Is it Christian to support the 2nd amendment?

Ask the Pastor with J.D. Greear

J.D. Greear

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 630 Ratings

🗓️ 28 December 2020

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Pastor J.D. discusses the purpose of the Second Amendment and a Christian perspective of self-defense.

A glimpse inside this episode:

Is self-defense ok for the Christian?

Yes (Biblical evidence: Old Testament law; Jesus letting disciples have swords.)
What about turning the other cheek?

In Romans 12, God tells the Christian to not ever seek vengeance, but to leave it to God. And then as an application of that, he says that God has given governments the responsibility of earthly justice in his name. So, if that government gives a part of it back to you, is it ok to defend yourself with lethal violence against an intruder putting your family in harm’s way?

We’ve been talking about the 2nd amendment in terms of self-defense, but the real purpose of the 2nd amendment is a protection against tyranny. Founding Fathers were terrified of a government that could very easily overwhelm the people and force them into submission of a tyrant. Governments will always have superior power, of course, but a well-armed populace will make that much more difficult. And, it was one of their safeguards that made foreign occupation nearly impossible. As Prisoners of Geography noted, if some foreign government (or even are own) tried to take over an area, because of the number of guns in Amercan’s hands, entering every single town and hamlet in the nation would feel like entering Fallujah. Eventually you could prevail, but at what cost? The Founding Fathers wanted any government to have to consider that cost as a safeguard to liberty.

Christians can disagree on this.

Other ways of looking at this?

Jim Elliot example as missionary

Transcript

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0:00.0	LifeWay Leadership Podcast Network.
0:25.0	Hey, everyone. Welcome to Ask Me Anything.
0:28.5	My name is Matt, and I am the host, and I am here with Pastor J.D., and he is the person that we ask anything of.
0:30.6	And J.D., today, we are asking a question about the Second Amendment, all right?
0:36.6	This is the deep end of the
0:38.6	pool jd is it christian love that start is it christian to support the second amendment to whom
0:46.0	do we owe such thanks for this question i don't know i'm not going to i'm going to defer to somebody
0:51.6	else we'll think about who to pin the blame on after we've recorded it. Of the Constitution, the United States, the right to keep and bear arms. Yes.
0:57.5	Okay. At least this one's not politically charged. Yeah, yeah, exactly. This is a calm. No, no one will
1:01.9	well as is customary on Ask Me Anything. I do try to avoid coming out with pastoral
1:09.9	declarations on things that Christians really can disagree on,
1:12.8	because at the end of the day, this is a practical question, not so much an inherently biblical one.
1:19.0	I'll give you some what I like to think of as guardrails for how to process this.
1:24.4	Is self-defense okay for the Christian? Let's just kind of back up a little bit and say,
1:27.8	is self-defense okay for the Christian? Because, you know, let's just suspend that we're not talking
1:32.4	about owning guns as for the purpose of hunting food or something like that or even for target
1:38.0	practice. But is self-defense okay for the Christian? I think that the biblical answer that you
1:42.0	would give to that is yes, that while taking
1:45.4	vengeance upon yourself and taking the responsibility of vengeance is never, never appropriate.
1:50.8	There are evidences in the Bible of trying to protect when somebody is going to harm you.
1:56.8	You know, if somebody is coming in and they are trying to seek your family, I would actually
2:01.5	feel duty bound to do what was necessary to stop them from hurting one of my children.
	...

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