My views on Biblical Self-defense

If you take my children as captive, I am not going to sit and wait to negotiate. God has given us the right to defend ourselves, and it includes bringing our children back from captivity. Those who think the New Testament Sermon on the Mount is about pacifism, let them know the same Lord said in the same Sermon, "Do not add or subtract anything from the Torah."  (Matthew 5:17-19)

 

The Torah is about God rescuing his people from their enemies and empowering them to remove their enemies to possess the promised land. Moreover, the Lord used hyperboles like "show the other cheek" not for literal obedience but to shame those who treated his people unjustly. Non-retaliation against a mighty enemy was the way to embarrass the violent and unjust enemy from within. (Read my Matthew 5-7 articles and Jesus' hyperboles.)

 

Mounce quotes 1 Peter 2: 20-23 and reasons that Jesus’ disciples should emulate their teacher and accept unjust abuse.[1] John D. Crossan contends that “this logion is not case law and does not enjoin pacifism.”[2]  Craig L. Blomberg says that counseling assaulted wives to submit to abusive husbands based on the “turning the other cheek” concept of this text is a misapplication of scripture.

 

A backhanded slap on one’s right cheek is not “the aggressive blow of a boxer but a backhanded cuff often used by a superior to insult a subordinate.” The proper application should instead be “do not trade insults or ‘retaliate when mistreated’ and not ‘deliberately subject yourself to physical abuse.’”[3] Kemmler believes that this scripture teaches about “handling an insult rather than handling physical violence.”[4]

 

Stott, however, observes that some have wrongly assumed Christ’s words “as the basis of an uncompromising pacifism.”[5] In this category, he mentions, Leo Tolstoy who viewed the text as a complete proscription of  “physical violence” (personal or institutional). Stott also adds Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and “the crazy saint whom Martin Luther describes”­ as the one who “refused to kill” the lice that bit him (because he read the passage as a prohibition to resist evil).[6]

 

To Stott, Gandhi incorrectly interpreted “turning the other cheek” as the doctrine of non-violence.[7] Jesus’ diktat on non-retaliation cannot be taken as an utter forbiddance of violence (including police assistance) unless we assume that “the Bible contradicts itself and the apostles misunderstood Jesus,” he remarks.[8] I agree with Stott that Jesus’ instructions do not validate “total pacifism.”[9]

 

In sum, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus does not talk about allowing people to hurt you incessantly. If someone strikes you on one cheek, in its original context, it is about people slapping the person with the back of their hand. A back-handed slap was considered an insult in their cultural world. Therefore, Jesus is talking about insulting the oppressor by showing the other cheek. By doing so, the victim could declare a moral victory over the unjust abuser.

 

Even so, some might argue that Stephen did not defend himself when the religious Jews stoned him to death (Acts 6-7). I ask them two questions. 1. If somebody is raping your children in front of you, will you not try to defend them? 2. Why did Jesus cleanse the Temple courts with a whip? Was it not a violent method? It was. Stephen's martyrdom was because he knew he was defenseless against religious authority, like Graham Staines' martyrdom. Even so, God rescued Peter from prison when the church prayed for him fervently (Acts 12). 

 

Jesus did not choose to defend himself before Pilate. Nevertheless, Paul fiercely defended his gospel and his innocence before the Jews and the Romans. Therefore, there is no single paradigm that God has chosen in the New Testament for believers to respond to injustice. Of course, the standard is to forgive the oppressor and allow him to repent. Even so, God doesn't demand people to let oppressors oppress those who are weaker than them (when it is in their power to help the weak).

 

The Christian faith is not about passive resistance or pacifism. It is about justice and truth. For instance, what Hamas terrorists did to Israelite men, women, and children on October 7th was unconscionable. They raped innocent women and killed innocent civilian men. I don't think if I were Israel, I would wait for American police to come and rescue my child from violent criminals. God would enable me to defend and protect my child against the vicious terrorist/rapist. 

 

In the socialist evil world,  people have no freedom to defend themselves against thieves, robbers, and dacoits. When goons attack people, they have no option but to wait for the police to come and help them. By the time the police come, many things happen. The violent goons would have hurt the men, raped girls, looted money, and abducted children. 

 

However, the goons that attack are in league with the police and the politicians. The politician controls both the weapon-holders: the police and the terrorists. That is why socialism invariably produces corrupt leaders who behave like dictators. They know that the people, their victims, have no power to defend themselves. 

Therefore, Americans have the right to keep their guns: the Second Amendment. The God of the Bible gives us the right to defend ourselves when attacked by goons and terrorists before the police would come.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

[1] Mounce, New International Biblical Commentary, 49.

[2] John D. Crossan, “Jesus and Pacifism,” in No Famine on the Land, ed. James W. Flanagan and Anita Weisbrod Robinson (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1975), 195–208.

[3] Craig L. Blomberg, Making Sense of the New Testament: Three Crucial Questions (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, Div of Baker Publishing Group, 2004), 113.

[4] Kemmler asserts that “turning the other cheek” should be understood in the light of the context, which talks more about handling an insult (a backhanded slap) than about how to address physical violence.

[5] “The prohibition of the use of force in any and every situation.” Stott, Essential Living: The Sermon on the Mount, 108.

[6] Stott, Essential Living: The Sermon on the Mount, 108-9.

[7] M.K. Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth [An Autobiography] (Ahmedabad: The Navajivan Publishing House, 1927), 58; Gandhi warns, “Until we take all Christ’s principles to our hearts, war, hatred, and violence will continue”. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 45 (New Delhi: The Publications Division, Government of India, 1984), 319; Stott says: Gandhi claimed that he applied non-violence to his “domestic, institutional, economic and political life” “for over fifty years” without a single failure. Stott, Essential Living: The Sermon on the Mount, 110.

[8] Stott, Essential Living: The Sermon on the Mount, 110.

[9] Stott, Essential Living: The Sermon on the Mount, 113.