the thief is struck. This isn’t an argument against tort liability, suggesting that we cannot be sued if an intruder slips in our home. Third, note that it is a thief who has broken in.
I have been in conversations with conservative, Bible-believing Christians who have argued with my conviction here, suggesting incredulously, “You would kill a man just to protect your stereo, or your wife’s jewelry?” The truth of the matter is that when a man breaks into your house he does not do so carrying a neon sign saying, “I’m just here for your stuff. Your wife and children are of no interest to me.” We don’t know what the man breaking in is after. But even if we did know what he was after, even if we knew he was only a thief, as we do in this hypothetical given to us in the very law of God, we are free from guilt if we should defend our home.
The Bible is abundantly clear. Men are called to protect their wives and children. The police exist to apprehend and bring criminals to justice, not to catch them in the act. That is what responsible husbands and fathers are for. We ought not take a sadistic joy in this calling, but neither should we have a weak-kneed fear of it. We serve a King who goes forth with a sword, and who sent forth His disciples with a sword. We serve a King who loves and protects us- His bride, and His children. Surely we can see that we who are the heads of our own homes, are called to do the same.
I don’t much care for physics. Never did. That, of course, doesn’t keep me from being grateful for physicists, and for engineers. This message has reached you through the labors of men who do care about such things. But usually when physicists start talking about wormholes, or engineers start talking about heat transfer rates, my mind begins to wander.
In like manner I have precious little time for books, articles, seminars about “leadership.” It strikes me as profoundly odd that “leadership” has become its own area of study, its own skill set, its own industry. I recognize, of course, that leadership is a real thing, a valuable thing. I have people in positions of leadership over me, and in turn I am a position of leadership over others. That said, it may be a sure sign of leadership failure on my part but I have never thought to myself, “I need to learn how to be a better leader.”
The questions I seek to ask myself when evaluating my interaction with those under my authority are far more fundamental, far more basic. I want to know if I encouraged my charges on to righteousness. I want to know if I treated them as I wish to be treated. I want to know if I exhibited patience with their frailties. I want to know if I was willing and eager to forgive, as I would like to be forgiven. In short, the measure of my “leadership” isn’t found in how well I measured up to some guru’s principles. Instead it is measured by how well I measure up to my Lord’s commands. To put it another way, I am far less worried about how I lead God’s people and far more worried about how well I follow God’s Son.
I fear that the seeming obsession the broader culture has with “leadership” as a concept, and the concomitant obsession of the church with the same theme is not a good sign. Given the lopsided attention given to leadership, isn’t it likely that we all give short shrift to our calling to follow not just Jesus, but those whom He has placed in authority over us? What does it say about us that while the Bible does from time to time talk both about leading and following, all our attention is on leading? Are we listening with lopsided ears?
Even when we get closer to getting it right we get it wrong. We talk about servant leadership, which on its face is indeed a good thing. But doesn’t that suggest that the reason we follow, or serve, is so that we can lead? What about servant servantship? If service is merely a means to the end of becoming leaders, if we race our brothers to the back of the line because we all desperately want to be at the front of the line, if we give with our right hand so that we might receive with our left, we’re not following Jesus aright. Followers, of course, don’t often write books or lead seminars on following, or on anything else for that matter. But that’s okay. We don’t become good followers by following a good follower. We become good followers by following the Good Leader.
Thesis 30- We must help our husbands as wives.
Long before the serpent first made his appearance in the garden, long before Adam and Eve fell into sin, God pronounced judgment. Having assessed His own creative work, God at each day’s end “saw that it was good.” But in Genesis 2:18 we read that God saw something that was not good. It was not good that man should be alone. God’s solution was simple enough- He would make a helper suitable to Adam.
In making a helper suitable for Adam, God endued Eve with the same value, the same dignity, the same image that He bestowed upon Adam. That she was made to help him did not mean that she was made less than him. That she is his equal, however, doesn’t mean that she wasn’t made to be a helper to him.
The important question is, she was made to be a helper for what? She was not made simply to cook his meals or iron his shirts. She was not made to make him comfortable, or to satisfy whatever whims come to his mind. The help Adam needed is not difficult to discern. Adam had been given only one task. Because Adam was made for God, it is God alone who determines his purpose. God had called Adam to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it, to rule over the birds of the air, the fish of the sea and every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. Theologians call this the dominion mandate, God’s call on Adam and Eve to manifest God’s glory through imaging His authority in ruling over all things. This is what Eve was made for, to help Adam in this glorious calling.
God did not make Eve that she might be self-actualized. Neither did He make her that Adam might be self-actualized. God made Eve for the same reason that He made Adam, but in a different role. She was made to be a helper, not to man, not to men, but to her husband. A wife ought to begin each day asking herself this simple question, “How can I be a help to my husband today as we set about our calling to rule over all things?” A wife ought to end each day giving thanks for the opportunity to so serve the kingdom of God.
The serpent is yet more crafty than any of the beasts of the field. It is his delight to mislead, to encourage all of us to fail to trust God, to find His calling on our lives to be not enough. He still tempts us to be as God, knowing good and evil. But the Seed of the woman has come to crush the head of the seed of the serpent. He has come to beautify His bride, as she serves as a help suitable to Him as He brings all things under subjection. Let us pray that He will, by His grace, encourage wives to fulfill their calling, to no longer heed the hissing of the serpent. And may husbands and wives together, the bride of Jesus, honor and obey Him in all that we do.
First, a reminder for those of you who have not yet memorized this. You know who you are. The RC Sproul Jr. Principle of Hermeneutics says, “When you see someone in the Bible doing something really, really stupid, do not say to yourself, ‘How can he be so stupid?’ Instead say to yourself, ‘How am I stupid just like him?’”
When, for instance, Jesus is rebuking the Pharisees for their rehearsed displays of public piety, we’re not supposed to laugh along with Jesus at those fools, but we’re supposed to realize He’s talking to us. Virtue signaling is the same thing as what the Pharisees did, only now we can do the same thing on social media.
When, for instance, we boldly shout to the world our support for the current Nobel Prize of Victimhood winner we’re not really doing anything for the victim. We are instead doing something for ourselves, trying on the mantle of the hero by… checks notes… changing our avatar.
This form of virtue signaling is foolish and embarrassing. That said, it is rather harmless. And not terribly effective. If you really want to bump your public moral standing ratings you take the next step. You don’t merely stand with the victim, but you must denounce the villain. You show the world how good you are by proclaiming to the clamoring crowd how bad he is. It matters not whether you have any particular insight into the issue at hand. You simply have to approve of the approved and disapprove of the disapproved. Vehemently, irrationally, if you want to do it well.
To earn your virtue signaling ninja badge, however, you have to take it one step further. It’s nice to side with the victim. It’s better to hate the villain. It is better still to insist on a lynching, followed by a show trial. It’s best, however, if you also denounce anyone who dares to suggest that some evidence might be helpful, that the tidy niceties of an actual trial would add a nice touch. The ones trying to stop the lynching are the most guilty of all.
The Christian is called to recognize himself in the condemnations put upon the Pharisees. The Christian is called in turn to repent of this folly. The only virtue we are called to signal is a virtue that is not ultimately our own. We are to point to the cross, which is our only hope. We are to confess our own sins before we hastily convict others of theirs.
Social media, that space where we are all free to express our own views, is sinking into a morass of virtue signaling on the one hand and cancel culture on the other. We all seem to type our tweets with one finger, and reserve the other nine for pointing at others, or we type with nine fingers and reserve one to make our message clear. Our message, the message of the church of Jesus Christ must never be, “Look how good I am” but must always be, “Look away from me. I’m hideous. Look to the Lamb.”
We live in an age of uncertainty. We are ignorant of our past, and fearful of our future. And in the here and now, well, we just don’t know. The one thing we’re sure of is that we’re not sure at all. That is a part of the folly of postmodernism. This epistemology of the culture is immediately, obviously and devastatingly self-referentially absurd. It affirms the truth that there is no truth. It says you are false if you affirm there is a false. But the contradictions do not stop there. It is not only epistemological nonsense; it is also moral nonsense.
As post-modernism crept into our culture it came in the thoughts and works of a ragtag band of mourning Jeremiahs. Sartre wept over the death of truth, as did his compatriot Camus. Kierkegaard may have been the melancholy Dane, but Nietzsche was not a man you wanted to invite to a party. This was no giddy celebration of emancipation, but the doleful realization that we are but strangers in a hostilely indifferent universe.
It’s ironic that the younger generation, those who find the lightness of being rather bearable, in some ways are more consistent than their fathers. Consider, why would one mourn to discover that there is no truth? One cannot mourn unless one presupposes that it is true that truth has value. If nothing is true, it’s not true that truth has value. And so nothing is lost. And so there should be no mourning. Perhaps they’ve learned the lesson, though we cannot either say that it is true that it is false to think it sad that there is no true, if there is no true.
The younger generation, however, has its own version of the same inconsistency. They not only mourn the loss of truth, they attack as evil those few of us left who affirm that there is truth. One of the supposed great advantages of relativism is what is can do for peace. If Roman Catholicism can be true for you, and Protestantism true for me, but neither can really be true, than why all the fighting in northern Ireland? If Judaism has no claim on the Muslim, and Islam on the Jew, we need no more summits at Camp David. The problem is solved. If we just agree to disagree, or agree to agree that it is true neither of what we hold to is true, then peace descends like the dew.
We don’t agree. We affirm that Jesus is Lord, over those who in His grace recognize it, and those who do not. We affirm that there is true truth, and that relativism is a lie. And so we are attacked. War breaks out every time your reality clashes with mine. To me, it’s fine for me to take what you own. To you, perhaps not. And so the shooting starts. But so far, and believe me this is changing, we are merely attacked socially. That is, we are called names. And tops on the list is “Arrogant.”
That is what we are called, whoever the “we” is that affirms objective, knowable reality. “Who do we think we are? Do we think we have a corner on the truth? Who are we to say what’s true and what’s false? Where is our humility? We always think we’re right.” The pimps of tolerance won’t tolerate us walking on their street corner. It’s bad for business. And sadly, we are just relativist enough that we let this nonsense get to us. We bend and scrape, and plead, and make sure we let everyone know that some of our best friends are relativists.
We miss the simple hypocrisy of their judgment. We miss out on the opportunity to respond, “Are you saying it is objectively true that I should never say something is objectively true?” “Are you saying it is wrong for me to say that anything is wrong?”
But we also miss the most astounding hypocrisy of all, that they think they have mastered humility and that we have the arrogance problem. Ask them this: Which is more arrogant? I say that there is an objective reality outside of myself. I did not make it; I do not control it. I cannot comprehend it in its totality. But I can, and you can know something about it that is real and true. Or, is this more arrogant? I create all reality. Whatever is is because I believe it to be so. Neither you, nor some god, nor anyone else can change the reality that I have constructed in my own head. To me sodomy is fine, and as such, it can never be judged.
Relativism is not rooted in epistemological humility, but in the very ontological pride with which the serpent tempted Eve. Bite into relativism and you shall be as God, creating reality, morality, all that is. Our view in turn turns on the conviction that the God who made us also made all things, and that He has revealed some things to us, such that we can know them. We are the subjects of reality, not its master.
Relativism is not humility; it is instead humiliating. It is the non-system of non-sense that falls of its own weight before it can take a step. All the moral posturing is just that, the faux posture of those slouching toward Gehenna. We are indeed called to be humble, to recognize that there but for the grace of God go all of us. But we must never be humble about God, and about His revelation of Himself. We must never confuse our own wishes with His. He is what He is; that’s His name. And we are His creatures, who must believe and affirm all that He teaches.
