guns – Protestia

Andrew Wilson is a self-described extreme pacificist and frequent contributor to the Gospel Coalition. He’s also the teaching pastor at King’s Church, London and the author of God of All Things: Rediscovering the Sacred in an Everyday World. During his “Good Faith Debate’ with Bob Thune on ‘How should Christians think about gun control and the right to bear arms?” Wilson claimed that the world should not have opposed Hitler militarily, but and instead should have let him conquer. Furthermore, arguing against the second amendment, Wilson suggests that in same way that Jesus rebuked Peter for cutting off Malchus’ ear in John 18, so too would Jesus rebuke anyone seeking to stop a church shooting by employing lethal force.

Question: You mentioned that there are weapons that can kill everybody in this room. Recently, at least in the United States as my context, there have been videos circulating of somebody showing up in a church or elsewhere, with a gun intending to kill a lot of people, but because someone else had a gun, it was stopped. Does that seem like an argument for people to be able to bear arms to you?

Wilson: “No, it doesn’t. And I think for two reasons. I think, firstly, if the camera was to pan back from that encounter with, you know, and of course, it sounds heartless. (to let everyone die) I’ve never been in this situation, praise God, and I know that some have, and there may be people watching this who have seen that or people close to them.

But I think if the camera was to pan back from that specific situation to the entire nation, and you said, actually, the freedom to do this, that applies to this guy defending these people, when extrapolated to all of these 350 million people, means a lot more innocent people die, which I think is what statistics at least suggest, then that changes the moral calculus somewhat I think, at a pragmatic level.

And I also think at a theological level, this is basically exactly what Peter was doing when he picked up the sword and chopped the guy’s ear off is, what the disciples are saying they were going to do, just call down fire from heaven. I think that when Christ engages with Christians raising that question, and it only happens three times, but each time it does, he’s pretty direct. He says, ‘No, you don’t do that.’

And so I think at that point, I think Christians, as we all do in many other fields anyway, is we have to choose the way of the cross to choose to suffer, rather than to take up arms and kill. And I think that’s yeah, that’s essentially what Christian pacifism is. That’s, that’s my position.”

Wilson argues it would be sinful and evil to stop an active shooter using lethal force, using Peter as the comparison, but that doesn’t follow. There difference is that Jesus’s rebuke for severing the ear was because he already told Peter on several occasions that he was to be arrested, put on trial, and then die, and by Peter doing this, he was being unwise and acting out of turn, unlike a legitimate use of self-defense to save another’s life. Timothy Hsiao explains:

…When Jesus sharply rebukes Peter later for drawing his sword and cutting off the ear of Malchus, saying that “all who take the sword will perish by the sword,” (Matthew 26:52) he is not condemning any and all use of swords. He is instead rebuking Peter’s specific misuse of the sword to interfere with God’s plan (John 18:11: “shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?”). In other words, Jesus is saying that we may not advance the kingdom of God by force (John 18:36).
The two verses immediately following the rebuke give context: “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” If Jesus wanted to be defended, he could request help on a scale much greater than what the disciples could do with their swords. But in accordance with scripture, he has decided against this option, and any attempt to force another outcome will not succeed.
As Tim Stratton has noted in Love Thy Neighbor & Pack Thy Heat, Jesus does not tell Peter to get rid of his sword. Instead, he merely commands him to put his sword “back in its sheath” (John 18:11; Matthew 26:52). Indeed, John’s description of the rebuke completely omits any negative reference to the sword, reporting only the command to sheath it. Likewise, Luke (who is the only Gospel writer who mentions the command to buy a sword) reports Jesus’s rebuke as simply him saying “No more of this!” The sword is not mentioned. In separating the rebuke from the sword, John and Luke appear to be drawing a distinction between the sword itself and how it is being used in that particular situation. It is the latter that is the subject of rebuke.

Following the murder of 19 students and 2 teachers in the Uvalde school shooting, leftist evangelical thought leaders politicized the tragedy in an effort to push universal background checks and other gun control legislation. While many Texas state leaders have called for their constituents to pray for the families of the victims, shameless political clown Beto O’Rourke raided a press conference that was focused on the tragedy, in a publicity stunt that will likely backfire at the polls in November. A number of evangelical thought leaders made incoherent comments about guns, including SBC Presidential contender Bart Barber.

Not to be outdone by pagans like Beto O’Rourke, or ignorant evangelical institutionalists like Bart Barber, TGC author Charlie Dates has taken up the mantle of anti-gun activism in the name of being “pro-life”. Dates published a rambling pro-gun-control piece in Christianity Today, the rag to which leftists like Russell Moore run when they want to publish an article that would be better suited for a leftist secular news source like the Washington Compost. Simply add a little Christianese to leftist talking points, and voilà, secular thought is baptized in the waters of a “Christian Magazine”.

Talking About Chicago Gun Deaths Is Racist

Dates calls republican references to gun violence in Chicago a racist “dog whistle”. According to Dates, white evangelicals should not discuss gun violence in Chicago, because they don’t care about black lives lost.

“In short, I think you should leave Chicago’s name out of your mouth until you understand the forces that shape this city. We are not your rhetorical whipping boy, trotted out for another session of mockery that serves your political ends. We are not your minstrel show, played on repeat on your news channels as a way to reinforce tropes about the inherent dangerousness of Black people. We see what you are doing and name it for what it is: racism. We know that you do not actually care about the Black lives lost to gun violence here. If you did, you wouldn’t use dead Black boys and girls as a political tool. You would see their tragic deaths as a catalyst for action.”

According to Dates, white people who reference Chicago in their arguments are involved in a sinister plot that involves using “dead black boys and girls as a political tool.” Such an argument attempts to equate the deaths of children in the Texas school shooting with shooting deaths in Chicago. Dates ignores the huge difference between the deaths of schoolchildren in Texas and gang-related shootings in Chicago. The children in Uvalde, Texas didn’t deserve to be murdered. While all death is lamentable, many of the “boys” and “girls” who have died in Chicago were willing participants in the gang war culture of Chicago which glorifies crime and murder as a way of life. They live with one foot in the grave. Chicago pastors should place their focus on confronting wicked aspects of their city’s gang culture, rather than blaming white Christians for not advocating gun control measures (i.e., take the cannonball out of your own eye before trying to remove the BB from your brother’s eye).

Blame Republican States

Dates proceeds to blame the lax gun laws of Republican states that surround Illinois for the crime that takes place in Chicago. Instead of blaming Chicago gangs for rampant violence in the city of Chicago, leftists like Dates prefer to place blame on all of the surrounding states that have lax gun laws. Never mind the fact that the border states with more lax gun laws have a much lower crime rate than Chicago itself. According to Dates, Chicago is beholden to its neighbors.

“Chicago is a border colony. Illinois is a gun-restrictive state. Studies have shown that nearly 60 percent of guns connected to crimes in Chicago arrive through Republican states. The loose privileges of others have a direct, negative, and destructive effect on us.”

According to the study linked to Dates’ article, the death by firearm rate for black children is more than four times that of white children. Blaming Indiana for Chicago’s gun violence is equivalent to blaming the United States for gun violence in Mexico. A large number of guns are smuggled across the border from the United States to Mexico, by Mexican criminals who break many laws in the process. The vast majority of these guns are purchased by drug cartels. The United States is not responsible for gun violence in Mexico. The drug cartels are to blame for smuggling guns and committing murders. In the same way, the gangs of Chicago are to blame for gun violence in the city. Criminals will commit crimes with complete disregard for the law, and that is why they are criminals in the first place.

Adopt Leftist Policies or You Can’t Call Yourself Pro-Life

Dates joins other left-leaning evangelicals, who say that those who claim to be pro-life must promote a litany of government-funded social projects, supporting individuals who are born from conception to death. Apparently, pro-lifers must support increased funding for government childhood indoctrination centers, free government healthcare, and pledge themselves to Marxist organizations like Black Lives Matter; in order to be considered truly pro-life.

“We have waited for you to use your influence to lobby Congress for better school funding, access to quality health care, and food security. We have waited for you to denounce the alt-right racism that made a playboy a president. We have waited for you to declare that our lives matter.”

Social Gospel Pushes Aside the True Gospel

Asserting that white evangelicals who point out the gun violence of Chicago know nothing about the “hard work of pastors and religious leaders on the ground” in Chicago, Dates lists several organizations and individuals that work to decrease violence through Social Gospel work. Among these individuals is James Meeks, the executive vice president of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Push Coalition.

“If you talk about Chicago, talk about James Meeks and the Salem Baptist Church of Chicago, which decreased violence by voting their neighborhood dry for two decades.”

James Meeks’ strategy to end alcoholism in his community mirrors Charlie Dates’ strategy to end gun violence. Meeks focuses on the evils of those who supply alcohol to alcoholics, and Dates’ focuses on the so-called evils of gun store owners in states that surround Illinois. All of these strategies push aside the true Gospel of Jesus, as anti-gun Social Gospel advocates seek to build an ecumenical coalition of churches to push their social agenda. In advocating for Meeks as a pro-life success story, Dates promotes an individual who serves as an executive for Rainbow Push Coalition, an organization that promotes race-baiting, abortion rights, big government globalist agenda items, and a false social Gospel narrative.

Perhaps Chicago is not the only thing that should be left out of people’s mouths.