QUESTION
Recently, I had been reading David W. Bercot's insightful book, The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down.
Our backstory: My spouse and I used to be "Preppers" and besides food, water, and other emergency supplies, we and all of our friends stocked up on guns and ammo. We claimed we were not doing it out of fear but to be wise and to have enough to share with others. In the past several years, I now see it as future-tripping and religious rationalization.
Apparently, the attitude among many conservative "Christians" is our need to fight for the right to bear arms and to be ready to defend property, self, or in these times, fight in a revolution.
For several years, I have been coming to terms with loving and blessing and forgiving my enemies. But a few chapters in Bercot's book, he shows via the scriptures that Jesus and Paul were nonresistant and never retaliatory. They never took up the sword or defended themselves verbally or physically.
My heart can believe Jesus functioning like that but we are having a hard time picturing ourselves acting without aggression if we found someone breaking into our home or doing some evil act against us. Any thoughts you care to share?
RESPONSE
Great question. There are a few ways to think about this.
I'll let Brian Zahnd address it briefly via a blog post. We think about this together a lot. https://brianzahnd.com/2014/
I would also recommend two other resources that show how preparing for violence is the real naive idealism versus Jesus' instructions, which are actually the higher realism:
Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers - https://www.jstor.org/
John Howard Yoder, What Would You Do? - https://searchworks.
I also respond to the question here: https://www.ptm.org/q-r-
What I mean by the naivety of violence versus the realism of non-violence is this:
If it's not enough for us that the prophets say that under the New Covenant, we will break down our weapons into farm implements and no longer even train for war...
And if it's not enough that Jesus (he's Lord, right?), directly commanded us to love, bless, and pray for our enemies (and forbade retaliation)...
And if it's not enough that Paul said the 'weapons of our warfare are NOT the weapons of this world. Our weapons (unlike the world's) are mighty..."
Then let us at least note some cold, stubborn facts about the imaginary scenario where you defend your home against break-and-entry:
First, you would be assuming the person doing the break-and-entry is fairly stupid. For example, you would assume they haven't cased your house, planned for stealth, initiated surprise, or thought to have accomplices. Oh, and that they're armed too.
You'd also be assuming that you are willing to kill them for whatever it is in your house that you think is worth more than a human life. Perhaps make a list of those objects and consider getting rid of them.
You'd also be assuming that you are willing to kill them for whatever it is in your house that you think is worth more than a human life. Perhaps make a list of those objects and consider getting rid of them.
Now if you don't actually kill them, and only retaliate sufficiently to chase them off, you don't foresee that he'd be enraged and willing to come back with more weapons, more friends, more plans, and ... aw skip that, he'd just burn your house down while you sleep. In other words, you imagine this person is wicked enough to justify killing but not counting on the possibility that he's wicked enough to return and escalate.
You're also assuming he's not just hungry or needs a few bucks for his next hit of drugs.
Further, you would also be assuming that prepping makes your family safer and overlooking the real numbers. Gun deaths of home invaders by homeowners are VERY rare. Compare that to the number of accidental deaths both of and by family, friends, loved ones, neighbors, and (often) children and toddlers ...
AND compare that to the number of self-inflicted gun deaths by suicide ... the odds of suicide increase by 600% when there is a gun in the house. Everyone gets sad sometimes...
Then statistically, the presence of a gun in your home makes your home FAR more dangerous to your family. Indeed, the threat of force by the home-owner during a break-in (the purpose of which you don't know) immediately increases the odds of escalation leading to death through the roof. That is, producing a weapon during a home invasion endangers your family of a fatality.
Further, you would be assuming that every forced entry into your house is hostile and that violence is the best way to address the one entering.
This happened to us: we heard someone breaking into our basement window to gain access to our son's room. We knew for sure that the 1:00 am intruder was hostile and we knew we should defend ourselves. Happily, we didn't come out with guns blazing. We can't have guns in our home as we have family members with a history of suicidal ideations during times of mental health crises. Instead, my wife called out loudly, "Who is that?" As it turned out, it was our youngest son's best friend (who also struggled with mental health), trying to get through the window because he thought our son was there and didn't want to wake us up. Domo was not waking up as he tapped on the glass, so he was trying to jiggle the window open. In other words, we didn't really know what we thought we knew at all. We not only didn't shoot him, but couldn't, because we had actually prepped our response (and next steps after that ... which would have included a 911 call and fleeing). I'm glad we didn't even terrorize him.
Another time, I was away and my wife and son were asleep. An intruder came in through an unlocked patio door and took her purse and an old laptop from the kitchen. They didn't wake up my family. The next morning, Eden discovered the loss. She also discovered that all of her credit cards and ID (very considerately) had been dumped outside on the neighbor's lawn. They may have found $10 or $20 in her purse and would have pawned my regrettable laptop for $100 worth of drugs.
Would that theft have warranted violence or death or self-endangerment? Absolutely not. If I had been home, caught them, and been awake enough to confront them, I would have been aware that most home invasions are by junkies who are armed only with knives. Stab wounds are series, so I would more likely have kept my distance, offered a snack, asked for their story, and perhaps drove them elsewhere. That's how I have prepped to deescalate and avert harm to my family.
I've seen a man killed. It was awful. Traumatizing. But to also be the one who killed them over $100?
The last young man I caught rifling through my bins turned out to have a name, was struggling to find work, couldn't seem to crack his drug habit, and also happens to be the father of two little children. I'm glad I didn't and couldn't shoot him. He left gratefully with two bottles of water, a can of ginger ale, and some recyclables.
Like Jesus and the early church, my truest self would rather die than kill, and to protect my wife, I'd be happy to help her flee, use nonviolent force (restraint), or give my life for hers before I resort to violence. The naive violent ego disagrees, so I have to prepare to keep that part of me in lockup.
But let's say you were a mind-reader and knew for sure the intent was to harm you. Again, any escalation on your part makes death far more likely. But pretend you wanted to avert that and just prevent it by killing the person. Assuming you can't talk them out of it, pray your way through it, or simply flee, now we're imagining ourselves planning for the alleged break-in. Since you don't know when it will be, I guess you'll need to be ready. Describe this. Where is your gun? Where is the ammunition? Of course, unless you are lawbreakers (the bad guy with the gun), then your gun and ammunition will be locked away in separate rooms? At what point when you wake up in the middle of the break-in do you get them both and assemble your arsenal? Or would you be careless and defiant enough of the law to keep a loaded gun under your pillow? In the hail of gunfire, what happens to the odds that you don't shoot each other or get shot? If the person is armed, what happens to the odds when they see a gun versus hands up?
And so on. All of the above tells me that the fear led to a crazy case of bravado. If the possibility is so real and threatening that you'd be willing to endanger your family, why not prep instead with a decent alarm system, guard dog, and saferoom?
This is what I mean by the naivety of violence. It is common among good people who aren't wicked enough to imagine that their assailant is better at violence than them, more equipped to do it, and may not be violent after all. Jesus knew this. He was not an idealist. He knows the if you want to walk away alive from a thief or an enemy combatant, you don't take bring a knife to a gunfight, and if you want to follow him, you don't bring the gun either. You find out what they want, give it to them, offer a little more, and live to live another day. He's being ultra-practical.
When Jesus says at the end, in the face of death, "Put away your sword, those who live by the sword, die by the sword," the first Christians (for 300 years), took this as a command to all Christians, as I do. That we'd opt for the way that leads to death seems unwise to me, but he was also a realist in that way when he said that the road that leads to life is narrow and very few (especially very few Christians these days) actually find it. Tragic but true.
It feels to me like you are in the midst of a moment of clarity where you're being invited to a more radical level of discipleship. It sounds risky, but not nearly as risky as the bloody alternatives.
When I read the second amendment, I know exactly by Jesus forbade making oaths (think "oath of allegiance"). They draw us into direct defiance against the express commands of Jesus that we committed to in our baptism into his death. At some point, every worldly oath requires you to choose to depart the Jesus Way.
Now I don't say all this because I have a peaceful temperament but because I have a history of violence and years of vengeance fantasies that have shaped my responses ... my default is to retaliate and escalate. For me, nonviolence is not a trendy projection of my niceness. It is a specific call to repentance so that I don't harm myself or others. Maybe you could see it as a similar call to a deeper repentance and freedom from the dangerous fear intrinsic to prepperism.
blessings!
bj
Comments