Why Christians Shouldn’t Be Pacifists

Why Christ Commands His Followers to be Pacifists

God says "Thou shalt not kill." 

Phillips says Christians must not not kill.

Jesus says "Love your enemies."

Phillips says, Kill your enemies.

Jesus says "He who lives by the sword will die by the sword." (Matthew 26:52)

Phillips says He who will not kill with a sword will be killed by a sword.

God says we must beat our swords into plowshares.

Phillips says we must beat our plowshares into swords.

Jesus says "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends" (John 15:13).

Phillips says we must make the bad guy lay down his life for us.

Everyone in the world (that is, everyone regardless of their own religious commitments, if they know anything about Christianity at all) "knows" that Jesus was an impractical hippie peacenik, whose commands are "spiritual" but utterly unrealistic for "the real world." And it would be suicide for governments, armies and navies, police, and ordinary people facing threats to their lives or property, to take Jesus literally and follow His pacifistic commands. Governments and the military must be "secular." Let Christians be pacifists in their spare time.

We all "know" this.

Phillips wants to create a new kind of "Christian." One that doesn't take Christ literally.

When commenting about this post on Facebook after the Paris tragedy, I observed “I am never going to be a fighter. I want my boys to learn self-defense, but I have little interest in personally learning to fight. Moreover, I am scared of guns and chain saws. But I am not a pacifist because I admire and support the warriors who are fighting against ISIS to keep the rest of us safe. And I pray for their victory.”)

The CIA once estimated that there are about 30,000 members of ISIS. The FBI says that's the number of separate gangs in the U.S. -- with a total gang membership of over 1,000,000 (one Million). More gang-related deaths on any weekend than total ISIS deaths in the U.S. since ISIS was formed. ISIS  is a deliberate distraction by the mainstream media. They want you to keep focused on events in the middle east, and don't want you to figure out that "the government" doesn't keep you safe here in America. And by claiming that the U.S. is against ISIS, the mainstream media allows you to forget that ISIS was created by U.S. actions.

Communism (referring back to "the Cold War") and Islamic Jihadism ("The War on Terror") are both false religions. The antidote to all false religions is the Gospel, not the sword. 

Imagine if America invested one TRILLION dollars in missionary efforts to ISIS. Brave, courageous, faithful, spiritually mature, well-catechized, unarmed missionaries. Armed with capital to dig wells, build schools, staff hospitals, put books on capitalism and Christianity on the shelves of libraries. One TRILLION dollars. Every year.

Imagine if the entire annual defense budget had been allocated to missionary efforts year after year since 1953, when the CIA overthrew the democratically-elected government of Iran, putting in place a dictatorship which was eventually overthrown by Islamic radicals in 1979, swinging the pendulum to extreme Jihadism aligned with Marxism against "the Great Satan" of Christianity and capitalism.

Imagine all that capital and all that Christianity pumped into the Middle East -- instead of into the coffers of Boeing and General Dynamics, and instead of blowing up schools and hospitals and killing and maiming and making homeless hundreds of thousands of Christians. Imagine the impact.

Arabs who were alive when the U.S. overthrew the government of Iran in 1953 would today have many Christian grandchildren or great-grandchildren.

To every school and every hospital built by American Christian/capitalist missionaries, tie a gift card that says "With love from Jesus followers in capitalist America. What has Mohammed done for you lately?"

The entire Middle East could be Christian by now.

No, I'm just an unrealistic, utopian pacifist. 

In this post I wish to explain my thoughts on why Christians shouldn’t be pacifists. I might be wrong, and welcome feedback, but this post represents my thinking at the moment.

On the outset I need to make clear that the rejection of pacifism does not equate to a rejection of principled non-violence in certain situations. Christians should be willing to practice non-violence in some situations, such as when facing martyrdom, while also being willing to engage in acts of homicide in other situations, such as when defending innocent life.

Homicide is never necessary to defend innocent life. Set your phaser to "stun."

I discussed this distinction in my Colson Center article ‘Guns and Killing (3)‘, where I used the example of vegetarians. While a hundred meals of vegetables won’t turn you into a vegetarian, it only takes one hamburger to end your existence as a vegetarian. In the same way, advocating non-violence in most situations won’t turn you into a pacifist, but advocating violence in even one situation will spell the end of your existence as a pacifist. To quote from my article:

“I am not a pacifist. But that doesn’t mean I am against non-violent solutions to problems. Just as a person need not be a vegetarian to recognize that it is sometimes preferable to abstain from meat, so a person does not need to be a pacifist to recognize that sometimes non-violence is the preferable option. This is because there is a difference between pacifism as an ideology and strategic non-violence.

In the early church, non-violence was widely practiced. Martyrs like Saint Ignatius, Saint Justin Martyr and many others looked upon it as an honor to die for Christ and they even turned down opportunities to escape or defend themselves. However, the early church never crystalized the practice of non-violence into a rigid ideology. If they had, then we would expect to see men like Saint John the Baptist and Saint Paul telling Roman soldiers to forsake the army. Instead, these teachers instructed soldiers to serve God within the army.

In American society, the opportunities to testify for Christ through non-violence will obviously be less than in the early church. This is because our society expects citizens to help keep our communities safe, and everyone has a statutory duty to intervene if they see injustice in order to help protect law and order. While this is a blessing, it can make it easy to overlook the fact that sometimes the most powerful way to submit to Christ is to endure violence without resistance. At the heart of our faith stands the cross, where Jesus Himself willingly surrendered to his attackers instead of engaged in acts of self-defense.

As I talk to different Christians within the pro-gun lobby, I find a reluctance to acknowledge the legitimacy of selective non-violence. This perspective was encapsulated by one Christian teacher who wrote on the internet that failure to defend oneself makes a person complicit in his own suicide. By that standard, Jesus Himself was a murderer.”

But if someone wants to kill me because they want my TV or my wife, I should kill that person. Intentionally. Dispatch him off to hell for all eternity, in order to save a few days of my own fleeting life here on earth.

The crime of killing a Christian precisely because he is a Christian, which is really an attack on Christ Himself, is not to be met with lethal resistance, but the lesser crime of robbery or rape deserves a more passionate response???

Paul said slaves are to obey their masters, but all Christians agree that slavery should have been abolished. John told the soldiers, "Do violence to no man" (Luke 3:14). If he had told the soldiers to go AWOL, they would have been put to death when caught. A Christian nation ought to abolish its armies. Those who volunteered should repent and get a real job. Those who do not should be excommunicated.

So it’s a balance: sometimes you need to not defend yourself (like Jesus), and sometimes you need to fight. Pacifists, of course, deny the later, arguing that you should never fight. When interacting with people who hold this position, I often respond something like this. “Come on! The safety of our middle-class homes (which are only safe because of being protected by an armed police force) in a comparatively safe nation (which is only safe because it is guarded by the armed forces), gives you the luxury to sit around and talk about the ideology of pacifism. You’re happy to reap benefits that only arise because of those who are prepared to kill to keep you and your family safe! In this regard, the modern pacifist resembles 18th century British abolitionists who were happy to purchase sugar from slave plantations. If you really wish to be consistent, then why aren’t you calling for the disarming of prison guards? Why don’t you advocate the retreat of our defensive armed forces, thus enabling our enemies to invade our land unopposed?”

But pacifists are unrealistic.

Nowhere in the Bible does God command the building and maintenance of prisons.

Yes, I advocate the abolition of our "defensive armed forces, thus enabling our enemies to invade our land unopposed." Name one "enemy" who is going to invade the U.S.? Is North Korea going to allow any North Korean soldier to see a Walmart store in person? Would any North Korean soldier, upon seeing capitalism in real life for the first time, not defect if sent to invade the U.S.?

Because Jesus teaches pacifism, the ideology of anti-pacifism is riddled with self-contradiction and (ultimately) lunacy.

If saying that isn’t sufficient to persuade the pacifist, 

Because Jesus is the Christ, and the world has been civilized by His reign.

It is precisely because of the detached nature of modern pacifism, that it is helpful to make things practical by posing the classic hypothetical question that everyone asks pacifists: “So what should you do if… ” (followed by various scenarios in which a villain initiates a situation where your only choice is to kill in self-defense or else watch your loved ones die).

The Pacifist will usually refuse to answer questions like this on the grounds that hypothetical scenarios are artificially restrictive. Two things must be said in response to this. First, if pacifism really is the Biblical option, then why this hesitation about the thought experiment? I mean, if God really calls us to be pacifists, then why not exuberantly declare “While I don’t know what I would do, it’s clear that what I should do is to let the villain torture my family rather than for me to kill him.” Secondly, in most of human history, and in many parts of the world still, this type of scenario is not merely a hypothetical thought experiment, but a reality that many people have to be ready to face all the time. Again, it is only because of the ease and comfort of our life (made possible by armed personnel) that the modern pacifist has the luxury of declaring that this thought experiment is merely hypothetical and therefore not relevant to his actual life.

The Bible says, "If a man's ways please the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him" (Proverbs 16:7).  Spending a trillion dollars a year on "armed personnel" is not a way that pleases the Lord. Spending a trillion dollars a year on "armed personnel" does not create peace.

So next time you find yourself starting to be persuaded by pacifist arguments, stop and ask yourself the following questions:

I’d like to close with some reflections from Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, from his book Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives:

“Now a certain Cyril was part of this delegation. His answer to the Saracens was: ‘If, in a certain law, there are two commandments that must be fulfilled, which man shall be more righteous, he who fulfills both commandments or he who fulfills only one of them?’ The Saracens answered, ‘He that fulfills both, of course.’ Then Cyril said, ‘As individuals we forgive our enemies, but as a community we lay down our lives for one another. For the Lord has said that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s neighbor. As a community we protect one another and lay down our lives for one another. Not only is your aim to enslave us physically, you also aspire to enslave us spiritually. It is for this reason that we defend ourselves. This, therefore, is justified.

“Then there is also the example of St. Ioannicius the Great. He was a soldier for twenty years. He was amazing — whenever he fought a battle, he won. He had never been defeated. He never gave a thought to his own life but laid down his own for others. And the Lord preserved him. Later, when he became a monk, he was a great saint and wonder-worker. There are many such holy warriors.”

The real meaning of Jesus' words is simple: it is better to be killed than to kill. Being a martyr is better than committing homicide.

Of course, we are to avoid the violence of martyrdom. We want to see our martyrer come to his senses and not martyr us. We use some of the techniques described in Yoder's book above. Those techniques show that pacifists are not passivists. We actively work and pray to prevent evil, but we do not engage in active evil.

Further Reading

• ‘Guns and Killing (1)’
• ‘Guns and Killing (2)‘
• ‘Guns and Killing (3)‘

• Theonomic Pacifism
• Would Jesus Celebrate Memorial Day?
• PeacemakerCoaching