Can Christians Use Lethal Force

Summary

Thinking Fellows Podcast – "Lethal Force" (January 20, 2026)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, the Thinking Fellows – Caleb Keith, Scott Keith, Adam Francisco, and Bruce Hilman – tackle a challenging ethical and theological question: Can Christians use deadly force to defend themselves or others? The conversation draws from biblical passages, historical perspectives (including Luther and Aquinas), personal anecdotes, and Lutheran theology, especially the doctrines of vocation and the two kingdoms. The hosts openly explore the complexity of Christian ethics around violence, pacifism, vocation, and self-defense, highlighting the scriptural ambiguity and the persistent tension between civil and spiritual responsibilities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Question: Christianity, Self-Defense, and Lethal Force

• Timestamps: 05:17–06:53
  • Caleb frames the core question: “Can Christians use deadly force? ...Is there a history or context of Christian pacifism? ...Does a Christian have the ability not only to defend themselves, but should they, for instance, use deadly force to defend a church?”
  • The challenge: balancing trust in God’s providence with the impulse or obligation to defend oneself and others.

2. Personal Leanings towards Pacifism and Contextual Ethics

• Timestamps: 06:53–08:20
  • Bruce clarifies he might be more pacifist than the others, but won’t issue “a blank check”; absolute pacifism isn’t warranted, but neither is a blanket justification for violence.
  • “There has to be a moral justification that fits within Christ’s ethic in the New Testament.” (Bruce, 07:21)

3. The Double Effect and Aquinas

• Timestamps: 08:23–09:39
  • Bruce introduces Aquinas’ “double effect” principle: actions causing harm can be justifiable if a greater moral good is achieved—e.g., protecting the innocent.
  • Caution: “Are we a good judge of that?” – recognizing openings for abuse.

4. Legal and Emotional Realities of Lethal Force

• Timestamps: 09:39–13:22
  • The hosts discuss the impossibility of thinking through layered ethics in the heat of violence; instincts and premeditated training take precedence.
  • Adam: "You don’t have the time or the luxury when your life is on the line ...to go through your moral checklist."

5. Scriptural Ambiguity and Turning the Other Cheek

• Timestamps: 13:22–15:45
  • Scott points out that scriptural support is ambiguous or incomplete—some over-interpret “turn the other cheek”; others rely too heavily on Old Testament precedents.
  • “At the end of the day, there is no prohibition in the scriptures against defending oneself from utter violence.” (Scott, 14:23)
  • Discussion of Jesus’ instruction to buy swords (Luke 22): “Maybe that’s a prohibition on collecting too many weapons, huh, Adam?" (Scott, 15:03)

6. Persecution, Witness, and Public Ethics

• Timestamps: 16:00–18:47
  • Adam recollects the film/book “Silence” (and stepping on a crucifix to save others), illuminating tensions between public witness, conscience, and ethical compromise.
  • Bruce: “It’s a public witness of an apostasy in that culture ...Yet from a faith-based way, it’s a potent symbol of the Christian’s call to ...give up a theology of glory for a theology of the cross.” (18:13–18:47)

7. The Cross Ethic vs. Instinct and Civil Duty

• Timestamps: 20:26–24:49
  • Romans 12 explored: “Repay no one evil for evil…live peaceably with all…”—but, as Scott notes, this is more about revenge/vengeance than instantaneous self-defense.
  • Story: Scott and Caleb recall witnessing a mass shooting at an IHOP, making clear that in crisis, civil obligation (protect your family) overtakes abstract theological calculation:
    “...In my car with my teenage son...what was occurring to me was my first civil obligation ...to protect my son.” (Scott, 23:15)

8. Instinct vs. Ethics, and Theological “Ideals”

• Timestamps: 24:49–27:14
  • Bruce distinguishes between instinctual action and ideal moral actions (“...a person isn’t doing ethics if they’re just acting on instinct.”).
  • Scott and Bruce both agree: there’s no “clear path in scripture” and the question is messy in both real time and reflection.

9. Vocation, Civil Law, and Christian Responsibility

• Timestamps: 27:17–32:18
  • Caleb grounds Christian obligations in the Lutheran doctrine of vocation: “The needs of your neighbor, their life, are a demand placed on you.”
  • Government and self-defense: “If you’re an American, the government has extended the power of the sword to its citizens...you are an agent...” (Caleb, 29:27)
  • Scriptural references: e.g., 1 Timothy 5:8, Exodus 22, Nehemiah 4, Luke 22—supporting care for dependents and protection of the home, but always paired with counter-examples (e.g., “turn the other cheek”).

10. Narrow Limits: Self & Immediate Care vs. Vigilantism

• Timestamps: 33:31–34:39
  • Both US state law and biblical wisdom limit self-defense rights to one’s immediate family/circle; vigilantism is not justified, and the “duty to protect” rarely expands beyond dependents.

11. Government Law vs. Christian Morality

• Timestamps: 34:39–37:08
  • Bruce challenges the group: even if government allows self-defense, that doesn’t make it “morally appropriate” for the Christian.
  • Example: Norway’s ultra-strict self-defense laws clash with American instincts but also highlight the limitations of grounding personal ethics solely in local law.

12. Luther, Just War, and Historical Precedent

• Timestamps: 39:07–41:56
  • Adam presents Luther’s teachings on just war and resistance during Ottoman invasions: defending family, home, and neighbor is a “Christian act of love and mercy.”
  • Luther distinguishes between resisting immediate aggression (justified) and running “offensively” with crusader zeal (condemned).
  • Notable quote: “Stab them, slay them, cut off their heads, do whatever you can and consider it a Christian act of love and mercy for your neighbor...” (Adam, summarizing Luther, ~41:30)

13. Lutheran Distinctives: Vocation, Two Kingdoms, and the Limits of Ethics

• Timestamps: 41:56–44:39
  • Scott: ethics within Lutheranism resists strict systematization; the doctrine of vocation and distinction between church and world mean the question is often left purposely unresolved.
  • “Ethics is sort of like this formal study...The problem is it just doesn’t work within the context of Lutheranism...many of which are left vague in the text of Scripture.” (Scott, 44:39)

14. Wrestling with Christ’s Call and the Accusation of the Law

• Timestamps: 46:40–53:06
  • Bruce: “There’s nothing distinctively Christian in that specific witness of ‘defend your homeland’...that’s what I struggle with when I think about ethics.”
  • The “give to all who ask” radical love ethic; the struggle with how to apply that to family and property.
  • Caleb and Bruce agree: all ethics are law, and Christians live in tension, simul iustus et peccator, never entirely free of sin, trusting their justification is only in Christ.

15. Sin Boldly: Christian Comfort Amid Imperfect Action

• Timestamps: 53:19–56:49
  • Sin boldly (Luther): No act—including justified self-defense—can ever be wholly sanctified or free from sin. Comfort is found only in Christ’s forgiveness, not in perfect ethics.
  • “I can’t give you an answer that will comfort you in every use of self-defense according to the law, but I can give you an answer that will comfort you ...according to the gospel, which is that you have been forgiven, you have been set free to serve your neighbor...” (Caleb, 55:23–56:16)

16. Real-World Consequences: Psychological Cost of Taking Life

• Timestamps: 56:49–59:45
  • Bruce shares a debrief from his crisis team: an FBI agent, despite being “totally justified” in killing to save a life, is haunted by how little it “mattered” internally. Echoing the point that “even if you do a good act, there’s still a cost somehow involved in that.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Scriptural Ambiguity:

  • “At the end of the day, there is no prohibition in the scriptures against defending oneself from utter violence.” – Scott (14:23)

• On Instinct and Ethics:

  • “A person isn’t doing ethics if they’re just acting on instinct. They’re doing a moral action, but they’re not doing ethics.” – Bruce (24:49)
  • “No act—including justified self-defense—can ever be wholly sanctified or free from sin.” – (summation, 55:23–56:16)

• On Vocation and Obligation:

  • “The needs of your neighbor, their life, are a demand placed on you.” – Caleb (27:47)
  • “If you have children, the lives of your children are a demand by God placed on you.” – Caleb (29:27)

• On Luther’s Advice:

  • “Stab them, slay them, cut off their heads, do whatever you can and consider it a Christian act of love and mercy for your neighbor...” – Adam (summarizing Luther, ~41:30)

• The Problem with Systematic Ethics:

  • “Ethics ... just doesn’t work within the context of Lutheranism ... many [moral questions] are left vague in the text of Scripture.” – Scott (44:39)

• On Sin Boldly:

  • “Sin boldly and ever more boldly cling to the forgiveness of Jesus Christ ... you are not going to be able to say X, Y and Z was absolutely not sinful. ...But that was probably in other ways the right thing to do ...And so ...rely on the forgiveness of Christ for your comfort, not on whether or not it was justified.” – Caleb (53:29)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Main Topic Introduced: 05:17–06:53
• Bruce on Pacifism: 06:53–08:20
• Aquinas & Double Effect: 08:23–09:39
• Legal/Instinct Dilemma: 09:39–13:22
• Scriptural Ambiguity: 13:22–15:45
• Historical/Theological Examples: 39:07–41:56
• Vocation & Law: 27:17–32:18
• Luther’s Just War: 39:07–41:56
• Lutheran Ethics & “Sin Boldly”: 53:19–56:49
• FBI Crisis Debrief Story: 56:49–59:45

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Conclusion

The episode thoughtfully balances theological reflection, personal experience, and historical precedent to underline the persistent ambiguity and difficulty in Christian decision-making regarding self-defense and lethal force. The Lutheran approach, with its doctrines of vocation, two kingdoms, and “sin boldly,” resists simplistic answers; the hosts encourage listeners to accept the moral complexity, make responsible decisions for those in their care, and seek solace not in ethical certainty but in Christ’s forgiveness.

Final word:
“Fulfilling your responsibilities will not save you. Only Christ alone will save you…So sin boldly and ever more boldly cling to Christ.” (Caleb, 59:45)

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Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Hello and welcome to the Thinking Fellows podcast. My name is Caleb Keith and today I am joined by Adam Francisco, Scott Keith and Bruce Hillman. The Thinking Fellows is part of the 1517 podcast network of shows. You can go to 1517. Org podcasts to see all of our shows. You can also subscribe to this show on YouTube on its very own YouTube channel that's just called the Thinking Fellows. And you can see short versions of these episodes over on the 1517 YouTube channel as well. So if you enjoy the full length content, we kind of condense some of the important questions that come out of these episodes and we do that over on the 1517 YouTube channel, usually with one or two of the hosts. So go check that out. Subscribe to those if you're interested in that kind of content somewhere.

[B]

Caleb I saw somebody refer to us as the. They said try Unthinking Fellows.

[A]

That's true. I don't know if these people are listening anymore because it was the Mormons. Our Mormonism episode did really well on YouTube. It was intended to though, so I guess it did what it was designed to do.

[C]

Were we uncharitable to the Mormons?

[A]

According to the Mormons, we were both uncharitable and completely uneducated to the Mormons.

[C]

Yeah, okay, that tracks.

[B]

But no.

[A]

It was actually very similar. Adam brings this up. It was very similar to the response from Muslims when we did the like, what you should know about Islam, what Christians should know about Islam episode recently as well.

[C]

In that they can't claim that Adam doesn't know anything about Islam.

[A]

No, it's like the claim that you, in order to have this dialogue, you needed to have one of our scholars on. So you're chickens or you don't know what you're talking about because you wouldn't have a Mormon scholar on the show. Now, the funny thing is the difference between a podcast and a debate is pretty obvious to me. Like, of course, in a podcast you're using, there are generalizations that the group is talking about that are, I don't know, easy for us to address, knock down, generalize, whatever. So yeah, some of it is just the nature of the difference. But you could see, I guess being on the outside group, I did make a comment and I wonder if you guys think it's true. I responded that if Mormons, because the meat of that episode was essentially just saying that Mormons and Christians do not belong to the same religion, Mormons aren't Christians in the creedal orthodox sense and Christians are not Mormons or We really can't share that same title of faith which Mormons and their doctrine and their existence agrees with, like asserts a corruption of especially creedal Christianity. Generalizations about that seemed fine to me. And I said, if you guys did an episode about why Lutherans aren't Mormons and you generalized about the life of Martin Luther and got some of the facts, I don't think I'd be very upset with. With the conclusion that Lutherans aren't Mormons.

[B]

What facts did we get wrong?

[A]

Bruce said something about.

[D]

I said, I'm in a shield. I was corrected. But I. No, I thought, well, I'm pretty sure he was killed in. Upstairs of a hotel or something with his. Was it his brother or somebody? Anyway, but I had said that the golden plates. They still had the golden plates. But you're corrected me. They didn't have the. They don't have the golden plates.

[A]

It was all just silly stuff that doesn't matter. And again, if Mormons did an episode where they got some of the events of Martin Luther's life wrong.

[C]

This is kind of mean, but I'm having a hard time taking a conversation about golden plates seriously. Whether or not we should have. We should have applied more academic rigor to the idea of the hidden and lost golden plates, written in a tongue that nobody but one man can verify existed. Could verify existed and. Or understand and. Or translate.

[B]

Well, he had goggles, though.

[C]

Did we not take that?

[B]

Special goggles.

[C]

I'm sorry, we didn't. Did we not take that seriously enough?

[A]

This sounds like.

[D]

Okay, so, by the way, it just says here, the mob, angered by Smith's political power, polygamy, and destruction of the newspaper press, shot Hyrum and Joseph through the jail door. Joseph fell from the window and was shot multiple times as he fell, uttering his final words, Lord, my God. So, like, he was shot.

[A]

Yeah, okay.

[B]

I mean, Chris wasn't even that off.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They'Re like Lutherans. They want you to say it exactly their way.

[C]

That's funny.

[A]

Kind of.

[D]

Oops.

[B]

I should have said, man, I gotta stop.

[A]

Degrees of separation.

[D]

He was shot by a mob. That's a shootout to me. Anyway, it's a podcast, guys.

[A]

This is not. This is not a. It also wasn't like a total refutation of Mormonism. It was sort of about those, like, big agreeable differences. I mean, Mormon and I just.

[C]

We don't need to redo the Mormon episode. You're not Trinitarian. You're not Christian. You don't believe that Jesus is true. God, true Man, God from all eternity. You're not Christian.

[A]

Okay, all right.

[C]

Talk about the topic today. You're not Christian.

[A]

Today's topic, now that we're five minutes in, is can Christians use deadly force to defend themselves? We're doing a self defense episode. I think if you've been a listener of this show, you could probably assume many of our answers. But I just do want to sort of set up the problem here. Came into sort of Lutheran Consciences again after a debate on the on the Line show podcast that I've been on before. My dad's been on, Adam's been on, I think another 1517 contributor, John Bombaro is on the episode that came out this morning. Various contributors from around here have been interviewed on there, but there was a debate that sparked this and many other issues. And then I've, I don't know, I've seen in the fallout of, let's say like attempted mass shootings or mass shootings of churches and things like this, questions about this as well. Does a Christian have the ability not only to defend themselves, but should they, for instance, use deadly force to defend a church? Or is that trying to avoid persecution or, you know, witnessing that we don't trust God or that God is not in control of all things or whatever it may be. So that's sort of the general question today is can Christians use deadly force? I would like to talk about what kind of scriptural background would this be? Is there a history or context of Christian pacifism? Certainly I've known Christian pacifists in my life. So can Christians use deadly force to defend themselves and others?

[B]

I kind of think Bruce might be a pacifist.

[D]

Why would you think that? I'm probably, I'm probably more pacifist than you guys, but I don't know, maybe not. I'm not passivist, though I take much because I would. I would want to know the context specifically. Like, I just won't give a blank check to it. That's what I'm saying.

[C]

Blank check to what? Killing somebody?

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Well, that's probably good.

[D]

Yeah, I think there has to be certain. I think there needs to be. And I don't even know that I want to make a list per se, but I would think that in each case there has to be a moral justification that fits within Christ's ethic that he teaches in the New Testament. So I think there is a place where you can have actual self defense where you end up harming another person. But I don't take that as a complete blank Check. In all cases, for example, if the government is going to kill you for your faith, I don't think you have a right to self defense in that particular case. I think you, if you're arrested and persecuted by the government for your faith, I don't think, I don't think the Christian tradition and I don't think the scripture makes it easy for you to say, okay, you can now kill all the government officials who are trying to kill you. But I think if someone breaks into your house and they're going to hurt your family, it's a totally different situation in that you can use self defense.

[C]

What about into your church and it's going to hurt your family?

[A]

Yeah. Let's say you're gathering for Sunday Morning.

[D]

So I think I'm influenced here most by probably Aquinas, because Aquinas had this idea, I think if I remember, I think it's called double effect. So what he basically argues here is. And this can be abused too, right? But what he basically argues with double effect is you can do an action that is harmful to another human person if there is a higher moral good that is being implemented by that act. So, for example, Aquinas gives this example. If you're protecting a lot of innocence and that requires you to harm another person, then it would be morally worse for you to allow the death of all these innocents and allow this person to live. So it's sort of an evaluation of the different moral questions that are in play. And essentially Aquinas is saying you can sort of add them up and get a moral sum and then you pick the one that's greater. And so in that case, he argues, well, yeah, if a bunch of innocent people are going to be killed, then you need to kill the guy who's going to kill all those innocent people. The question of course is always, are we a good judge of that? Obviously in a church shooting that's pretty obvious. But when people start to want to harm other groups, for example, violently in the name of some type of defense, then it can get abusive and wrong. I think too.

[A]

I think this conversation always ends up difficult for me. Not that I've ended up in a lot of self defense situations, although certainly I'm aware of trying to avoid that kind of thing. But that if you've known people who have had to engage in a self defense shooting or a fight that was sort of out of their control or some sort of other violent altercation, you know that there's not time or the luxury in those cases to run through your ethics, oh, is this more morally good that this person die or these people live or whatever? It's, it's something you have to sort of have trained into instinct as well. Right. Or, and I think this is where some of the debate about it is, or you have to premeditate in some ways. Right. So if you, for instance, you have a concealed carry permit or you live in a constitutional carry state or something like that, and you carry at church in preparation for that, you're sort of preconsciously deciding that if something were going to happen, I will be capable of acting before that happens. But when things go down, or if things go down, if violence occurs against you, you don't have the time or the luxury when your life is on the line or your family's life is on the line or something to, to just to go through your moral checklist or everything that you know is right or wrong and self defense law and case reflects a lot of that. That's what sort of the essence of the stand your ground or castle doctrine laws are, is that in the case of real bodily harm and threat, you shouldn't have to sit there and decide how, how am I going to disarm this person or attempt to do everything I can to avoid a shooting. First, it's that if a real life threatening incident is happening, you don't have the luxury of saying shoot them in the leg or shoot the gun out of their hand or where's that coming from?

[C]

Shoot them in the leg.

[D]

It's a version of Sweep the Leg.

[A]

Yes, a version of Sweep the leg. You'll see it in police. I saw a clip on YouTube. I have no, I think it was of what's the Tom Selleck show where he's like a police commissioner.

[B]

Blue Bloods.

[A]

Blue Bloods. I saw Blue Bloods clip last week where his son is an officer also and lethally encounters somebody who is, you know, threatening children with a gun in some park in New York or something and he shoots him. And some, you know, they have a clip of some lawyer, you know, screaming at him, why didn't you shoot the gun out of his hand? And you hear that kind of stuff on the news.

[C]

That's a good shot.

[A]

You'll hear that kind of stuff, which is like, why didn't you just attempt to disarm them? Or why didn't you shoot them in the leg, immobilize them? And you, you get this really weird.

[C]

They think we're all like another Tom Selleck character. Quigley Down Under. Yes.

[A]

You're the greatest shot in the West. And people sort of reveal what they don't know in some of these questions. I mean, maybe a prosecutor has a job to try to get a conviction, which is wrong in some ways also, but you see that kind of thing and you go, you have no experience with firearms, number one. You have no experience with sort of thinking about, or being forced to think about the act of self defense or deadly force or the implications of that, or how quickly things happen. It's kind of like a car accident. It's, you know, how much time do you have to react to the accident happening to you or in front of you or things like that do you make? How conscious are the decisions? If you're trying to avoid something quickly when you slam on the brakes or you move into the next lane or you pull into the shoulder, asking people to think about their whole driver's ed course before you hit the brakes.

[C]

I think when people ask this question, one of the things that they're struggling with is there's not a whole lot of biblical validation on either side. And that you kind of get the turn the other cheek folks who take that, I mean, way further down the road than Jesus even ever did. And then you'll take people who rely heavily on Old Testament passages that maybe do have to do with or don't have to do with, you know, the specific sort of form of self defense that you might find yourself in in the modern world and extrapolate that pretty far too. I think that's prob. Part of what makes this problematic, part of what I think you'd have to do as a Christian citizen of a particular country. Then I think this is pretty well established Christian doctrine is you'd have to kind of figure out what your limits and liabilities are within the system of government under which you find yourself, and then sort of constrain your actions to those and. Or accept, you know, duly accept the punishments when you don't. At the end of the day, there is no prohibition in the scriptures against defending oneself from utter violence. And you can't take, you know, Jesus rebuking Peter on the night in which he was betrayed and extrapolate that beyond Jesus saying, hey, listen dude, this is my.

[A]

I have to die.

[C]

This is my goal. Essentially, you can't stop this.

[A]

But then I also love how confusing that is because, you know, who made him buy that sword? Yeah, Jesus did sell your cloak, buy a sword.

[C]

And well then they literally say, hey, Jesus, we have two swords here. He's like, that's enough.

[A]

That's enough swords. Yeah.

[C]

And maybe that's a prohibition bent, collecting too many weapons, huh, Adam? And then on the other side, again, there's also no direct command to defend oneself other than to sort of stand up to evil, which you can take some of those. And so some of this is just left within the realm of sort of what a mature Christian person might try to figure out for themselves within the very limited bounds given to you by the scripture on this issue and then with. Within the legalities in the government under which you find yourself, which for us is the state of California and the state of Illinois. So bummer indeed.

[B]

Bummer. But I think I'd choose California over Illinois not for the laws, but the sunshine and the long walks on the beach with my boss.

[C]

Yeah, that was fun.

[B]

Bruce, you made a point earlier that I thought was really interesting about if it's government that is persecuting you. I forget how you put it, but it made me think about the. Do you know the movie? Well, it was a book first, I think it was called Silence.

[D]

Oh, yeah. By Saki Endo.

[B]

Yeah. Where there's a.

[D]

It was made by. Scene into a film.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the film. I remember there's a scene where I guess these are Jesuits, I assume, but is given the option like to. In order to save some Christians who are hanging upside down, if I remember.

[D]

In the pit and slowly die. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And then he's given the option like you can actually save them by stepping on a crucifix or something like that. Do you remember that scene?

[D]

Yeah. It's a fumi and it's an image of Christ.

[B]

Okay. And he opts not to. And I remember being asked by somebody like, what would you do? And like my knee jerk. And I probably had a glass of wine at this point.

[C]

Wine is at the house.

[B]

Or, you know, a very fine wine probably, you know, or a couple of vodka Bronzia, a three butt Chuck or something. Yeah, from the box. But, you know, and I remember saying I, I'd. Because, you know, because that image is just a.

[D]

It's just a.

[B]

Just a picture. Right. In order to save some. I'd. I'd do that and then I'd find a way to kill every last one of those people who are persecuting Christians. And I. It was kind of off the cuff, but as I thought about it, I was like. And going back to your point, Bruce, like. Yeah, if it is like Christian persecution from the hands of government, that's a totally different question.

[C]

Right.

[B]

I Mean, there's lots of early church stuff on this, obviously, because then it does speak to witness and other things.

[D]

So what's interesting. I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I was gonna say in the book and in the movie, what's interesting is that the character who has to make that choice about saving the people in the pit or stepping on the image, he believes that stepping on the image is type of apostasy because that's what the Japanese are telling him he believes too. So it's a symbolic apostasy.

[B]

Yeah, that's what I didn't get when I had my knee jerk reaction, you know?

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I was like thinking too abstractly about it.

[D]

It's a public witness of an apostasy in that culture.

[A]

Weird.

[D]

But he hears the voice of Christ. The character's name is Rodriguez. He hears the voice of Christ kind of in his mind. It's not very specific if it's the actual voice of Christ or just his discipleship that's coming to mind. And it says, step on it. Step on it. It is for this purpose that I came to earth. Step on it.

[C]

Yeah. It's an interesting view of Christ that he wouldn't allow himself to be.

[A]

To be trampled for the lives of others.

[D]

And so that's the point. He tramples it. He does. Then trample it. Okay.

[B]

Oh, he does.

[D]

He does trample it. You know, there's two things that are sort of at play there. Because his public, the book Endo, is a Catholic, one of the few Catholic, he's dead now, but Catholic, Japanese. So it was really interesting because you had a Japanese Catholic of perspective on Christianity. So you have this culture, this Japanese culture. Right. That's very conforming. And now you've stepped on the image. So you've lost your witness in the eyes of like the Japanese who don't know you well, you're not a Christian anymore. They just don't believe you are. No matter what you say. Oh, you stepped on it. You're not done. And yet from, if I could say from like a devotional or a faith based way, it's actually a potent symbol of the Christian's call to follow after Christ and to give up a theology of glory for a theology of the cross, which means to trample. So I think sometimes in these self defense questions, that has to be the driving question too. Is there a theology of the cross or a theology of glory at stake? Not in the case where someone breaks down your door and has a gun. I mean, that's an immediate thing. But Like, I'm just thinking I looked it up because I couldn't remember the verse, but you know, Romans 12, repay no one evil for evil, but give no thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all, beloved. Never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for his written vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary. If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him something to drink, for by so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. So I think there's a cross ethic that we at least have to consider as we think about use of violence, whenever that is.

[C]

That's interesting to me. I feel like this is where this discussion always goes. When you talk to, to theology, pastoral type people, it becomes a juxtaposition between your witness and your self defense. And then, I mean, that passage from Paul, he's trying to. He's trying to tell Christians how to. I mean, it's Romans 12, right? So especially by that point, he's trying to tell Christians how to live in the world. And he's like, as far as it depends on you, be peaceful. In other words, don't go around looking for fights. Buzz could probably learn from that. Um, you know, give good for evil as much as you can. Don't, don't go out for revenge. That one's interesting because you kind of have to land on your definition of revenge in that. But I don't think that necessarily has anything to do with, like, in the moment. Can you defend yourselves and the ones that are in your care around you? More has to do with, hey, if I find out that somebody harmed me. And in the ancient world, this is a big thing, right? If I found out, if I find out somebody's grandpa harmed my family, do I go after that tribe, the whole family, murder them all? Paul's like, yeah, let's not do that anymore. You know, which is pretty enlightening for the time. Maybe not in Roman law that wasn't as big, but in the Semitic cultures certainly was. This is what I mean about this conversation. Like, this gets to be an extrapolation in the moment. Let me tell a story. One day, Caleb and I, when we, back when we were living in Carson City, we're driving down the main road, right? And we're stopped at a stoplight, and all of a sudden we see just people randomly fleeing an ihop, literally like running out the front door and running across busy streets to just get away from this ihop. Now, we don't know what's going on. We have no clue. We are stopped at a stoplight maybe 50 yards from where this is all going down, and all of a sudden you just see cop car, cop car, cop car, cop car, cop car. Like, literally cop cars jumping curbs and medians to get over to this ihop. Like, I don't know how the cars even made it over and to get over this ihop. Turns out that some dude went into the IHOP for unknown reasons and just took out a gun and started blowing people away. And that there were a couple people in that. A couple people in that IHOP with concealed carry permits that returned fire on this guy. There weren't really good shots as far as I remember. And he never. He didn't get hit.

[A]

He went out to his car and killed himself.

[C]

Went out to his car and they killed himself. In that moment, right in the moment, in my car with my teenage son at that point, who I was also at the time concealed carry permit holder, I was not thinking about my Christian witness. If whatever happened at the IHOP spilled out into the parking lot and then into the street, this was not what was occurring to me. What was occurring to me was what I saw as my first civil obligation in the moment. And that was to protect my son. Right. And so I think one of the big things we do here is we make this connection between our civil obligations in the world and our obligations in the church to preach the gospel. And we combine them in a way that the text of Scripture does not ask us to combine them on the whole. And two, that really disregards the fact that especially we as Lutherans, we do have a doctrine of vocation which says in our civil lives you have some primary responsibilities. And one of those is to protect people that God has placed into your life to provide for them, to care for them, to protect them, to be his hand in their life in the world. And these are two separate things in a way. Now, they don't need to be. They don't need to be so isolated that. That they never come together. But what I'm saying is, in the moment, I'm not sussing out if I'm going to be able to witness this guy that is, you know, shooting up an IHOP and causing people to flee out into the middle of traffic because they're so terrified.

[D]

See, the problem I have with that is that I totally understand how in the moment, especially a Moment like that, there's going to be a sort of instinct that kicks in. That makes complete sense to me. But when it comes down to being an ethical. A question of ethical evaluation, like, what's the right thing to do? When you can step out of the instinct and you can actually say, like, to me, a person isn't doing ethics if they're just acting on instinct. They're doing a moral action, but they're not doing ethics. They're just responding in the moment. But to actually do ethics and to say, well, what is the right thing to do? What's the ideal? What's the good that we are pursuing or should be pursuing, regardless of the actual way I respond in the situation, like, I was threatened at knifepoint once. I was not a pacifist. I picked up a giant stick and beat the kid in the head and ran away. And then I had to go to court and do everything else. So I was younger.

[B]

Proud of you, Bruce.

[D]

I was younger, but that was. That was about as violent as I ever got. So I'm. I didn't act very passively in that case. That situation was interesting because I didn't feel I was actually under threat that that kid was in the neighborhood and he was actually going after a girl a few blocks away because they'd gotten in an argument on the bus. Long story short, any. Anyway, but that was also. I wasn't really defending anyone in that present moment. There was no one else around. I ran into this kid on his way there, and there was no one else around. So I just still think that there's a difference between the sort of moral action that we choose and the moral action that we idolize that should be done. I think that's a different way of doing theology.

[C]

There's no discernible clear path in Scripture to figure out the prescription for what to do in that moment. Right. And so you say, well, what do.

[D]

You mean by that? There's no absolute right. But people claim on both sides that it's clear.

[C]

Yeah, but it's not, though.

[B]

I don't think in abstraction it's always clear, but in the moment, it never is clear.

[A]

About this.

[D]

But that's the whole part about doing ethics. That's my argument. My argument is the hard part about doing ethics is that it seems clear as a hypothetical or looking back, but it's in the moment.

[C]

Now we lean back on the wisdom of Rod Rosenblatt. No ethics, dearly departed in glory. Rodfather, who said oftentimes Lutherans should not do ethics.

[D]

Timothy why don't you say a similar thing?

[A]

A great example of this. I do think there's a couple, I mean, just to. There's a couple things that are clear from scripture that I think my dad talked about. Like that we get our doctrine of vocation not just from reason, but from scripture about the people God has placed in our lives. And that God, you know, we Lutherans don't talk about hearing the voice of God very, very much. And that's wise because we would say that God does speak, God is active, God does bring us things, but he uses most frequently other people and other means. This is the gospel is actually the word of God, the voice of God coming to you and forgiving your sins and proclaiming Christ's death and resurrection. And he does that through other people. Vocation is a very. Is similar to this in where the will of God or the needs of other people that God is going to meet are made known to you by other people. Sometimes just their existence, sometimes actually by their voice asking or needing you, or sometimes by the circumstance or the relationship that you and they have been put in together. And in a lot of cases it seems to me that self defense is a combination of the doctrine of vocation and then also as my dad said, the where you live, your laws. Sort of what Christians confess about the role of government, which, you know, as Romans 13 asserts that God restrains evil by his servant bearing the sword. Or we would say that, you know, Luther or the Reformation will say the prince bears the sword. Or we could say that God has given government the authority of the sword, that as an individual we do not get to determine the legality or the societal justice of using lethal force, but the government does. And so where you live matters for this question as well. So if you're an American, though, the government has extended the power of the sword to its citizens. Now some of us might not.

[C]

That made me smile a little bit.

[A]

Oh, it did? Yeah.

[C]

Good.

[A]

And so, you know, you are an agent. One of your vocations is an agent of the government on the streets, one might say, not as Batman or as a vigilante, but in this legal area where they have said that citizens can in fact defend themselves and it could be justified. And we have a court system that helps determine if those are justified after the act has happened. Likewise, the needs of your neighbor, their life are a demand placed on you. If you have children, the lives of your children are a demand by God placed on you. And you take care of those through things like house and home and food.

[C]

And if somebody wants some biblical foundation for that, first Timothy 5, 8 is pretty strong on that, by the way.

[D]

It could also be like lot.

[A]

Okay, well let's not be like, I'm just saying there's two examples, but that's a negative example. That's somebody not fulfilling, you know, their, you know, their vocabulary.

[D]

You could be like Abraham, you could be like, there's a few examples.

[C]

Well, this is the point. This is the point. This is the point where people shouldn't just say, even in abstraction, that it's totally clear. Right. Because it's just not at the end of the day. Exodus 22 would tell you that you can't let anybody break in your head your house at night. And if you do and you kill him, you're not guilty of bloodshed. Right. Nehemiah 4 tells you that you got to protect your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives. Like Caleb already put out. Luke 22 is Jesus telling people, telling the disciples to go get a couple swords. First Timothy 5 tells you to protect your family. I mean, it's just you. And then you can give counter examples to all that people in the Old Testament who didn't do that. Times when Jesus seems to say, and Paul even seems to say, hey, try to stay out of this if it whatever possible. That's why I'm, that's why I'm landing on this. I think you were right, Bruce, to say that in a moment there's some instinct. Right. But instinct isn't sort of sussing out whether or not what you're doing is absolute.

[A]

Your instincts can be wrong. Yeah.

[C]

Or your instincts are what they are. They're not necessarily moral or immoral in the moment. And then just taking into account our theology and the idea that everything that we do is sin right and ought to be confessed and absolved. But it's not, you're not in that moment sussing out an ethic on self defense. You're just doing what you do. That's why I, that's why I really landed on sort of, you got to lean back on the laws where you live on that then too to figure out whether or not this is right or wrong in the moment. Again, I think scripture sort of leaves this up to your judgment in a way, as a, as a mature Christian, in a moment.

[D]

Wouldn'T you add to that.

[C]

There's lots of stuff like that. There's lots of stuff like that, like how you raise your kids in a lot of ways.

[A]

Again, I think, I think it sort of comes down to their needs too. That's, that's where the need to have their body protected. We don't argue about whether or not you should provide your children with clean food and water, which is protecting and preserving their body and life. If I want to take language from Luther's explanations in the small catechism regarding Thou shalt not murder, for instance, where he adds the positive you are to protect your neighbor in his body and life, I think you have that. You have that demand where self defense is a harder version of this. And by self defense I mean even defense of your family or those entrusted in your care. This helps also distinguish from things like vigilantism or revenge, where it's no longer an act of defense, or perhaps not about those in your care. There are some examples we've talked about too, where you have somebody who goes to an event where they don't need to be right, or drives hours with a weapon to go, hmm, do something and puts themselves in. Or, or somebody who puts themselves in harm intentionally.

[C]

Right.

[A]

There's lots of examples of that.

[C]

By the way, even most state laws in states, even where it's fairly easy to get like a concealed weapons permit for the purposes of personal protection, most of those states do not cover you. Like going out and seeking to defend people that aren't in your immediate care. Like this is almost always narrow, narrow, narrow, narrow, narrow.

[D]

I completely agree with that.

[C]

You and those in your immediate care. Right. And that what that means is debatable in a sense, but at its core it's not. It's like if I go into a restaurant with my family, the basic core of that is me and my family. Does that extend out to the other people in the restaurant? Perhaps, but I know it extends to me and my family. Well, in brought the people I brought there with me and this is, I mean there.

[A]

That even may be based on your skill.

[C]

Right.

[A]

Like it, your immediate circle may be narrower based on your ability to assess danger, how good of a shot or of a fighter you are, if you have the ability to run all this kind of stuff.

[D]

I think one of the things that I think still complicates it for me as I think about it though, is even if you have, say, government laws that make certain violent behaviors permissible, like you can carry and shoot or stand your ground, whatever those are, that only means that the government has determined that something is morally permissible. It doesn't really speak to the fact on still whether a Christian should find it permissible simply because the government does. I mean, the Government says that you shouldn't do things that, you know, as Christians we would say you should do that. Like in certain countries where the government says you shouldn't worship the Lord or it says things that we, that are permissible, that we disagree with. Like it says that, you know, gay marriage is a true and valid marriage, which we say, well, that's permitted, but it's not morally appropriate. I don't even think I personally can fall back on like, well, you know, the government's opinion on either end of this spectrum really enters into how I think of the morality of the action aspect of it.

[A]

Right. Because like, maybe if we lived, you know, I like to think that, you know, if I lived in. We have awesome listeners in Norway. Norway has really restrictive self defense laws, as my friends in Norway have told us. There was a time where we were at a bar in Norway and I was with Adam and some homeless guy starts freaking out on us. And you can see Adam start to get twitchy, twitchy. Like this situation is, this situation is going bad.

[C]

He's twitch going on.

[A]

He's getting closer and closer to women in our group. We're getting uncomfortable. And one of the guys we're with is like, you cannot, you cannot hit him. You will go to jail. It does not matter if he's harassing anybody, if he touches.

[D]

It's like a resort though.

[B]

I'm not a hitter.

[A]

Adam's not a hitter. Whatever. He's a grappler. He's a submitter, He's a grappler, whatever. I gotta take him to the ground and choke him out. You know, the lesson there is so. But if I live there, I like to think that, I think that the government is not acting wisely there. And I'd be some sort of advocate for, you know, loosening the self defense laws and wherever I live, because I think, you know, all over Europe, for instance, they're far too restrictive. And that would come from. I think they limit people's ability to rightly defend, to fulfill their vocations, to fulfill, defend the lives of their family and those in their immediate care. So, yeah, I don't know. I agree, Bruce. The government cannot be the end all.

[D]

I mean, this is a, it's a little bit, and I hate to use this term, but it's just my opinion is this issue on the use of violence is to me a little bit situational ethics.

[A]

Well, that's why I say permit. I think the question is, is it permissible rather than is it ethical or not a sin? So I Guess is self defense permissible.

[D]

Because both sides want both sides. If they're acting judiciously in their arguments, they both want to follow Christ. Either way, that can. And to Scott's earlier point where it might murky both sides, I think if they're being judicious and honest and the ones that are behaving that way are trying to do that. If you're trying to defend innocence or defend your family, like Aquinas had argued with that double effect, that's because you're trying to follow Christ who cared for the innocents. If you're someone who's more of a pacifist and you believe, oh, at all costs, you know, I have to give myself over to my enemy because I should not take my enemy's life, that's how I turn the other cheek or whatever the argument is, then you're also trying to follow Christ. And I think if that's really the default of the person, it's much harder to judge the situation objectively. There is this sort of, to me, this sort of subjective side to it of, well, what was your motive? What were you really trying to do? That's why the instinct argument for me is, well, it's very true because I acted on instinct in that situation. But if I'm sitting in a ivory tower talking about ethics can't work with instinct. I have to think about what it means to be a moral person who follows Christ. And then I might look back and go, maybe I should have tried to talk him down first instead of just hitting him with a stab.

[A]

Probably not. Good job not getting stabbed.

[C]

Yeah, you should have hit a whistle.

[D]

I can sometimes.

[B]

Because you wouldn't be here with us today.

[C]

Bruce, you're in the ROM's virtual room for the talk em down.

[B]

Can I give a little historical reference?

[A]

Absolutely.

[C]

To Luther.

[B]

Not that Luther settles things just because he says it, but, you know, in the 1520s he writes a work, I think it's 1526, on whether soldiers too can be saved. And then a little later, you know, this 1520s things are ratcheting up as the Ottoman Empire is coming into Hungary and enslaving Christians and beheading Christians on, you know, a mass scale. And Luther then writes a work called. That's Often. It's not in English. It is translated in English. It's not been published. I won't say why, but I'm a little irritated. It's usually translated in an army sermon or a muster sermon against the Turk. 1529, 1530, where he gives actual Advice to Christians living in the borderlands between Islam and Christendom. And early on, as he's thinking about this, he tells Christians in the early 1520s, 15s he says, first we need to clean up our own house before we even consider whether we ought to go with war with the Turks. Because the Turks are still far afield. They're down in Belgrade at the most. When they're in Hungary, when they're banging on the gates of Vienna, it's a totally different question. Luther's advice to Christians, men, women and children is if the Turks come towards your town, resist them with everything you got. Burn your village down like scorch earth so that they can, if you're leaving, if you have to flee, so that they can't get a hold of stuff that might benefit them. To those actually physically fighting the Turk, he says, stab them, slay them, cut off their heads, do whatever you can and consider it a Christian act of love and mercy for your neighbor that you're doing that. He does that to alleviate consciences that are like worried about this issue, like whether or not we should be, because there was a lot of Anabaptists at the time. You see it in the, the visitation articles. There's an actual article in there, what 1520 say on whether pastors should encourage non resistance to the Turks. And Luther and Melanchthon say, of course you got to resist the Turks because what they will do is they will enslave you. They will. They don't necessarily force you to convert to Islam, but they are interested in converting Christendom into Islam, dom, if you will. Now if you get, if you do get caught by the Turk, if you're stuck in the Ottoman Empire, Luther says, then things change, then your authority is the Turk and you ought to serve your Turkish masters well and et cetera. So in the moment, as we've been talking about it for Luther, when it's in defense of your neighbor, your nearest neighbors, your household, or even if it's in self defense in the context of where you live, in a community where that community in some way, shape or form, form relies on you, all bets are off. Take some souls. I shouldn't have said that.

[A]

Can we use the Putin quote? It's not my job to judge them, but it is my job to send them to God for judgment.

[D]

I don't know that he's a moral authority you want to appeal to in any type of argument, but I always.

[B]

Thought that was a Vietnam thing. Kill them all, let God sort them out or something. Like that.

[A]

Okay, yeah.

[C]

See, that was a really good explanation of sort of, I think, what the historical, in my understandings, sort of the historical, at least sort of, if you want to take the German Reformation Lutheran approach to this has been, and largely based on Luther's essays on that, but also based on our doctrine of vocation and also based on Luther's explanation in the Ten Commandments, in the Small Catechism and in the Large Catechism. It's just I've. I've never struggled. I just have never struggled with this. This is not. I've never connected whether or not I could or should defend me and mine against evil to my Christian witness in a way that I have recently heard Lutheran ethicists do this. And this is why I was kind of kidding when I said, you know, Rod's advice. But I. I used to struggle when Rod would say Luther's advice shouldn't do ethics. Mainly because I think I had a bad understanding of what doing ethics theologically meant. That I was maybe just talking about good works or maybe even to talk about Caleb's specialty, sanctification, and that this meant don't do. Don't do ethics. But that's not what it is. Ethics is sort of like this, this formal study within Christianity that tries to systematize every ethical question into good or bad, usually based on little to no scriptural guidance, and then taken to the extreme of, yes, this is good. No, that's bad, yes, this is evil, and on and on. And the problem is it just doesn't work within the context of Lutheranism, which has a thing like a doctrine of vocation, which has a thing like the idea of the two kingdoms, which has a category of law and Gospel, which has the category of what happens in the church and its focus on the preached word as given in word and sacraments, and what happens in the world, as focused on God using you to provide the physical needs of others and answering their prayers through you, giving them daily bread and protection and all these things. The problem is it just doesn't work within the way we look at the Scriptures and the doing of theology to systematize every action of life, many of which are left vague in the text of Scripture.

[A]

The not to relative. Not to be a relativist here, but.

[B]

There'S online that you might be one.

[C]

I have to, by the way, on Twitter, which I'm on.

[A]

Yeah, you're both on with secret, secret anonymous accounts that post nothing. That's the.

[B]

I tried to get on last night, just for the record. I couldn't figure it out. I don't know what I'm doing here.

[A]

It's like, that's like logging into your email.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Can I respond to Adam's Luther summary?

[C]

What?

[B]

You're responding to Luther, just for the record.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Luther summary. I feel like if I was like, and I think Scott said this earlier, it's hard to do because like, if you're actually in that situation where you're in the Middle Ages and the Turks are coming for your village, you're probably going to feel a very different way. I'm not a huge fan of Bonhoeffer, but I, I do have sympathy for like when you're in a certain situation, you have to rethink what's right and wrong. You just buy the necessity. It's just a necessity.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

And yet I also want to say at the same time that the problem I see with that particular advice, or maybe not the problem, but at least a weakness of it, is that every other non Christian, including the Muslim, sees the enemy as a threat by which violence is justified in eliminating. And I don't know entirely how that squares with Christ's continual calls and Paul's calls and Peter's calls to love the enemy.

[A]

I know.

[D]

And so there's nothing distinctively Christian in that specific witness of Defend your homeland, defend your family, defend your. There's nothing specifically Christlike about that alone. And that's what I struggle with when I think about ethics.

[C]

Yeah, well, maybe you think about ethics too much.

[D]

I probably do. I think about too many things too much, this is for sure. But I readily admit if I'm put in the situation, I probably would feel differently. I know myself enough to know that Adam.

[B]

So since we're talking about a particular historical sort of circumstance for Luther, had the Turks stayed in their own realm, he'd say we should be friends with them.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Friendly, non intervention. He wouldn't use that term, but relations. But they started this war and now it's a war of aggression and a war of expansion.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

And that for Luther, you're right, it's not a Christian, it's a war. Whether it's like a self defense kind of situation or like actual war is a question of whether it's just or not. And to make it, to try to baptize it or to think about it in a Christian way. For Luther, when the Turks are coming in, he writes a work earlier in 1529 called On War against the Turk and says, you should run from this. He's writing to soldiers in particular says if you're out there fighting the Turk, you're doing a good thing. Right. But if you see some bishop out there with a flag with a crucifix on it or something, run from it as if it's the devil.

[A]

It's not a proclamation of the gospel.

[B]

Yeah. It's not conflict. Like this is a purely. He didn't use this term. But like a secular temporal matter, could.

[D]

We say it's a matter of the.

[A]

Law, which is why it's not a witness of Christ or being Christlike, because defense is a matter of the law.

[B]

Well, Luther used the term just war and he talks about just war as like both the micrological level. I don't know if that's the right word there. You know, like in the case of self defense or on the larger macro level, like a war between the Turks. And so Luther and Lutherans would prefer a. And again, this is an anachronistic kind of way of putting it, but a non interventionist sort of disposition when it comes to these sorts of things. But when it comes to you. But there is some space for preemptive stuff too.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But if it's coming towards you, you need to be, at least for Luther and of course, Bruce, in our day and age, I think we should just sit around and pass out tulips and be pacifists. But back in the 16th century, just.

[C]

To extrapolate that into everyday life. Right. This means that you don't. The simple part of this, if you take that advice, is you don't go out looking for trouble and you don't even go try to fix every problem in the world that might be unjust out there on your own. But if you're in your home or you're in your church or you're with your family somewhere and you're assaulted or the threat of assault, this is the same thing. Then you have a call in a sense to protect those people. But that call to protect them is not an offensive call.

[B]

Correct.

[C]

Right. And I think, I think what we're. What would have.

[D]

What do you mean an offensive? I just don't know.

[A]

Someone's going offense. No, going on the offense.

[C]

We're jumbling up offense and defense here. We're kind of calling them the same thing. We're saying, oh, it's the same thing to defend your land against the Turks as it is to go invade a Turkish land for Jesus. Those are not the same things. Right. Or I could say it's the same thing to defend My home against a crazy homeless person that's coming in trying to assault me and steal my stuff. As it is for me to go to the corner where that crazy homeless person is hanging out and go do something about the fact that they're. They're being crazy on the corner. Those are not the same thing. One is defensive, one is offensive, and we jump.

[D]

What if they want your land? I'm just to make a theological kind of hypothetical. If they ask for your Coke, you're supposed to give it to them. They ask you to go two miles, they're supposed to give it to you. The ethic that I struggle with is that the justification of violence. There is an ethic of give unto all who ask to you. Well, I want. I mean, it sounds ridiculous because it is. It's radically ridiculous, but that's. I think the point is to struggle with that radical ridiculousness. I think that's what Jesus is provocative in that very sense of trying to get us to think differently. So I don't think Jesus is saying every single time someone asks of you, you literally have to give them everything they ask for. I think what he's trying to do is to say, I want my followers to think more deeply and less instinctively or reactively like everybody else. When ethical situations arise, they should be the kind of people who are somewhat unique and different from everybody else. That's my personal opinion.

[C]

They are.

[A]

I think that Christ is accusing us with the law and our desires too. So for instance, that we desire our home, our property, our goods, our life more than life with Christ.

[C]

Well, and by the way, to even wrestle with this at all does make you different.

[D]

Yeah, yeah. If it's genuine wrestling. Yeah, yeah. If it's an intellectual like bloopity, boo. That's different. Do you like that, Blue Biddy?

[A]

But to abstract like Jesus there from the accusation of the law and just as sort of a wisdom is, I think badlong gospel. Yeah. Is bad long gospel. But I'm not saying it's gospel parting like a unique wisdom. All ethics is law.

[D]

I take the point. All ethics is law.

[A]

But because of that, though, because of that, you know, the Christian lives this dual reality, right. We would all say that he's a simul creature, totally sinful and totally righteous under the law in this life, insofar as we have not been perfected yet. And also under the gospel, free from. Be free from the accusation of law in the gospel. And also because of this, there are demands of the Christian that are somewhat contradictory and hard. Right. Like this Law of witness and then the Ten Commandments, which may you may be able to justify, I think certainly in the Old Testament you could justify the difference between murder and a self defense killing or whatever. Whereas then when witness comes into play, again not to harp this word too much, there is a certain relativism. Well, witness to one group of people may be one thing from the result of your actions and maybe another to another. As you gave an example of the.

[D]

Japanese, I don't like relativism.

[A]

That's fine subjectivity as much as Adam thinks that, or contextualism or whatever. Right? As you said, Bruce, to the Japanese, trampling the image meant one thing, and to Westerners it may mean a totally another. To Christians or to non Christians, that's.

[C]

Kind of funny because the context there seems to be to the Japanese, apostasy meant one thing, and to the people that actually knew Christianity, Christian apostasy meant another thing.

[A]

And so then the question of your witness is subjective in a lot of ways. This is where I think Luther again, very helpfully with a quote that people are often uncomfortable with, with the sin boldly quote and the letter that that encompasses is very helpful here, which is to say if you're involved in some sort of form of lethal self defense and you're reflecting on it, can you completely eliminate the well, you defended yourself because your life is your idol, you cling to your life more than you cling to Christ, where you are afraid for your life in a way that you shouldn't have been because you're already alive with Christ, or you acted selfishly or hastily or something like that. But that very well also on the other hand, that was probably in other ways the right thing to do. Your family needs you to provide for them. If you had been harmed or killed or maimed, your children's lives could be irreversibly damaged, your spouse's life ruined, those other people or community that depends on you changed forever. And so then in this other vocational sense, you've done exactly what God has demanded of you in loving and caring for your neighbor and their bodily needs and things like that. And so what Luther says here about sin boldly, which is you cannot remove the sin from every act. You will never be a totally righteous creature on your actions alone or in the intentions of your heart. The right thing can be coerced out of you by the law and the Holy Spirit can use that. So sin boldly and ever more boldly cling to the forgiveness of Jesus Christ, which is that as you act as a person in this world, you are not going to be able to say X, Y and Z was absolutely not sinful. A self defense shooting, of course, involves some sin, a sin of the heart, maybe external sin. You don't, you can't eliminate sin from your life. And nothing you do will be totally justified by works of the law. You will not be justified by works of the law. And so act, act with the reason God has given you. Act according to the obligations God has given you, which may include defense of your family, defense of your children, defense of your homeland, your home, all sorts of things that may externally be called on you. And also act according to the gospel of Christ. When you're called to proclaim the gospel and because you won't be justified by these actions, rely on the forgiveness of Christ for your comfort, not on whether or not it was justified. And I think that's the problem here is Christians can't. I can't give you an answer that will comfort you in every use of self defense according to the law, but I can give you an answer that will comfort you in every use of self defense according to the gospel, which is that you have been forgiven, you've been set free to serve your neighbor, to use a reason in this life, but to be judged on account of Christ alone in his death and resurrection alone. And so this life is difficult. Moral questions and actions happen every day, whether we choose to be conscious about them or just sort of walk through life. But Christ prevails through all of that and your sins are forgiven. And if you need real comfort because you fear that you may need to use self defense, or you have used self defense and there is some sort of moral ambiguity there, for you know that there is no ambiguity to God. You are righteous. And it has nothing to do with an act of self defense, has to do with the act of the sacrificial death and resurrection of Christ.

[D]

Can I give a quick illustration that makes that point that you just made? Caleb When I was a pastor, I had the opportunity to be part of what they call a crisis, a police crisis debriefing team. And we had to be trained on this. And it was like when, when a kid was killed or something like that. Like we would get all the police that together within 24 hours and they would, it was a very like formal thing and they would go around and they would be able to debrief and they wanted clergy there because when cops talk to each other, they can be called to testify in what they say to each other in court. And so Cops tend to not talk to each other because they're afraid that, you know, it can be used against them. But if you have clergy in the room, at least in New Jersey, it was considered attorney cleric privilege and so they could speak freely. So we were trained, we had this week long training on this. One of the guys who came in was an FBI agent and he showed us this video of a drug sting they were doing. They basically caught this drug dealer. Long story short, they turned him to get the bigger drug dealer and they put him in a hotel and they set up next to him, in the hotel room next to him. And this guy was supposed to come with a briefcase of cash and they gave the drug dealer they were working with a bunch of money and it didn't go well. Essentially the guy took the money, took the drugs and wouldn't get the money. And at one point, the bigger drug dealer came in and he pulled his firearm and he was gonna kill this lesser drug dealer. And the FBI is responsible for this guy, so they have to burst into the room. And this FBI agent who was trangist, he shot him and he killed the bigger drug dealer. And he said his whole life he had pulled his firearm many times in his job, but he had never actually. And he had shot people, but he had never actually killed anyone. This was the first time he killed someone. And he said he absolutely, 100% and he showed us the video of the whole thing. He was absolutely 100%, he was convinced he was in the right. Like no doubt whatsoever, like this guy was going to kill this guy. I was responsible to defend this guy and I shot this guy and I killed him and he was a bad guy. And I'm kind of okay with the fact that I killed him. What bothered him and what made him end up kind of break down over the next few years was that he always thought taking a human life was like this big deal. And it wasn't a big deal to him once he did it. And he really struggled with what kind of person he must be, that he kind of took delight in the fact that he saved this other guy's life and killed this guy. And it was totally unexpected that he would feel this way. So I tell that story because it was very memorable to me in that, you know, like you were saying, even if you do a good act, there's still a cost somehow involved in that. And ultimately our hope has to be in something bigger and greater and beyond our own righteousness. Because you never know, like, even if you do a right act once you start using violence, there's all sorts of other complications that could come in that.

[A]

Well, very good. Fulfilling your responsibilities will not save you. Only Christ alone will save you. And I just think people should be confident though to fulfill those responsibilities, including the vocation to take care of and preserve those lives in their immediate care, which may mean self defense and various other things. So sin boldly and ever more boldly cling to Christ. With that, we will conclude this episode of the Thinking Fellows Podcast. We thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this, you made it all the way to the end. Please make sure that you're subscribed to the show. That helps us because we can sort of see who's more regularly listening to the show with various podcasting metrics. It also helps you sort of support this show. Tell podcasting apps and things like algorithms. I'm sure people have heard of algorithms that you are interested in this show and that people might like. You may be interested in this show as well. We thank you for listening and we will catch you next week.

[D]

Bye.