Should Christians own and use guns? What does the Bible really say about self-defense, protecting your family, and turning the other cheek? That’s what we’re going to get into today. But before we get started, make sure to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell so you never miss an episode. Dad. Wow, James, you had to go there.
Christians and guns. This is definitely a a contentious topic. It’s a dangerous conversation, but it’s really important particularly as things get crazier and hairier in our culture. So, James, what what made you pick this topic just in light of all of the school shootings and the Charlie Kirk assassination that was making me kind of think of the topic of guns and Christians and should we have them? And then on top of that, I watched a documentary about the Amish.
And the Amish are pacifists. So they don’t own guns and they don’t believe in using the guns as le lethal force against other people. So I thought more about it and I just kind of did a deep dive on what the Bible says about murder and what the Bible says about killing, what the Bible says about protection and defending your family.
And I also found that a lot of Christians actually hold the same position somewhat as the Amish that Christians shouldn’t use guns because God says to turn the other cheek, which is an interesting concept and really made me think. Yeah, I’ve got it right here. Um, Matthew chapter 5. But I say, do not resist an evil person.
If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also. Yeah. So I think a lot of times Christians look at that and say well let’s attribute that and apply that to our own lives and let’s put it into a real life circumstance. Say I am in my house and somebody breaks in and they’re threatening me and my family.
That means that I shouldn’t defend myself. I should just let them have it and hope that I’m okay and hope that my kids and my wife are okay also. And obviously that didn’t sit right with me. So I went and researched and studied my Bible to see what it said about that. And I found a bunch of different verses that were talking about defending your family and about actually even using lethal force in a certain circumstance to preserve life itself.
What are some of those passages? One of those is uh Exodus 22 and it’s verse 2 and it says, “If a thief is caught breaking in at night, “And struck with a fatal blow, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed.” Wow. There it is. Struck with a fatal blow when some when a thief breaks into your house in the middle of the night.
Now, with that verse, obviously, back in that day and age, they didn’t have guns. So, it’s struck striking them with a club or a knife or whatever they had available um to protect themselves. But I think the actual meaning of that verse is you’re able to use that ultimate force, that lethal force when life is in danger.
That’s the idea behind it. But when the intruder is trying to take life, you are you have a responsibility, especially as the man of the house, to defend the life that God has entrusted you to protect. And it’s also really interesting in Exodus 22 that there is a caveat. You’re not guilty if you end up killing the thief in the middle of the night when it’s dark.
