Defending your family vs. being a witness for the Gospel....

[Pergamum]

the laws of many nations are unclear, contradictory and inane in many respects.

Whether you broke a law or not if often in the eye of the beholder (or the holder of the highest bribe).

If the laws for building churches and assembling is that there must be neighborhood approval - what does that mean? If a few thugs demonstrate loudly, versus the silent majority of peaceful citizens, has the church then broke the law or not by building with/without neighborhood approval?

Or if the local judges are members of radical groups or can be bribed, then the church suffers without legal remedy.

The Church is not called to go without suffering in this world.

You may get persecuted even while still following the law. Being condemned because of bribery is completely different from being condemned because of breaking the civil law.

So when the angry crowds come to burn your church, based on an extreme intepretation of a fuzzy law and after the angry mob pays off the local cops, then the church goers should resist or passively allow this to happen?


The lines are not as clear cut as you would like to make them

 

[larryjf]

How on earth is this a Scriptural position? I just don't see it at all.

Because it's based on the example found in the Book of Esther as noted in an earlier post.

I overlooked your earlier reference. The inference that you are making is not analogous. The king was giving the Jews legitimate authority to form their own armies. This is different from a man protecting his family. Further, just because this pagan king gave them the 'permission' to defend themselves does not mean that they did not posses it already in God's economy.

But it was the people of God who waited until it was legal to protect themselves. It was Esther who begged the king for this law of defense.

It was no army that was created...the Jews never became the sword of the civil magistrate. This was a law inacted to defend the Church from persecution not to create an army.

 

[larryjf]

the laws of many nations are unclear, contradictory and inane in many respects.

Whether you broke a law or not if often in the eye of the beholder (or the holder of the highest bribe).

If the laws for building churches and assembling is that there must be neighborhood approval - what does that mean? If a few thugs demonstrate loudly, versus the silent majority of peaceful citizens, has the church then broke the law or not by building with/without neighborhood approval?

Or if the local judges are members of radical groups or can be bribed, then the church suffers without legal remedy.

The Church is not called to go without suffering in this world.

You may get persecuted even while still following the law. Being condemned because of bribery is completely different from being condemned because of breaking the civil law.

So when the angry crowds come to burn your church, based on an extreme intepretation of a fuzzy law and after the angry mob pays off the local cops, then the church goers should resist or passively allow this to happen?


The lines are not as clear cut as you would like to make them

One doesn't have to act in accordance with bribed authorities.
It's not so clear to me because i don't have the law that you're speaking of. But if you post it i could answer your question.

 

[LawrenceU]

Haman bribed the king. And it was Mordecai who instructed the Scribes regarding the Jews, Esteher 8.9

Alright, not an army, but it was a militia. Look at the fact that they were allowed to organise.

Is it not eisegesis to say that the Jews would not have attempted to defend themselves if they had been attacked?

 

[larryjf]

Pergamum,

Let me put it in the context of my situation.
I live in America where we have a great deal of religious freedoms.
If a mob were to come to my church to burn it down i would protect the lives of those in the church, but most likely would not protect the building itself. I feel that life always trumps property.

If some came into the church to kill members i would be perfectly comfortable killing such a person in order to save life since it is legal for me to do so.

If i was in a Muslim country where it was legal to kill folks who converted to Christianity i would not kill the civil authorities who had the job of executing such converts any more than i would kill doctors who legally perform abortions in the U.S.

 

[larryjf]

Haman bribed the king.

Alright, not an army, but it was a militia. Look at the fact that they were allowed to organise.

Is it not eisegesis to say that the Jews would not have attempted to defend themselves if they had been attacked?

If you believe that life can always be protected with lethal force, no matter what the civil law says, then are you defending the life of unborn infants by killing the doctors who are murdering them?

 

[jd.morrison]

Pergamum,

Let me put it in the context of my situation.
I live in America where we have a great deal of religious freedoms.
If a mob were to come to my church to burn it down i would protect the lives of those in the church, but most likely would not protect the building itself. I feel that life always trumps property.

If some came into the church to kill members i would be perfectly comfortable killing such a person in order to save life since it is legal for me to do so.

If i was in a Muslim country where it was legal to kill folks who converted to Christianity i would not kill the civil authorities who had the job of executing such converts any more than i would kill doctors who legally perform abortions in the U.S.

I never really thought about that. The individual is then operating and an instrument of the state, hence the state is actually the one killing the convert...

 

[LawrenceU]

Haman bribed the king.

Alright, not an army, but it was a militia. Look at the fact that they were allowed to organise.

Is it not eisegesis to say that the Jews would not have attempted to defend themselves if they had been attacked?

If you believe that life can always be protected with lethal force, no matter what the civil law says, then are you defending the life of unborn infants by killing the doctors who are murdering them?

That is a straw man. I've never said that. I asked the questions to understand what you were saying and were your reasoning was coming from. We may not disagree as much as you think.

I do believe that innocent life of the unborn should be protected with lethal force; the death penalty for those who are guilty of the action. There is a difference between the protection of those assaulted by a mob, evil army, armed intruder, etc. and vigilante justice directed toward a criminal which is what your strawman would actually be.

 

[larryjf]

Haman bribed the king.

Alright, not an army, but it was a militia. Look at the fact that they were allowed to organise.

Is it not eisegesis to say that the Jews would not have attempted to defend themselves if they had been attacked?

If you believe that life can always be protected with lethal force, no matter what the civil law says, then are you defending the life of unborn infants by killing the doctors who are murdering them?

That is a straw man. I've never said that. I asked the questions to understand what you were saying and were your reasoning was coming from. We may not disagree as much as you think.

I do believe that innocent life of the unborn should be protected with lethal force; the death penalty for those who are guilty of the action. There is a difference between the protection of those assaulted by a mob, evil army, armed intruder, etc. and vigilante justice directed toward a criminal which is what your strawman would actually be.

The difference is in the civil law. Are we to abide by the civil law unless it condones murder of a select group of people (whether Christian or infant)?

The point for me is that we must stay within the limits of the civil law whenever we seek to take lethal force into our own hands.

If we won't fight for the life of those who can't even defend themselves if they wanted to because what is being done is legal, how can we defend other who are being persecuted legally?

 

[Pergamum]

Gov'ts and civil laws do not always rsemble what we have in the West.It is not blackand white - It gets a lot grayer in other parts of the world.

What about contradictory laws, fuzzy laws and local policemen and judges who are laws unto themselves, not to mention the competing fiefdoms and tribal gov'ts that rule locally,plus some areas where the law is a mixture of civil and shariah law and both constantly compete for power.

 

[larryjf]

Gov'ts and civil laws do not always rsemble what we have in the West.It is not blackand white - It gets a lot grayer in other parts of the world.

What about contradictory laws, fuzzy laws and local policemen and judges who are laws unto themselves, not to mention the competing fiefdoms and tribal gov'ts that rule locally,plus some areas where the law is a mixture of civil and shariah law and both constantly compete for power.

Contradictory laws: that's what happened in the book of Esther. One law said to kill the Jews, the other said for the Jews to defend themselves. That seems pretty contradictory, and yet it was this that allowed the Jews to be spared from persecution.

Fuzzy laws: that happens in the West as well. You simply have to interpret them as best as you can.

policemen and judges being laws unto themselves: If they are not acting in the name of the civil authority then they can be resisted, but only in so far as the civil law allows. That also happens in the West.

 

[larryjf]

Clearly under some situations you would have to use your own understanding and the wisdom of others to decide how to react to persecution.

But when the civil law clearly prevents you from defending yourself or others, that's a different story.

 

[Abd_Yesua_alMasih]

Pergamum brings up a good point that as a man he will defend himself but in the pulpit he might not. Are these people attacking you because you are Christian or because they don't like your face/you are a westerner/you yourself has done something wrong?

To suffer in the first case for Christ is nobel, to suffer in the second case when Christ is not involved is a bit of a shame.

As examples we have Jesus not resisting his arrest on in the garden along with the testimony of all the martyrs. In the second case we have the Jews in Esther and the fact that Jesus told his apostles to take swords with them (hence probably to defend themselves against thieves or bandits but not martyrdom).

 

[jd.morrison]

Pergamum brings up a good point that as a man he will defend himself but in the pulpit he might not. Are these people attacking you because you are Christian or because they don't like your face/you are a westerner/you yourself has done something wrong?

To suffer in the first case for Christ is nobel, to suffer in the second case when Christ is not involved is a bit of a shame.

As examples we have Jesus not resisting his arrest on in the garden along with the testimony of all the martyrs. In the second case we have the Jews in Esther and the fact that Jesus told his apostles to take swords with them (hence probably to defend themselves against thieves or bandits but not martyrdom).

The implication was that they were after you with the intent to kill you and your family because of your faith and the fact that you are a Christian and/or you were trying to convert some local Muslims.