protecting your family...

farmfresh · #1 Mar 10, '12, 11:51 am

Does the bible address the issue of killing someone due to self protection? A friend and I were discussing this the other day and we have different viewpoints, but neither of us could reference the bible.

heres an example: someone is assaulted in a parking lot, and that person shoots the other person in self defense. the person shot then dies. im not talking about a 'planned out' situation, just a case of someone protecting themselves and their family.

thank you for anyone who can point us somewhere in the bible.

Bartolome Casas · #2 Mar 10, '12, 2:02 pm

Luke 22:36 >>

New International Version (©1984)

He [Jesus] 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.

These were instructions Jesus gave to missionaries who were going out into the road and countryside. Clearly he wanted them to be able to protect themselves from attacks.

CDB1718 · #3 Mar 10, '12, 2:06 pm

This priest argues that there is no justification for violence, including self-defense, found in the New Testament. You can see the whole thing on his website.

http://www.centerforchristiannonviol...FT_Booklet.pdf

Quote:

Contrary to some Renaissance art and modern motion pictures, Jesus in the New Testament never strikes a human being nor does he ever kill a person or recommend such a course of action. The cord or whip, found only in the “Cleansing of the Temple” narrative in John, is a Messianic symbol of authority (mt 3:12; lk 3:17) employed exclusively on the livestock in order to move them out of the Temple. The fact that the moneychangers and owners of the livestock leave the Temple with the animals should speak for itself. Once the reason for their being in the Temple—to make money—is removed, their hearts know no reason to do anything other than follow their treasure and depart the premises. The Temple passage is a prophetic-symbolic condemnation of the almost universal evil of the commercialization of God by the few to the spiritual detriment of the many, and not a justification for homicidal violence.

The bankruptcy of the attempts to stand the Temple story on its head and make it a “proof text” to justify homicide and its consequent divisiveness is more than merely an intellectual, historical and spiritual embarrassment. When one considers what Jesus in full Messianic authority is trying to announce, i.e., the oneness of all humanity before God (“Does not scripture say, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all people’? But you have made it into a robbers’ den.”) embarrassment turns to fear and trembling and nausea. For the sickening reality is that the very passage whose intention it is to declare the unity of humanity before God and in God has been manipulated to promote the division of people from people and hence the separation of people from God.

Parenthetically, one can only wonder if the great anti-evangelical scandal of the Church, as a house divided against itself, could exist as it does, if Constantinian Christianity had accepted the Temple presentation for what it is—a prophetic sign, rooted in Jesus’ Messianic authority, warning against commercialized religion and a clear statement on the essential unity of the People of God—instead of as a sham “proof text” for homicidal violence. And one further wonders whether Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Churches will ever be able to achieve anything but the most shallow forms of ecumenical unity until they collectively take the “Cleansing of the Temple” seriously by asking themselves of what was it cleansed, and why.

In the end the fact that the history of Christian homicidal violence has been forced to depend for justification on a narrative which has nothing to do with justifying such activity should alert the simple and the sophisticated to the impossibility of locating anything other than a nonviolent Jesus in the New Testament. The “Cleansing of the Temple” referred to by scholars as the “Overturning of the Tables” is no more supportive of Christian participation in homici- dal violence than the “healing of the armed servant’s ear in Gethsemane” is supportive of Christian participation in the armed services.

Do as you will, but be aware that the justification of homicidal violence through the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus is a desperate grasping at spiritual straws while ignoring the overwhelming reality of Jesus as The Baptized Suffering Servant, The Proclaimer of the Sermon on the Mount, The Nonviolent Lover of Gethsemane and Golgotha, and the Nonviolent Lamb of God who is “led to slaughter” (is 53:7) who now is the the Lord of lords, King of kings (rv 17:13-14) and “who reigns forever and ever” along with those whose names are written in “the Lamb’s book of life” (rv 21:22; 22:5).