Is It OK for Christians To Keep & Bear Arms?

Word-Of-The-Day: ‘(21) <Jesus said to the crowd calling Him part of ‘Beelzebul’, or Satan,> “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. (22) But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up his plunder.’ (Luke 11:21-22)

One of the questions I often come across is, ‘Is it OK for Christians to be armed, to own guns?  Is it OK to protect myself and my family from harm?”  The answer is a resounding ‘yes’.  There are several passages in the Bible that discuss protecting one’s self with arms, including Luke 11:21, 1 Samuel 17 (David protecting himself and Israel with a slingshot), Exodus 22:2-3 (defending the household at night and the day), and Luke 22:36 (Jesus telling His Apostles to carry a sword for defense).

Part of this questioning comes from the expectation that Christians are to be meek, or to turn the other cheek if attacked.  These are correct in that Jesus told us be meek and to turn the other cheek, but in taking this to the extreme and misunderstanding what was meant, these are detrimental to us.  Meek is not to be ‘weak’; it is more, as President Teddy Roosevelt said, ‘to walk softly and carry a big stick’. 

To be meek is to be reserved, not boasting or wanting to make a ‘show’ of ourselves; it is not that we are to be pushovers but we are to seek to avoid fanfare or confrontation if at all possible.  If we are verbally attacked or even physically confronted without fear of serious harm (a slap in the face during an argument, for example) we are to walk away and forgive those who trespass against us.  We need to ‘go the extra mile’ to help those who confront or oppose us.

When it is apparent that a crime is about to be inflicted upon us or our property, however, we have the right to self-defense.  We do not have to be ‘wimpish’ and allow ourselves to be robbed, carjacked, or harmed.  We certainly do not have to comply with orders to walk into the boxcars, as many Jews did during the Holocaust.  There is an expectation that we can defend ourselves from harm.  This expectation comes with a scale of how much we can fight back, per Exodus 22:2-3.  In Exodus 22:2, God (through Moses) tells the Israelites that is permissible to fight back, up to the point of lethality, if a thief breaks in at night. 

But God then states in Exodus 22:3 that in the daytime, that same thief should be able to be stopped without lethal force.  If your car is being broken into, you can hold the thief or thieves for police and take the necessary steps to stop and hold them without harming them.  If they start moving toward you with a weapon in hand, the level of harm you can apply goes up, to that point of lethality.  Lethal force should be the last resort, the last option, and never the first one.  The police, even if after the event is over, will need to come in assist and secure the situation.

It is not in our strength alone that we need to depend on defending ourselves; Luke 11:22 refers to the need for Jesus to defend us Spiritually.  His ‘house’ is the space within us that the Holy Spirit is to dwell in; if we depend only on our strength or ‘weaponry’, and don’t have the Spirit to defend us (or we tell the Spirit ‘we got this’), we will be overrun by that which we cannot win against on our own.  Only with Jesus as our defender do we have the strength to overcome our Spiritual adversaries.  Like stopping a home invasion, we can only do so much, but eventually the police will need to be called.  Stopping a sinful attack, Jesus is not only our police force but our private security, our alarm system alerting us of danger!