A Matter of Trust
Paul GoodellI’ve lived long enough to have learned
The closer you get to the fire the more you get burned
But that won’t happen to us
‘Cause it’s always been a matter of trust
– Billy Joel, “A Matter of Trust”
About a year ago, I and some fellow English teachers were at the local foreigner bar (appropriately named The Western), having one of those in-depth discussions best accompanied by alcohol. Eventually, the subject of the US Second Amendment came up. My two companions (who were from England and Australia) found the concept of an individual right to own firearms disconcerting and unjustified. They argued for total personal firearm bans, saying that since guns are dangerous having more of them in circulation can only lead to more people getting hurt. Besides, they argued, the police are the ones who should have guns, not citizens. I argued that the Second Amendment was the ultimate safeguard for liberty — that citizens’ ability to defend themselves is the only real check on any government, should it ever devolve into tyranny.
My friends said that I was paranoid, and that my opinions were a recipe for vigilante chaos. I replied that they were ignorant of history and human nature. After a few more minutes, we decided to move the discussion to a less controversial topic. (I think we started talking about religion.) My friends and I never finished that discussion — they finished their contracts and left South Korea not long after that — but if we had, I’d have told them that I saw a third, and more basic, problem with their position. My friends’ basic problem was one of trust — trust in the basic incorruptibility of their protectors. As a student of history, this was something that I truly couldn’t understand.
To wit: no government has ever demonstrated a willingness to limit its own power, or shown that it could be given unchecked authority without becoming corrupted. (This, as Justice Scalia once ironically observed, is why Lord Acton didn’t say that “power tends to purify.”) Given this 100% failure rate (to my knowledge, the only exceptions to this failure are Cincinnatus and George Washington), I find it hard to comprehend why anyone would ever willingly give any government complete power over themselves. That, after all, is what personal firearm bans do: they put unarmed citizens completely at the mercy of an armed state. Such an act suggests a willful ignorance of history as well as a complete denial of worst-case scenarios.
To use a different example, my English friend from the above conversation once told me that the overwhelming number of public security cameras in Britain made her feel safe, not uncomfortable. Part of the reason for her feelings of safety, no doubt, was her basic comfort with the ruling Labour Party. If, for instance, someone like Dick Cheney or John Ashcroft was in charge of the surveillance program, I doubt she’d be so comfortable with it. Once such a system is in place, however, it’s unlikely that any government would willingly dismantle it. (This contention is at the heart of much of the opposition to The Patriot Act.) So, given that my friend likes the surveillance system, if she doesn’t want a Cheney- or Ashcroft-type in charge of it, she’s effectively saying that she believes that no Dick Cheney-type will ever come to power in Britain. Otherwise, why advocate a universal surveillance program under which she only feels comfortable when politically Liberal politicians run it?
It’s the same kind of thing with people who advocate private firearm bans. Samuel Johnson once quipped that a second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience. A study of history seems to suggest, however, that firearm bans are as well. They are essentially an act of faith. Their proponents believe, contrary to the examples of almost every government in history, that their governments will never “go bad;” will never use their power to illegitimately impose their ideals on people who don’t agree with them and don’t want them; will never oppress nonconforming citizens whom they consider a threat. They believe it so strongly, in fact, that they are willing to render themselves defenseless forever. It’s hard to imagine a government giving its citizens back their right to defend themselves after they’ve taken it away, after all. For evidence of this, look no further than Britain — where firearms are effectively banned (except in a few very limited situations), and self-defense itself has essentially been outlawed.
The point we must remember is that people are far from perfect: they are flawed, sinful creatures. Since governments are made of people, though, it follows that they must also always be flawed. And flawed governments made up of the power-hungry and utopians seeking to remake society to fit their own ideals don’t seem like the types of institutions most likely to have most citizens’ real interests at heart, or be concerned about their liberty or actual well-being. The right to bear arms is a basic recognition of this fact. Personal firearm bans represent a basic rejection of it. We’ve heard much over the past seven years about opposition to “faith-based” policies. If we’re at all serious about observing human nature and learning from history, personal firearm bans seem to be another faith-based policy that we can do without.
May 3rd, 2008 at 11:15 am
Excellent, excellent observation. And mind-boggling faith in the government is only the first step of trust a person takes when they advocate a gun ban. They are also taking a leap of faith (with life and death literally on the line) that:
1) They will always be able to call the police, and the police will always come, on time, whenver bad people or wild beasts try to harm them. (Forgetting, of course, the tens of thousands of incidents every year where the police cannot be called, or, when called, do not come on time–or the Supreme COurt’s clear statement of law that the police have no duty to prevent crime or to protect from its occurence, only to investigate and capture the perpetrators after the fact).
2) That said police will always be constituted in a functional, effective unit, able to respond (Forgetting, of course, that in the Chicago riots, the LA riots, the Harlem riots, and after Hurrican Katrina, the police broke down, refused to enter the zone of conflict, and sometimes joined in the unlawfulness).
3) That the world economy will always hum along merrily, and that the flow of available and affordable food and other essentials will never be interrupted (forgetting about 10 millenia of human experience to the contrary, and the more recent clear demonstrations, like Katrina, of what happens to supplies of essentials when there is even a minor blip in the local infrastructure).
4) Most disturbing of all, and most relevant of all, people who advocate a gun ban have the unshakeable belief that governments are ultimately, uniquely, and solely responsible for the most fundamental aspects of a person’s life–the responsibility to remain alive. A gun ban is a clear declaration that a person has no right to kill to defend themself; no right to hunt to feed themself–in other words, no right to exist outside of the all-encompassing embrace of the State.
May 3rd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I agree with everything written, but also wish to point out that the platform of your argument is one of self-defense. Important to recognize though as you mention the concept of sin in your analysis as well as faith-based policies. The Christian stance must be one of self-sacrifice for the sake of others
May 3rd, 2008 at 12:11 pm
…and it raises the interesting issue of whether to legislate on beliefs, or to reduce legislation to the most common secular views.
May 3rd, 2008 at 12:16 pm
If you walk into your child’s room at night and a masked stranger is standing over her bed with a raised weapon, it’s reasonable to assume the question isn’t whether anyone is going to die, but whom.
When it’s your own life on the line, the concept of dying rather than killing your assailant makes sense. It’s a rational–although, I think, mistaken–interpretation of scripture. But when the life on the line is a third party, the sacrificial model doesn’t work out as nicely. Is it really more moral to sacrifice your daughter (and likely yourself) to a murderer, leaving him free to murder further? Or is it more Christian to sacrifice the murderer for the sake of your daughter, who will likely not commit murders at any point in her life?
I think the clear moral duty is to defend your daughter. Christ said “turn the other cheek,” but he did not say “stand idle while your loved ones are murdered in front of you.”
The concept of self defense and defense of others are represented and accepted throughout scripture. Christ himself did not force is disciples to give up the swords they acquired. When Peter struck at those who came to arrest Christ in the Garden of Gesthamane, Christ did not reprimand Peter for using violence. He reprimanded Peter for trying to stop the events Christ himself knew had to occur.
May 3rd, 2008 at 1:48 pm
As with the other antithetical teachings, it seems there are acceptable ways of doing things, and then there are better ways. I respond to your statement in two parts:
1. The model of Christ who knowingly condemned his disciples to death by choosing them for the sake of others who might learn through their teachings.
2. The concept that the daughter is in fact a part of the father and that it is certainly a selfish action in part to save the daughter without regard to what the killer might gain by not personally intervening.
One assumption of your last statement seems to be that death is evil, and it is therefore fair to perform actions otherwise detestable in God’s sight to avoid death. While death is certainly painful, I propose that Truth is more along the lines of my second statement, and that greater good can come out of the situation by leaving it in God’s hands entirely than attempted rectification by, as Paul pointed out, flawed beings. Flawed in judgment often, and usually short-sighted.
Now, were I in that position, I imagine I would shoot the attacker without hesitation, but that does not mean it is the best thing to have done for his sake, for my sake, or for my daughter’s.
May 3rd, 2008 at 2:41 pm
As far as the question of Jesus’s pacifism, and our being martyred, I might have an interesting take on it: suppose that pacifism were the only lawful and christian way to respond to martyrdom. This would make christian martyrdom mechanical & obvious, not free & beautiful. It seems to be the beauty & freedom of martyrdom lies precisely in the lawfulness of self-defense, the fact that both options are open. Most cases of self-defense don’t come near this (sacrificing your life for for faith) but when they do, I think both options are lawful/ethical. Perhaps St. Paul would say… one is better, another is best.
As far as self-defense, when the question of faith is not involved in the situation, (as can be judged from aggressors motives) I think there are situations in which to not act would be unethical. Because pacifism in those situations is putting a distant potential hope (of the aggressor’s benefit) above an immanent need to protect human life. I suppose I’m assuming a universe so-organized such that God doesn’t allow salvation of souls to depend on contingencies & competing intentions.
“I answer that, Nothing hinders one act from having two effects, only one of which is intended, while the other is beside the intention. Now moral acts take their species according to what is intended, and not according to what is beside the intention, since this is accidental … Accordingly the act of self-defense may have two effects, one is the saving of one’s life, the other is the slaying of the aggressor. Therefore this act, since one’s intention is to save one’s own life, is not unlawful, seeing that it is natural to everything to keep itself in “being,” as far as possible.” –Summa II-II Q64 Article 7: ‘Whether it is lawful to kill a man in self-defense?’
May 4th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
There seems to be little difference between using deadly force to save your daughter from an attacker, and intervening to save your daughter from starvation. After all, if God is going to save your daughter regardless of your intervention, why intervene at all? As Christians, we have a duty to protect the weak and innocent from the strong and tyrannical. It’s a duty that God’s given us. We can wait for Him to do it for us. Thats’ always a possibility. But then, it’s a possibility with everything in life. If you ask me to pass you the salt at the dinner table, I could legitimately say that there was no reason to, because God has the power to pass you the salt without my intervention. God has given us the power to act; it’s not wrong to use that power to accomplish legitimate, moral ends.
Of course, this is all tangential to the issue at hand — the right to self-defense via firearms. Looking at Britain, for example, the state is continually assuming the place of God in society, for purposes of self-defense. It is now illegal to defend yourself or other people in England with violent or deadly force, BECAUSE IT IS THE STATE’S RESPONSIBILITY. Everything we’ve discussed about God in this post — that He is always available to help, that we must have faith in Him and His power, etc. — is being applied to the state in England, and enforced through the law. This is, of course, the logical outcome of any kind of firearm ban. (Although firearms are technically not banned in Britain, since people can still use them to hunt in very limited situations, but not in any remotely practical or important situation like self-defense.) The state becomes God and we must believe in the state, have faith in the state, trust the state with our lives.
May 5th, 2008 at 10:22 am
It is always misleading to label something as “playing God” or “becoming God”, as you put it. We have to trust the state and have some faith in the state regardless of whether we have guns as aback-up plan or not. And I agree that a firearm ban would be less than ideal for the reasons outlined above. Though it is also my contention that Christians could hold themselves to a higher standard. Whether this standard is a myth or not we might discuss, but I understand that was not the point of your essay.
And there is a considerable difference between killing in self-defense and feeding your kids: one is specifically prohibited (with one or two contentious exceptions, the other is not. Perhaps if you could discuss this “duty to protect the weak and innocent from the strong and tyrannical” a little further, we could decide whether an otherwise unacceptable act is justified by this command.
May 5th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Benjamin,
The underlying assumption of your argument is that taking life is always morally bad, with possible limited exceptions. I don’t think scripture backs you up on that. Biblical history and the specifics of scripture (e.g., “thou shalt not murder–not thou shalt not kill) suggest that the morality of taking life may always be context-specific. That is, taking human life is, in a vacuum, morally neutral. Because we never act in a vacuum, however, the act always becomes moral or immoral in the specific context in which it was committed.
All that to say, you want to argue that self-defense advocates have the burden to prove that the concept is morally permissible. You don’t, however, have any basis for claiming a presumption in your favor.
More to the point of Paul’s essay, God has entrusted us with inalienable, non-delegable responsibilities. Among them are keeping ourselves and our families alive. If taking life from an aggressor–who has given up his moral right to remain living at commission of the aggressive act–is necessary to preserving the life with which God entrusted us, we err morally if we refuse the burden of stewardship.
We also err morally if we delegate that burden of stewardship to a corrupt and untrustworthy government. That is what a firearms ban accomplishes.
May 5th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Where does you definition for murder originate? Are you imposing the distinction between killing and murdering on scripture? From what context can you determine that the command to not murder does not also encompass the act of self-defense, in the way the language was originally written and intended?
And I ask again, it is fine to say that we have been entrusted with some responsibility, but where does this charge come from? If we examine it together, perhaps we can determine whether your interpretation is fair.
May 5th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
I completely agree with the essay. I also think the European attitude of incomprehension w/r/t gun rights is disingeneous. Who, with a burglar heading toward their children’s room, wouldn’t want something more effective to defend those children than a telephone and a ten minute response time? A person who threatens your safety could very well be impervious to pain. They are almost guaranteed to have been hit in the past by people meaner and probably better at it than you. Guns are the most effective means of defending your own life, and anyone - even a dedicated nanny-state trust-the-government type - who has truly examined the issue ought to recognize that fact, whether it outweights their other concerns about guns or not.
I am ambivalent about the scriptural support for taking a life in self defense. On the one hand, Jesus drove the money changers out of the temple. In that instance, he used violence (although not lethal violence) to defend his Father’s house. On the other hand, there’s Luke 14:26-35 “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace. So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be seasoned? It is neither fit for the land, nor yet for the dunghill; but men cast it out. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”
Frustratingly, this extremely challenging bit of scripture is not explained, the way so many other parables are. Perhaps (one can hope) it applies only to disciples, as in the 12 disciples, as in those who devote their entire lives to God, even when that means leaving their families (as the disciples did, and in the days before sending money back home was practical or even feasible, no less).
Leaving aside the issue of whether this passage has limited application, however, there is the question of what it means. After much reflection and prayer (and consideration in the context of the rest of the New Testament), I think that it means that unless you are willing to follow God *even at the expense of yourself and your family,* then there’s no point in even starting the path to become a disciple, because like the tower-builder, or the warring king, you haven’t got the resources to finish. And what good does your love for your family do you, if you have rejected God, the source of all love (i.e., your love would be futile, like flavorless salt). (This passage also makes sense in conjunction with “whosoever seeks to save his life will lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, shall save it” which is in all four of the gospels. People are mortal. If you are called to be a disciple, you have to be ready to let go of your earthly attachments, in order to retain them.) I don’t doubt that someone who is called to be a disciple must put God before their family, even when the interests of their calling and their family conflict.
My point is, I think there’s strong scriptural support for the argument that self-defense is not a justification for killing. Seeking to save your life at the cost of another life is ultimately futile. There is also some scriptural support for the argument that even lethal defense of your own family is not something a disciple (however you define that) would engage in.
Don’t get me wrong - I would shoot someone in the defense of my family. I recognize that shooting someone until they stop moving may indeed kill them, and I’d still do it. (I think I would, at any rate - blessedly, I’ve never been in that position.) I also think that, politically, private gun ownership is the ONLY guaranteed defense again tyranny. (There’s a reason Hitler and Stalin and Mao were all so dedicated to eliminating it.) I support the right of anyone (who can prove they understand the concept “don’t point the gun at anything you aren’t willing to shoot” anyway) to own guns. I’m just not sure that it’s morally right for a Christian to kill in self defense. I’m not sure that it’s wrong, either, but I certainly agree with the commenter above who stated that, though self-defense may be good, self-sacrifice would be better.
May 5th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
To engage in the tangential point a bit, I think it’s helpful to look at how the Church dealt with issues of killing in her early years. Church leaders told Christians not to join the military, because of Christ’s general proscriptions against violence. If a man in the military converted to Christianity, however, Church teaching allowed him to remain a member of the military, since that was where God had called him. In scripture, neither Christ nor John the Baptist condemns soldiers for killing. John the Baptist tells soldiers to not use their authority illegitimately or for their own gain, but he never tells them not to kill.
I don’t know about Jeremy’s contention that killing per se is morally neutral, but I do know that killing per se is not condemned in scripture. Fornication is unequivocally condemned in scripture, for instance. There’s never an example of God telling people to fornicate, nor is there ever an example of fornication that God doesn’t condemn. Killing, however, is different. God tells Israel to commit genocide in the book of Joshua. He blesses David as a great warrior (although, to be fair, He also doesn’t allow David to build His temple because he’s a “man of blood” not a man of peace). He blesses the Maccabees who fought against the invading and oppressive Seleucid kings. He blesses the Judges, who fought against numerous invading nations. There are countless examples in scripture where killing is not only not condemned, it’s divinely ordained. There are also many other examples of killing that God condemns (such as David’s murder of Uriah). These opposite examples, however, strongly suggest that killing is not always wrong.
It seems that, unlike fornication, killing is only wrong when done for the wrong reasons. Now, it may be the the right reasons are few, and so killing may often be wrong. But I can’t see how, absent ignorance of Church teaching and tradition and a selective reading of scripture, someone can conclude that killing is necessarily wrong.
May 6th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I have also read these passages of divinely ordained killing and I agree this is a convincing argument that killing is not always wrong. I do not see anyone here trying to make an argument that killing is always wrong.
My question is whether it is possible that killing is more like divorce: acceptable, but there is a better way. Your arguements in defense of killing do nothing to support the idea that it is the best or most Godly resolution to any conflict in the present day and age.
May 6th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
That’s a good discussion to have, but it’s not the one the essay invites us to have. The question on the table is whether the people ought to retain any capability for violence, or whether all capacities for harm should be within the control of the state. I agree with your original idea that the moral question is not entirely separable from the policy question. Now that we’ve agreed that self-defense killing is morally permissible (reserving for future discussion whether it is ever morally laudable), the question returns to whether, in a free society, it is better for the government or individuals to control defensive weapons.
May 8th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Instances in which the aggressor’s orientation towards your faith, or the aggressor’s action as it is represented publicly, directly pertain to some rejection of your faith or creed–in these instances, there is an element of martyrdom: death potentially occurs due to specifically religious motives. In these instances, morally and not necessarily civilly, complete pacificism may be thought of as superior to self-defense.
Now as to whether surrogate-martyrdom (of kids) is ever an acceptable (morally, theologically) form of martyrdom, my hunch is that it sometimes is, but not everytime.
I think that there are situations, aggression both applicable to martyrdom, and aggression which is not, in which we are morally required to protect our children or other defenseless beings out of self-defense. (The ‘better, best’ argument, as I stated it earlier, really only applies to martyrdom-situations.) In these situations of which I now speak, I believe that God will hold us accountable for whether we protected the innocent and defenseless threatened around us. I suppose my only point-of-reference is my own heart, in which not defending others could be construed as cowardice, and would inevitably promote cowardice, in my heart. I don’t think ‘I loved the aggressor’ would be an acceptable answer before God.
May 9th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Well Benji, strictly speaking, the analogy of divorce puts does nothing to clear up the “should I or shouldn’t I” question, since Christ himself straight out says that divorce is only ever permissible in one situation. (The unconscionable acceptance of divorce by many Christians contra Jesus’ own words on marriage is a topic for another day, however.)
Given that defense of self and of those within your circle of care is legitimate, the question at hand, as Jeremy reiterated, is whether the state has the right to effectively eliminate people’s ability to affect such defense. More importantly, given what we know about human nature should anyone ever trust a state to be able to do such a thing?