Guns in the Bible

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Section: Origins ⋅ Bans ⋅ Pacifists ⋅ Peacemakers ⋅ Root Cause

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Gunpowder and the military cannon were not invented until hundreds of years after the scriptural canon was considered closed. So obviously there are no guns in the Bible, but most of the time it's people who kill people, and sometimes they use a gun as their tool. There are plenty of weapons in the Bible, and there are plenty of examples of people using, needing, and being banned from having them. Since the Bible is God's word, and human nature hasn't changed, there are surely lessons to apply to our lives today from studying the scriptures. This topic has nothing to do with whether we like or own guns or not, rather is an exploration in the allowance and use of lethal force by both man and God in God's word.

First, as an admission, war and weapons were not instituted by God. Created beings brought that into the world (Genesis 4:8, Revelation 12:7). But since they're here now, we would be gravely mistaken if we tried to pretend we could simply pray, legislate, or otherwise wish them away. God gave us freewill for a reason, and now we have to live with the consequences of our choices, the choices of those around us, and everyone who came before us. God does on occasion make exceptions and allow us to skip the consequences of our choices, but only rarely. In 6,000 years of history He's had plenty of chances to ban or uninvent weapons, but He hasn't. He clearly, intentionally left weapons and war here for us to deal with, as exemplified in Judges 2:20-3:2. But that doesn't mean we should blame Him. Remember, it's our choice that violence exists, not God's (Genesis 6:5-6). So the question is posed, should we ban guns, could that force ourselves into peace, and most importantly, what can we learn from all this about God's character and His expectations for ours?

Bans

While God was never recorded as banning weapons, would the world be a better place if we did? Obviously peace on earth would be a lot easier to achieve without weapons, but is that something to seriously attempt? A more realistic question is should we ban guns in our nation? Doing so wouldn't change (much less fix) three realities:

A legislated ban would only reduce the number of guns in the possession of law abiding citizens, and violent crime offenders aren't law abiding anyway.
The only thing we can count on to stop a skilled bad guy with a gun is a skilled good guy with a gun.
Guns don't start wars, politics do.

Even if you don't buy #1, you can't argue against point #2. If you try, I'll remind you of what happened to the Samurai. (Japan's elite warriors, dominating with swords for hundreds of years, were slaughtered by a peasant revolt brandishing guns.¹) Granted there are plenty of cases where heroic, unarmed bystanders have disarmed an armed gunman and saved the day. But it's cruel to premeditate that we want to limit those heroes to an uneven playing field where they are guaranteed the lower hand. Banning guns would create a temporary and false sense of safety, until the violent crimes increased.² Then the same people who caused the ban would blame the increase in violence on those who opposed the ban. (They'd either do it explicitly, or by implication because of the non-banning people's supposedly "corruptive" and "chaos causing" ideology.³) But remember what happened when we tried to ban alcohol. Even if I would rather we all mature beyond most of our use of alcohol, did prohibiting it effectively reduce the amount of it in America?

We live in a world that is well aware of the constraints imposed by the law of supply and demand (there are limited supplies and unlimited demands). This is the basis for the "zero sum game," in which for one side to win, the other must lose. Guns have hundreds of years of proven track record to help their holder get what they want. Combine that with the diversity of thought (and especially religion) which inhibits any nation on earth from truly trusting all other nations enough to completely disarm, and we are stuck in a world that has no hope of ever un-inventing (or otherwise eliminating) guns.⁴ Unless they're completely eliminated, bad guys (both foreign and domestic) will always find a way to get them. Since they can't be completely eliminated, banning them is only a fantasy, and wishful thinking.

Gun control is weapon control. The point of banning weapons is to make your adversaries defenseless against you, to afford yourself superior firepower (or other might) over your opponents (both real and potential). If we legalize a ban, then even if faced with infinite levels of violence and suffering, the people who legalized such ban would never reverse that law because the real point is not to minimize random acts of violence, it is to make your opponents both defenseless and offenseless. (And to the pagan, when the violence increases in your opponent's neighborhood, why would you care if they kill each other or otherwise distract themselves from opposing you?) We saw great examples of this in the Bible:

In the book of Judges, like Ehud in chapter 3 and Gideon in chapter 6.
In the story of Esther, where Haman (a serious anti semitic) arranged for the elimination of all Jews everywhere beginning in Esther 3:6. (But then Esther exposed his trickery to the king and secured the Jews unrestricted ability to defend themselves, which severely backfired on Haman (Esther 9:5).)
And when King Saul, Israel's first king, wanted to overthrow their Philistine oppressors, we see there had been a ban on weapons (1 Samuel 13:19-22).

Back in the USA, even if I prefer to live in a country without firearms, banning them has no more hope for success now, in the 21st century, than the prohibition did in the 20th. The number one problem atheists have with not banning guns is the number one prevention of gun violence is good character training (good people don't misuse guns) but the number one long term effective source of good character is the Christian worldview, which also condemns atheism. Rather than face this, atheists prefer to try to avoid the issue by simply banning them. The fact this strategy is nothing more than wishful thinking is irrelevant in their eyes, and not worthy of sympathy from Christians (theists).

Pacifists

The Bible isn't literally pro gun, nor pro weapons. God is clearly pro life, pro love, and pro people. But He's not a pacifist.

Genesis 20:3-4 hub
Genesis 38:7,10 hub
Exodus 12:29-30 hub
Exodus 14:24-28 hub
Exodus 23:23 hub
Exodus 32:27-29 hub
Leviticus 10:2 hub
Leviticus 10:8-9 hub
Leviticus 26:23-25 hub
Leviticus 27:29 hub
Numbers 11:1 hub
Numbers 12:9-14 hub
Numbers 14:37 hub
Numbers 16:31-35 hub
Numbers 25:4 hub
Deuteronomy 7:2 hub
Deuteronomy 7:9-10 hub
Deuteronomy 7:16 hub
Deuteronomy 20 hub
Deuteronomy 21:18-21 hub
Deuteronomy 32:35 hub
Deuteronomy 32:40-43 hub
Deuteronomy 33:27 hub
Joshua 10:11 hub
Joshua 11:6 hub
Joshua 11:20 hub
Judges 3:2 hub
Judges 3:10 hub
1 Samuel 15:2-3 hub

Psalm 101:8 hub
Isaiah 1:28 hub
Isaiah 1:31 hub
Matthew 8:12 hub
Matthew 10:28 hub
Matthew 10:34 hub
Matthew 13:40-42 hub
Matthew 13:49-50 hub
Matthew 21:40-46 hub
Matthew 22:7 hub
Matthew 22:13 hub
Matthew 24:50-51 hub
Matthew 25:29-30 hub
Mark 12:9 hub
Luke 2:14 hub
Luke 8:28,31 hub
Luke 12:4-5 hub
Luke 12:46 hub
Luke 12:49-53 hub
Luke 13:28 hub
Luke 19:27 hub
Luke 19:43-44 hub
Luke 20:16 hub
Luke 20:18 hub
Luke 20:47 hub
Acts 5:5, 10 hub
Revelation 6:15-17 hub
Revelation 16:21 hub
Revelation 19:11-16 hub

A pacifist is someone who thinks both war and violence are unjustifiable, both individually and at the international level. It is a term referring to an attitude that is the polar opposite of the attitude that jumps at the chance for war (a warmonger). No one was ever praised in the Bible for being a pacifist. Accepting persecution, yes, but not allowing evil at all costs. God does not appease evil in hope it will simply go away, because He knows the natural state of man.⁵ Nor is He passive enough to simply ignore evil without punishing it. God is clearly in favor of capital punishment in the Torah.

the death penalty for murder is the only command found in all first five books of the Bible:
- Genesis 9:6 hub
- Exodus 21:12 hub
- Leviticus 24:17 hub
- Numbers 35:16,31 hub
- Deuteronomy 19:11-13 hub
the command "put to death" occurred 45 times between Exodus & Deuteronomy alone (link) notably in this case including Exodus 21:14-16.
the phrase "purge the evil" was found 9 times in Deuteronomy (Moses's greatest sermon) (link)
Moses admonished the people "do not spare" in Deuteronomy 13:6-11
Deuteronomy 13:12-18 contains an extreme example. This was spoken to a people who lived in a theocracy, not democracy, so even if we restrict administration of capital punishment to a non-religious government, God's opinion is still clear of what He thinks of people who corrupt the worldview of His people (of believers). Jesus had another angle on this recorded in Matthew 18:6-9, Mark 9:42-48, and Luke 17:1-4. But notice He didn't lax it, He reinforced it (Matthew 5:17) because He was the One who gave the command to Moses in the first place.

Executing individuals because of heinous sin is not against God's character/will. Why? God's reasoning is clearly stated in Deuteronomy 19:20 (the inverse is described in Ecclesiastes 8:11) with important followup in Ezekiel 18:23. It's largely when you lack absolute standards of morality that it's politically incorrect to call certain sins heinous.⁶ Executing individuals because they're inconvenient to us is totally different and is itself a heinus sin. If you're against the death penalty but for abortion then you're being sadly hypocritical.

God had a strategic plan for His chosen people when He delivered them from Egypt. He told it to Moses in Exodus, and Moses repeated it for the people in Deuteronomy:

Exodus 23:20-33 hub
Exodus 34:10-16 hub
Deuteronomy 8:10-20 hub
Deuteronomy 9:3-6 hub

Besides rewarding Abraham's descendents for his obedience (Genesis 12:1-5, James 2:23), God had grown pretty disgusted with the cultural norms of some other descendents of Noah. God knew back in Genesis 8:21 that man was still evil, even after the flood, and a few hundred years later His concern had long since been proven justified. So part of His strategic plan was to wipe out those who had chosen to embrace despicable practices, in a term we today call genocide. But like the terms "election" and "predestination," it's completely different when we mortals make decisions and use these terms and when God does. For one, He didn't declare it because of their skin color, fashion sense, athletic skill, wealth, hygiene, possessions, homeland, or ancestral background (Isaiah 11:3-5). He condemned them because of their unrepentant, self righteous, sin, which had absolutely permeated their culture. But along the way He simultenously reminded the Israelites not to let His using them for His judgement go to their head (Deuteronomy 9:4-6). He told them to stay humble and remember that being God's chosen people is not a free ticket to a position above reproach.⁷

On multiple occasions in the Old Testament, God commands His people to go to war (for examples, Numbers 25:16-18 and 1 Samuel 15:3) and He promises in the New Testament to someday wage war on Satan and Satan's followers (both angelic and human, Revelation 19:11-16). Of course God will not have to put any effort into fighting Satan because God has no equal nor anything even close, but God has a master plan that involves this war He describes in Revelation, surely for our benefit more than His. The Israelites learned the hard way in Judges 2 and 1 Kings 20:42 that it's sinful to make peace treaties when God specifically said to fight. Just because God told the Israelites to fight various, specific people groups three millennia ago doesn't automatically mean we should take that as instruction to fight anyone today. It simply reveals God's character and sets precedence that God is not a pacifist, which has relevance in a broader context. God has a reputation for being a God of wrath, and sometimes He deserves it (more on this below). He called His people to war, and He talked smack about them in some verses (for examples, Leviticus 26:23-25 and Ezekiel 36:22-23). But was it morally acceptable for God to treat humanity and the Israelites this way? Can you remember a time you created something, whether with computer code, food, legos, etc, and it didn't come out the way you intended? What did you do with it? If Google creates an artificial intelligence and it turns against us, wouldn't we expect to pull the plug? When we sin, even once, we aren't coming out the way God intended. So yes, unless we're being absolutely hypocritical, it is within God's right to treat us any way He wants (Jeremiah 18:1-6, Isaiah 45:9-12, Job 40:2,6-8).

Another interesting, practical look at scripture is how often angels, who are God's personal messengers, carry (and even use) swords:

Genesis 3:24 hub
Numbers 22:21-33 hub
2 Samuel 24:13-17 hub (compare 1 Chronicles 21:12-17)
2 Kings 19:35 hub (parallels 2 Chronicles 32:21 and Isaiah 37:36)
Revelation 6:4 hub
Revelation 6:8 hub

There were many occasions when God was recorded as fighting on behalf of His followers (this is where angels were carrying out God's will):

Exodus 14:10-31 Egyptians
Joshua 6:20-21 Jericho
Judges 7 Gideon
1 Samuel 4:1-11 Ark, pt 1
1 Samuel 5-6 Ark, pt 2
1 Samuel 7:7-11 Thunder
1 Samuel 14:1-23 Jonathan
2 Samuel 6:1-7 Uzzah
2 Kings 3:20-27 Water illusion
2 Kings 6:8-7:20 Elisha
2 Kings 19:35 Assyrians
2 Chronicles 13:13-18 Civil war
2 Chronicles 14:8-15 Cushites
2 Chronicles 20:1-30 Triple threat
Psalm 44:1-7 David
Ezekiel 38:1-39:24 Recap

So the obvious question then is should we be pacifists? To most people this is a hard one, since Old Testament precedence is overwhelmingly against it, but New Testament teaching could make us think so. And we know that God does not change, so how do we reconcile this? Let's start with the polar opposite. War is often referred to as "hell" by those who experience it, but is there such a thing as a "just war"? Soldiers wrestle all the time with the dilema: how can I be a follower of Jesus (who preached so boldly about love) and yet have (much less use) weapons of minor or mass destruction against those who would trample me and my nation? Typically the rest of us just say "too bad" and leave the struggle to them. But we all have to deal with this, because they're fighting (and putting their life and their family's future at risk) on our behalf. The simple, straightforward answer is God has a recurring command to defend the defenseless:

Psalm 82:3-4 hub
Isaiah 1:16-17 hub
Jeremiah 22:3 hub
Amos 5:15 hub
1 Timothy 5:8 hub
James 1:27 hub

Leviticus 27:29 is not exactly in order, but is pretty close. And 2 Timothy 1:14 sounds great too, but wasn't written in the right context, so be careful including it in this bunch. Then there was Judges 3:2, which explicitly said God wanted His people to be familiar with war. To understand why God would want that, let's look at the context. The only time God commanded His people to fight (to go to war) was in order to take posession of land He'd promised their ancestor, Abraham (Genesis 13:14-15). On no occasion did God tell them to expand their territory (such as by taking the land of their neighbors) or bully anyone. The reason they were to take the Promised Land by force was the "natives" had rejected God so severely (Genesis 15:16, Deuteronomy 9:4-5). After that, God uses men (evil men or otherwise) to punish people who should know better (His own people or not) as exmplified in Isaiah 10:5-12, Jeremiah 43:8-13, Ezekiel 30:10-13, and Habakkuk 1:5-6. But more to the point, since evil exists in the world (by the choices of men and demons, not by God's will) everyone needs to be prepared to face evil. In the case of Judges 3:2, God left no ambiguity, He explicitly gave His reasoning in Judges 2:20-3:1. When we fast forward to the time of David, followed by his son, Solomon, there's a great quote in Jack David's adddress to Rutgers University in 2014, which provides interesting perspective. Mr. David said, quoting a millenia old source, "if you want peace then prepare for war." This is not a warmonger's mantra, it's a succinct reminder that, unless your enemies know you can defend yourself really well, you invite attack.

In a world that knows how to make infinite weapons, we have to be prepared to live up to these commands no matter what that requires of us (whether we are wearing a military uniform or not). Did you ever notice the nuance of how most translations translate Exodus 20:13? (This is the 6th commandment. Read a bunch of translations on BibleHub, here, or BibleGateway, here, or the original Hebrew, here.) Notice in the original it didn't say don't "kill," as a pacifist would want, it said don't "murder." There's a huge difference that should be obvious if you know the definition of each word. Deuteronomy 19:4-13 is a good example of a distinction. And there is precedent that God delegates "the fear of God" to parents in Deuteronomy 21:18-21 and Exodus 21:15, establishing that discipline has no limits (discussed in more detail on my Family in the Bible page, here). Since God encourages discipline (Revelation 3:19), we are all to embrace discipline (Proverbs 3:11-12), the two greatest commandments in existence say to love (honor) God and love (treat) our neighbor (everyone else) like ourselves (Matthew 22:34-40), we are commanded to protect the defenseless, and discipline has no limits, then this sure sounds like a formula for a "just war." Now it's not an open invitation to violence, but it is important persective. Even (and especially) during a war, we should still keep the rest of the instructions in mind (including treating all people as people at all times). Themes like love the sinner, hate the sin (Jude 1:22-23) and love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18) and the nature of spiritual warfare (Ephesians 6:12) come to mind. (Note, nations were never intended nor instructed to have international policies of pacifism, but there are more choices than pacifism and warmongering. Neither extreme is good.) On a more personal level, self defense is clearly defended in the Bible:

Exodus 22:2-3 hub
Proverbs 25:26 hub
Nehemiah 4:14-18 hub

Many of the Old Testament heroes of the faith were not only not-pacifists, they even killed people. Arguably the two most spectacular examples were David when he faught Goliath, and Elijah's contest on Mount Carmel.

David faught Goliath in 1 Samuel 17.
- Notice why David challenged Goliath. First he tells king Saul why he's willing to fight in verses 36-37, and then how he confronts the giant himself in verses 45-47.
- David and Goliath made it into most children's Bibles. And rightly so. But most of those accounts have David killing Goliath by simply throwing a stone at him. That's not all that happened. Read it all in verses 48-51. From a pacifist perspective, David went above and beyond by cutting the man's head off. But it was most likely a symbolic act. David was such a successful miltary leader that after he'd won many victories and brought peace to Israel, and he wanted to build God a permanent temple, God said "no" in 1 Chronicles 28:3. But don't forget how God gave His unparalleled endorsement of David in 1 Samuel 13:14 and Acts 13:22.
Elijah confronted the leaders of the dominant, false religion of his day in 1 Kings 18:16-46.
- Remember important back story to this was 1 Kings 17:1 and 1 Kings 18:1-2 (with followup in James 5:17-18).
- If you want God to show up, then an important factor is your humility. And the greatest humility you can demonstrate is to put yourself in a situation where if God doesn't come through, then you're going to look stupid.
- Notice all that's recorded that God told Elijah was verse 1. So as far as we can tell, the whole contest was Elijah's idea. Elijah really, really put himself out there. Confronting 400-800 prophets, all of whom were probably considered professionals, educated, successful, popular, and politically entrenched in their culture.
- Not only did Elijah intentionally, publicly humiliate all these false prophets (explicitly in verse 27 but also implicitly in how their god just never showed up by verses 28-29), when it was all over he personally ordered them all executed (verses 39-40). And at the end of this account, God is not horrified by Elijah's actions because Elijah wasn't acting from his own pride, nor from a desire for a zero sum game, but rather he was defending the reputation of his (our) Creator (remember Deuteronomy 18:20 and Isaiah 42:8).

There were no Old Testament heroes of the faith who demonstrated pacifism. Joseph might be the closest example, but he was never recorded as confronting someone who had gone postal. And he went from slave to prisoner to second to the pharaoh. None of those 3 positions would have been expected to carry a weapon. Even Moses took part in people's deaths (remember the Egyptian in Exodus 2:12, the Red Sea in Exodus 14:27-28, and the battle against the Amalekites where he had to keep his arms up for Israel to win in Exodus 17:11?) Of course they were heroes not because they faught, but why they did. They are famous because they listened to and obeyed God, they took Him seriously, and in the process they didn't tell their Creator that killing people was off limits. In the New Testament, admittedly all the apostles seemed to be pacifists. But they too were never recorded as encountering someone who'd gone postal, though Paul makes a curious sarcastic comment in 2 Corinthians 11:19-21. (And remember the New Testament only covers 2% of the history of the Bible, so the examples there are difficult to declare more weighty than those of the Old Testament.) That said, as followers of Christ, we should never intentionally incite violence (unless our acting righteously infuriates, which it has a tendency to do, 1 Peter 2:15-17, 2 Timothy 2:23-26), but when selfish, greedy, or otherwise disturbed people (suicide bombers, school gunmen, etc.) show themselves, we should remember verses that admonish us to defend the defenseless before we quote verses about turning the other cheek.

Turning the other cheek was stated in Matthew 5:38-39, which was in the middle of a bunch of recommendations about individual behavior (commonly referred to as the Beatitudes, given in The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7). Willingly accepting persecution is a very important theological concept, but doesn't have to be interpreted as an excuse to allow evil to run unchecked in the world. This would be a direct violation of so many other verses listed above. Just a couple verses later, in Matthew 5:43-44, Jesus instructed us to love our enemy. Taking this literally would mean we have to let gunmen blow our children's brains out, bullies break our kids bones, and extremists blow up our buildings and then greet them with cookies and milk. Taking Jesus's comments seriously would involve remembering that the gunman/bullies/etc are still human, created in God's image, stuck in a sinful world, and may very well have been tricked by Satan (2 Corinthians 4:4, 2 Timothy 2:25-26). So we stop them from acting on their awful ideas, if we can, at any cost, with any amount of force necessary, while still treating them as a human being whom God wants to be saved (Jude 1:22-23). And earlier in the same chapter, in Matthew 5:17-20, Jesus points out that He came to fulfill the law, not abolish it. He's saying all those verses from the Old Testament that you find politically incorrect: too bad. They're not going away. His teaching was not a replacement for it. His teaching was to help us realize that the world is not black and white, that we don't have to live at either end of the spectrum, we aren't limited to only two choices (pacifist or warmonger). God wants us to think for ourselves, and He wants us to demonstrate love, to be His ambassadors to each other and to all of creation. And when the one you're an ambassador for is far from a pacifist, why on earth would we think we should be? As a concession, if you lack self control and you can't control your temper, then you have my endorsement to be a pacifist. But then don't tell everyone else they have a moral obligation to be like you (Matthew 5:19).

Remember Jesus was God incarnate, was here for a very specific prearranged purpose, and had His own time table that He wasn't about to let mortals nor demons mess with:

Matthew 9:30 hub
Mark 1:43-44 hub
Mark 3:11-12 hub
Mark 7:36 hub
Luke 4:41 hub
Luke 12:49-50 hub
Luke 13:31-33 hub
John 2:4 hub

So He had an excuse to pick His battles even more selectively (and more supernaturally) than the rest of us can. In Luke 4:28-30, John 8:59, and John 18:4-6, Jesus exemlified that He could just say so (say "no" to the evil plots of men) but the rest of us have a little more challenge. John was one of Jesus's disciples and he wrote 1 John 4:8 after meeting Jesus (and seeing Him die and ressurect). And Jesus was arguably the greatest pacifist who ever lived. But was Jesus ever violent? He got ticked, and violent, making and using a weapon, with the people who were trying to "sell" righteousness (using their location in the temple as a false source of authority) in John 2:15-17. Then in Matthew 4:12 and 12:14-15 we can be reminded Jesus didn't demonstrate combat because (at least in part) too many of us don't need excuses to fight. We needed His example to love. But that doesn't mean we who know God should let Satan have free reign of the world in the name of love. We learn in Revelation that Jesus is not some dope-smoking peace-spouting hippy (for example, Revelation 1:16 and 19:15). We are commanded to defend. If bad people have guns then good people need to have guns, too. No one ever said you have to be employed by the government to be good (except corrupt government officials, hence the USA constitution's checks and balances, and second amendment). Nor is it anti Biblical to have standards of who may own a gun. (But what those standards look like is a different matter entirely, and I am not going to even begin to address that here.) I am saying it's anti Biblical to ban guns, and it's missing an important point. A free society can only survive on Judeo-Christian values. The gun violence we see is a direct result of a public abandonment and disavowing of those values, and more specifically of our Creator God. Banning guns does nothing to improve the culture, and the argument to do so is just a distraction from the only thing that would cause real improvement: Jesus.

None of the above is an excuse for random violence (Leviticus 27:29). And that's the rub. Because what one person may find justified another may find random. Sometimes the difference is just perspective (for example caused by the law of supply and demand) and more annoyingly, it is sometimes simply caused by one person being less mature. If we dabble in the nuances of "when" self defense and fighting are appropriate, one distinction to make is terrorism and persecution are not the same thing. Persecution, for this context, is when someone treats you maliciously because of your association and non-denial of Jesus/God. Terrorism may be religiously motivated (and yes, atheism is a religion, just not as organized as Christianity) but isn't necessarily about religion. Sometimes it's about economics (either past or present) and sometimes it's because the perpetrator has gone wacko. When someone seemingly randomly pulls a gun and starts shooting people in a theater or school, that's not persecution, and isn't what Jesus was talking about when He said love your enemies. In this example, the shooter isn't your enemy in the traditional sense, they're a terrorist who often indiscriminately kills whoever is in the wrong place at the wrong time (even if the shooting is preplanned and even if one or more specific targets are included in the victims). When God says vengeance is His (Deuteronomy 32:35), that is more referring to after the incident is all over, don't take revenge. But that is completely different than letting a terrorist have their way and just go around killing (or hurting) people until they decide for themselves when they're done. God's not saying justice is His alone, as He repeatedly exhorted us to be instruments of justice in the world and stop injustice in its tracks (for example Deuteronomy 16:19-20). If a perpetrator acts in such a way that the only way to stop them is to shoot them (or shoot at them), then so be it. Our skill level with our gun and the bad guy's position may limit our choices in how we stop him, but there's an important detail that being anti ban is not automatically pro kill. If you think I'd think twice about sending an active murderer, especially an active mass murderer, to the hospital, then I don't get you.

If it's so wrong then why is pacifism so attractive?

It sounds good, and it feels good to talk about peace. (But talk is cheap, Jeremiah 6:14, and it feels even better to actually experience it.)
Satan and his followers masquerade as angels of light (2 Corinthians 11:14-15) and play us for fools, quoting scripture at all the wrong times (like turn the other cheek) to confuse us and stall the efforts that will cause genuine peace, safety, and security. That was characteristic of Satan's first interaction with Eve back in Genesis 3:1-5, with Jesus in Matthew 4:1-11/Luke 4:1-13, and still is today.

Peacemakers

So the case has been made that banning guns and being a pacifist are bad ideas, now let's look at some highlights of verses that must be counterbalanced. These might be compelling evidence we should be pacifists, if all the above were not the case:

Genesis 9:5-6 hub
Exodus 20:13 hub
Exodus 21:12 hub
Exodus 23:2 hub
Exodus 23:4-5 hub
Ecclesiastes 9:18 hub
Isaiah 2:4 hub
Ezekiel 35:6 hub
Micah 4:3 hub
Matthew 5:5-9 hub
Matthew 5:43-47 hub
Matthew 7:12 hub
Matthew 26:52 hub
Matthew 28:18-20 hub
Luke 6:27 hub

Luke 6:35 hub
John 10:10 hub
John 14:27 hub
Romans 12:17-21 hub
Romans 13:10 hub
Ephesians 6:12 hub
Colossians 3:12-13 hub
2 Corinthians 10:4 hub
1 Thessalonians 5:15 hub
2 Timothy 2:24 hub
James 3:18 hub
1 Peter 2:19-21 hub
1 Peter 3:9 hub
1 Peter 3:17 hub
Hebrews 12:14 hub

You know who wants you to be a pacifist? Your enemy (those who hate your worldview or want what you possess). There are also people who sympathize with the idea of pacifism but yet realize that literal pacifism is impractical, so they mentally make some sort of compromise between the two ends of the spectrum but keep the same name. This isn't pacifism and they're not doing the world a favor by reusing the word. Perhaps the word "peacemaker" would be better, and is probably why Jesus uses it (not pacifist) in Matthew 5:9 (also found in James 3:18).

"God is love" (1 John 4:8) was true in the Old Testament too, not just the New. Here are a few succinct examples (and there are a ton of less succinct examples):

Exodus 34:6-7 hub
Psalm 107:1 hub
Psalm 119:32 hub
Psalm 136 hub
Nehemiah 9:17 hub
Isaiah 49:15 hub
Isaiah 54:10 hub
Jeremiah 32:40-41 hub
Hosea 3:1 hub
Micah 7:18 hub

And yet, consider all the wrath that was present in the Old Testament. So when "God is love" in the New Testament, why would we think He's no longer wrathful? (Isaiah 13:13, Revelation 19:15) The takeaway is not to judge God, but to take Him seriously and conform our thoughts and actions to what He says we should (2 Corinthians 10:5). For He is love, and desires a relationship with us, not to punish/criticize us:

Genesis 4:7 hub
Deuteronomy 30:1-4 hub
2 Samuel 14:14 hub
Lamentations 3:31-33 hub
Ezekiel 18:31-32 hub
Ezekiel 33:11 hub
Jeremiah 5:1 hub
Jeremiah 18:7-8 hub
Hosea 11:8-9 hub
Joel 2:12-14 hub
Jonah 3:10 hub
Micah 7:18-19 hub

Remember all those stories above about God fighting and killing on behalf of His people? Not only can those be used as evidence that God sets precedent (not so much that we should follow, but that we should not be prohibited from following) but they can also be evidence that there is less need for us to take matters into our own hands. We can trust God to take care of us. Psalm 91 is a beautiful summary on this theme.

Root Cause

This page was catalyzed by the issue of gun control, which is a hot topic in my culture. The larger issue turns out to be the appropriate balance between the commands to love & protect, while not emphasizing either one over the other. Similar to how John said Jesus came to bring grace and truth (John 1:14). If Jesus just had grace, then chaos (relativism) could ensue and God would still forgive. If He only brought truth, then legalism would take over, and we'd all be doomed. These balancing acts are evidence that God wants us to think for ourselves.

The real issue is not guns, it is sin and rebellion against God. The first piece of advice God is recorded as giving us after the curse was about mastering temptation and not letting sin be our master (Genesis 4:7). No government/social policy on guns will change that, only turning our hearts to Jesus, which is demonstrated first with a Biblical worldview, and then our actions must flow from that (James 2:18-19). Gun control is less important than self control. We have the great commission, which is to spread God's love (Matthew 28:18-20) but we don't have a general command to pick a fight. But we do have instruction to be prepared for spiritual warfare, which is discussed in more detail, here.

Final Extra Thoughts

Final (incomplete) thoughts that didn't quite fit into the above:

There are a few verses which might seem on topic but are neither here nor there. For example:
- Psalm 46:9 (...)
- Psalm 144:1 (This is just King David praising God.)
- Ecclesiastes 3:8 (...)
- Luke 22:36 (This was a specific quote to a specific person to fulfill a specific prophecy and is not valid to use as a general command. However, if Jesus ever told someone to do it, can it possibly always be wrong? (no)) Later, in John 18:11, He didn't say swords are evil or wrong, nor did He say they're good.
- Luke 11:21-22 (This is just a truism and isn't any form of instruction.)
- Numbers 31:3, 1 Samuel 25:13 (These are just examples of ...)
Heros of the faith who weren't acting as pacifists: (perhaps make into a footnote)
- Numbers 31:3
- 1 Samuel 25:13
Romans 13:4 obviously police/military are expected to carry weapons.
Teen girl suicide rates are up in the USA in the last few years (upper two thousand teen years). A major reason for this is speculated as social media. The thought is girls and boys are equally violent (or perhaps equally evil), but girls express their violence through emotional relationships rather than through physical actions. Social media has created a means for popular or otherwise mean girls to belittle and otherwise bully susceptable girls. And unlike conventional bullying, which is exclusionary (meaning it only exists in one place at a time) cyber bullying through social media can be ubiquitous. If a person really wants to ban guns because of the violence and destruction they cause, I wonder how fast they'd pick up the cause of banning social media, too?
Walt Disney was a great visionary. He changed the entertainment industry in numerous ways, mostly for the good. (Not that the industry has stayed pure, but his contributions were largely good.) One thing we've forgotten though, living in a post-Disney world, is that before Disney many children's stories ended in death. Because life is dangerous. As an example, remember Aesop's fables?
Notice one thing God never says in the Bible. He never once tells His people to go on jihad and kill non believers. Even after the exodus, when He commanded the Israelites to genocide small nations, it was a very specific command to kill those people. Not everyone on earth who meets the criteria or who ever will. There are no blank checks to hate or kill people in the Bible. If you want to kill people in the name of Jesus then you're an idiot, or at least missing the point.

Footnotes

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations by David S Landes, page 369, or the Battle of Shiroyama (Wikipedia) (return)
There's a technical term for this, namely a fallacy (a mistaken belief based on unsound logic). (return)
There are two technical terms for that, namely a travesty (a false and absurd representation) and Victim Blaming. (return)

Costa Rica and other countries with no military only do that because the USA will fight for (protect) them. Even they don't actually trust every nation on earth. (return)

The natural state of man is evil:
- Genesis 6:5-6 hub
- Genesis 8:21 hub
- Job 15:14-16 hub
- Jeremiah 16:12 hub
- Jeremiah 17:9 hub
- Ezekiel 36:26 hub
- Matthew 23:27 hub
- Luke 11:11-13 hub
- John 2:24-25 hub
- Romans 3:23 hub
(return)

God clearly defines sin in His word, the Bible. (Jews agree with this and their Torah, and Muslims agree with their Quran.) Only people who don't want standards object to people using these standards. (Though they only object to standards they didn't invent themselves.) When the people who don't like standards are random, then we might be able to ignore them. But when those people are in charge of nations, we have a problem. There's a term for when an idea doesn't serve those in power (or those who want to be in power). It's called "politically correct." God is the real one in ultimate power, and so how He defines (and doesn't define) sin is more important than how we do, or how any president, king, or dictator does. By the way, it's important that whatever standard of morality we chose (even if, for a non-Christian, it's not the Bible) causes us to raise our standards above what we intuit, not lower them. (return)
The religious leaders of Jesus's day literally thought this (Matthew 3:9, John 8:39). They thought because they were biological descendants of Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3) that they had a free ride to heaven. This lead to serious self righteous beliefs and actions which Jesus confronted (condemned) head on in Matthew 23:13-36. (return)

http://rock.jayden12.com/guns.php

Last Modified: Thursday 28 December 2023

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