“but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,”
1 Peter 3:15 ESV
The very minute I say that the way to eradicate violence, in all its nefarious and grotesque forms, is by the repentance of sin, it’s quite likely that the non-Christian will recoil with horror. Why? Well, quite understandably, due to the philosophical bias inculcated into our culture and education, they’d see this assertion as a form of intolerance. Blanket statements such as Jesus is Lord, we’re led to believe, are a form of fundamentalism and fundamentalism is a form of intolerance, perhaps one of the most virulent, and intolerance is what leads to oppression and violence. Got that? That’s the ubiquitous logic of the day, the philosophical soil we’ve all been raised in.
That is, as we say, par for the course and the philosophical operating system running in the background of modern America’s ethical evaluations. Thus, it’s quite necessary to address the obvious elephant in the room – both for the sake of the Christian and non-Christian. Quite frankly, unless this issue is addressed we’ll never make any progress. We’ll always be talking right past each other as it were. More still, to be wrong about this subject, as I believe non-Christians certainly are, is to flirt with the very thing we all know is abhorrent – violence and oppression.
My primary point is that oppression and violence against the innocent is and always will be evil. The premises of Christianity support this and, when followed consistently, lead to the wonderful treasure called liberty. No other worldview/philosophy provides the necessary foundations for what we all know to be true. What’s that exactly? Well, put simply, that no one has a right, personally or by proxy, to punch you in the nose, stab you, shoot you, hit you with a club, nor threaten you with any of the aforementioned in order to get their way. Everyone knows, because God has created us in His own image and, consequently, written His moral law on everyone’s heart, that each person should be safe from the initiation of force (or fraud that accomplishes the same end) by others.
The goal of this work is to explain how biblical Christianity alone provides the necessary metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical grounds for this plain fact of life without contradiction or, importantly, need to borrow from other any other worldview. Other approaches, truth be told, can’t be consistent. They have to borrow from the Christian philosophy in order to avoid the unpleasant consequences of their false ideology. Violence is the easiest way to point this out.
If we were to line up the worldviews along a wall and have them present their case as to why we shouldn’t shoot each other to prove a point, or why a point should be argued at all, including and especially this one, only Christianity is logical. All the others will present their argumentation either by assuming a large part of the Christian story and by necessary question begging. In other words, they just assume, with no foundation, that superior physical power doesn’t grant truth.
When the kid in elementary school has a science project that everyone knows his parents “helped” with, it’s all rather cute and innocuous. But when an atheist clamors about moral rights, he’s getting his Creator’s help all while denying Him. That’s not cute. It’s sin. So, yes, it’s considered improper these days to call such nonsense to account but call it we must for the same reason that we tell our child that, no, they aren’t really the Batman and can’t play in the street.
Two things first.
To start, it’s been my experience, both as a martial artist and Bible study leader, that the vast majority of Christians (and I say this with both pain and love) are unaware of the systematic implications of Scripture. Indeed, many of the un-argued philosophical biases of the unbelieving world have crept in and taken root within the church. The premises of secular humanism are so deeply embedded that they’re never challenged – even and especially amongst the professing followers of Jesus Christ. This leaves even the so-called Christian operating on principles of ethics and social order derived not from Scripture, but from, in the main these days, secular humanism. To this I say that political freedom is a Christian virtue, a product of proper and logical Christian theology only, and a rational corollary of the fact the Jesus Christ is Lord and all men sinners. Only in this context can the concept of political and personal liberty make sense.
Second, the non-believer, as we’ve pointed out, is operating along the lines of an un-argued philosophical bias. This is something that we’ve been trained not to look at in our personal evaluations. My goal is to point out exactly what I mean by Christian premises over against those of other systems of thought. If our goal is peace and security we must take ideas seriously because premises lead invariably to actions and policies. If our premises are flawed – and left that way due to un-examination – our actions and policies will be as well. More than that, flawed premises will lead to violence and oppression in literally every case. With all due respect for Socrates (and he was outstanding in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, by the way), an unexamined life is one that’s going to lead, inevitably, to conflict.
Picking up on the main thrust of Socrates’ concern, we note that people have a weird tendency to accept ideas that are, ultimately, counter to their felicity. This is explained by Scripture in that the heart of man is deceived by the false premise he starts from (Psalm 14:1; Romans 1:18-21), which is that there’s no God. Proverbs 14:12 states:
“There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way death.”
In other words, start with a bad premise and we run into trouble. Start with the premise that this isn’t God’s world, created by Him, ordered by Him, and for His glory, and that we’re not, in fact, image-bearers of Him, and we have no way to make sense of life’s most urgent issue. Why shouldn’t we abuse and kill each other if we’re only advanced animals and there’s no personally ultimate Judge?
Think about it. If we’re merely lucky germs existing in an ultimately meaningless universe, the battle for truth and life is but a fool’s errand. One man that kills another is no more guilty of a crime than a child that steps on a bug. To counter with expediency (by arguing that cooperation is better than slavery and violence), even if that were true, is begging the question. Expediency is not ethical law. We’re talking about something much deeper than a mere physical law. A man that drives past his exit on the highway and has to double back isn’t guilty of immorality. He’s simply going to be late. As we’ll point out repeatedly (because we absolutely need to be reminded) if there’s no ultimate and personal ethical authority at the bottom of life, then self-defense makes no sense.
But back to the issue of intolerance and how it interacts with oppression and violence.
Am I being intolerant by asserting that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life? Well, that depends upon what we mean by the term, doesn’t it? It’s rather self-evident that all truth claims are exclusive, which is true even of the claim that to say what I said is intolerant in the first place. Truth claims must be exclusive by their nature or else they’re gibberish. The issue of intolerance, however, is another deal altogether.
The unspoken and un-argued bias is that my position will lead to the oppression (a form of violence, be sure) of those that disagree. But the truth claims of Christianity are a package-deal. The Lordship of Jesus Christ has clear implications that actually bless everyone – believers and unbelievers alike. The philosophy of Scripture is the gospel of God, which is that all men are sinners and need to repent of their rebellion against Him. That rebellion is, at root, the insistence upon being a little god for oneself, the ultimate judge of right and wrong. The gospel is ordered by God to be preached by His church. His church is to go out and make disciples (the Great Commission in Matthew 28). How is this to be done? With clubs, swords, and guns? Heavens, no! But by reason. To evangelize is to make a reasoned case to other logical image-bearers of God, which they are free to accept or reject.
The church is a specific entity established by God. One of the things it does is train up His disciples so that they’re equipped to bring the gospel philosophy to the world. We see this in the book of Acts over and over again as the inchoate church reasons and debates with everyone, everywhere they can. Jews, Greeks, slaves and free, men and women. All. Every image-bearer of God, fallen from fellowship with Him, can be restored to that high place by rejecting their life of self-reliance and pride and turning to Him in faith.
None of this can ever be done by force or government decree.
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