Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Do humans have an inherent right to self-defense, including the use of violence? What about Christ’s consistent ethic of non-violent resistance toward evil?
The Bible mostly assumes that people have the right to defend themselves. There are places, though, where this right becomes plain and is dealt with openly.
At the beginning of the Bible, God pronounces a death-penalty on murderers. Since humans are made in his image, to commit murder is to strike out at God and is rewarded with death. It would seem logical that, if human life is worth the payment of death after the fact, then defending that life from loss in the first place would also be appropriate.
When we get to the law of God, delivered by Moses, we find this becoming explicit, as that document allows for violence in defense of human life. It contains sophisticated procedures for deciding cases of homicide, whether they amount to murder or to something like what we would call manslaughter, and then between voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. The possibility of killing an attacker in self-defense is in the latter category: not murder but manslaughter, and not considered worthy of capital punishment.
Later, there are many times the men of Israel are called upon to act as soldiers in defense of their families and communities against invaders.
It’s clear that violence may be used to defend human life from attack. There is no place where defending your own life is considered an exception to that idea.
In fact, coming to the Gospels of the New Testament, we see Jesus admitting at one point that he had the capacity to deliver himself by force from the hands of those who sought to kill him. As the son of God, he could summon a heavenly army to his defense if that had been what he was seeking. This amounts to confirmation of the appropriateness of self-defense, though he chose not to pursue that.
In fact, Jesus did consistently preach an ethic of peaceful non-compliance toward evil. He didn’t strictly take self-defense off the table for his followers (two swords among the 12 of them was “enough”) but he urged more peaceful means, like running away, to preserve their lives. I believe it’s still righteous to defend those weaker than oneself, as in a parent defending children from attack, or a man rescuing a woman from the evil actions of bad men.
When Jesus instructs his disciples to flee and not fight, or to turn the other cheek, he’s not suddenly overturning the justice of self-defense. He’s not taking away their right to defend themselves. But, rather, he’s urging them to set their rights aside, for the sake of something higher. In that case, it was the kingdom of God, with its Gospel message of mercy even toward those whose actions frankly deserve vengeance. He practiced what he preached, voluntarily giving up his life, and seeking forgiveness for his murderers.
If we practiced an ethic like that, it just might change the world. To do so, we have to decide that the legal, and even acceptable, use of our rights may not always serve the highest purposes. There may be a better way, as the prince of peace demonstrated.
Gordan Runyan is pastor of Tucumcari’s Immanuel Baptist Church and author of “Radical Moses: The Amazing Civil Freedom Built into Ancient Israel.” Contact him at: