Archive for the 'Religion' Category

I have certain incorrigible views of covenant and sovereignty that have their genesis in my Calvinian theology, and it is always interesting to observe and study how men relate to one another and to God.  But before we get to that, let’s begin with what’s happened in the narco-trafficking world.  This analysis promises to be lengthy and perhaps even tedious, so if you intend to make it through a sweeping panorama of violence, revolution and covenant, get a strong cup of coffee and a hard back chair.

There was a time, the story goes, when if a local collided with a drug trafficker’s car on the streets of Culiacán — a bastion of the infamous Sinaloa cartel — the narco was likely to hop out to check that everything was ok.

“They’d say: ‘If you have any problems call this doctor and I’ll pay,'” says journalist Javier Valdez, who specializes in delving into the entrails of drug trafficking culture in Sinaloa. “Not anymore. Now they’ll get out of the car with a pistol. Not only will they not pay you; they’ll beat you, threaten you, or kill you.”

Such tales of shifting mafia etiquette are part of the legend of the underworld in Sinaloa but, close observers like Valdez say, there is also truth to the idea that the newer generations rising up within the Sinaloa drug trafficking scene are more violent and impulsive. And none more so than the one emerging to take control right now.

Few in Culiacán dispute Chapo’s status as a ruthless and bloodthirsty operator, but many credit his generation of Sinaloa traffickers with ensuring the cartel is still considered less wholeheartedly exploitative and sadistic than some other Mexican groups, such as the Knights Templar or the Zetas. While the point is often overstated, the Sinaloa cartel leadership has traditionally limited the expansion of side-rackets, such as extortion and kidnapping, at least on its home turf.

[ … ]

At other times the cartel has prospered because Chapo and his peers have maintained strong relationships with the impoverished communities where they grew up, Valdez says. The writer also emphasized that such leaders have often shown themselves to be been smart enough to know when to negotiate with enemies, including rival cartels, politicians, state security forces, and even the Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA. This may not be the case, he says, with their more impetuous offspring.

“This generation does not have this sense of belonging, they’re more violent, more dangerous,” Valdez warns. “Their ascendency could put the stability of the cartel at risk.”

Those fears have proven true enough, as the current cadre of Hispanic and Latino crime lords have been known to behead, torture, and engage in inflicting pain and violence merely for the pleasure they see in it with no intended tactical advantage.  I have long said that I don’t believe in the war on drugs, but that without such a misinformed and misdirected campaign the cartels would still exist because they are warlords and shouldn’t be considered “drug” cartels per se.  Just as the Tehrik-e-Taliban engage in extortion, kidnapping, and mining of precious metals and gemstones, the Hispanic and Latino cartels aren’t restricted to drugs.

They have expanded into timber harvesting, and this has caused enough problems in one area of Mexico to catalyze the violent overthrow of the government and cartels altogether.

CHERÁN, MEXICO — Silently in the mountainous deep green of southwestern Mexico’s ancient pine and oak forests, volunteers armed with automatic weapons press forward on patrol.

They aren’t hunting insurgents or drug smugglers, common here in Michoacan state. And they aren’t part of any army. These self-appointed guardabosques — forest guards — are defending the land from illegal clear-cutting by regional organized crime cartels.

In doing so, they illustrate a determination not to succumb to despair in the face of violence — a commitment Pope Francis urged on Mexicans during a visit to Michoacan earlier this month.

Few people interviewed here last year would give their full names out of concern over retaliation. But they were undeterred nonetheless. Jacinto, from a neighboring village, explained what happened: “The trouble began in 2008. That’s when the federal officials came in with the gun registry lists and went house to house. They took our guns away.”

That disarmament effort, to which locals ascribe to nefarious motives, left them with only antiquated single-shot weapons for hunting vermin. These were of little use when the cartel loggers came over the mountain in 2010.

In his cowboy hat and black-and-white plaid shirt, Don Santiago, a 62-year-old wiry, soft-spoken resin farmer of the Purhépecha tribe, said organized criminal syndicates have entered into the large-scale forest destruction business. “We couldn’t go to the police,” he said. “The police were in the pay of the gangsters.”

The main criminal cartels in Michoacán are known as The Michoacán Family, known as La Familia for short, and the Knights Templars, or Templares.

Tension rose as the people of Cherán found their treasured forests being leveled closer to home. Huge, noisy lumber trucks tore through town to haul out the logs, seemingly around the clock. With police and elected officials unwilling to help, a small group of local women, led by a diminutive, five-foot firebrand affectionately known as Doña Chepa, rose up to take their forests back.

“The breaking point came on April 15, 2011,” said David, a big, animated Purhépecha tribesman. “It was Holy Week. The women came to stop the clear-cutters.”

About 15 women piled rocks on the roads as barricades. With the trucks immobilized, the women used rocks and fireworks to chase the cartel raiders away. A church bell clanged an alarm for citizen reinforcements. When the police arrived, the women directed their fireworks on them, pushing them back. “We surrounded all the exits to the town,” David said.

Nothing like this had happened before in Cherán. Energized locals directed their rage at the politicians who had done nothing to stop the deforestation. Armed with their obsolete hunting rifles and shotguns, families converged on the town center. Using one of the abandoned logging trucks as a battering ram, citizens stormed the town administration building and police station and overthrew the local government. The police abandoned their posts — and their weapons.

Mexico’s militarized police, even in small towns, often carry AR-15 assault rifles. Now those weapons were in the hands of the townspeople. “Then we started the rondas,” David said, referring to the armed citizen patrols.

The townspeople created a provisional government and banned political parties so that no candidate for public office would be beholden to outside political forces. They invented an electoral system to eliminate vote-buying and ballot-stuffing. All candidates for public office had to stand in the central square, with their supporters lining up behind them to determine who would win. Gangsters sent agents into the villages to burn cars and homes, and hunt down the guardabosques. In the course of the next three years, 18 of Cherán’s defenders, including Don Santiago’s brother, would be killed, and five more disappeared before the organized crime operations were shut down.

Cherán is a tidy little town that’s closed to outsiders. Heavily armed uniformed guards man checkpoints at every entrance and exit, questioning people whose faces or vehicles they don’t know. Hand-painted graffiti, in neat lettering, tells outsiders what the locals really think: “Leave us alone.”

To save face while recognizing reality, the Mexican government officially accepted Cherán’s new autonomous status. It deputized the checkpoint guards and guardabosques as the de facto authority to protect the forest lands. It issued them uniforms as “community police,” without attempting to take away or even register their newfound automatic weapons.

Federal police in shiny black twin-cab pickup trucks, wearing black tactical gear and armed with M4s and an occasional roll-bar-mounted machine gun, patrol the clean superhighways and the potholed back roads of rural Michoacán. The locals generally welcome the federales, sent in last year by President Enrique Peña Nieto to crush the cartels. The federales don’t interfere with Cherán’s guardabosques, and keep in contact with them by radio.

The checkpoint guards, young men in their late teens or early 20s, wear blue uniforms bearing embroidered seven-point stars and custom-made shoulder patches.

This is truly great investigative reporting, the kind we don’t often see any more.  I applaud the folks in this little corner of the world.  But will it last, and can it expand?

The article concludes with this. “Our whole way of life is in these forests,” said Don Santiago, the soft-spoken tribal elder. Tapping the resin from highland pines is a way of life, and an art, he inherited from ancestors who can be traced back to the Aztec empire. An individual pine tree can be tapped for up to 80 years for resin sold as raw material for industrial and food products.  “The pines have faces,” said Don Santiago, reflecting the mysticism of his people.”

Their way of life is tied up in the forest and protecting it’s health and viability.  But what if instead of cartel violence, they employ another strategy?  What if they get to several of the mothers and tell them, “We’re here to help you.  Here is a million dollars for each of you, take your family across the border, enroll you children in American schools and universities, and live a much better life than you could here?”  Will they break, or are they committed to a world view that can sustain them against the advances of their enemies, come what may?

At WRSA there is a salient question being posed concerning the American constitution and body of constitutional law.  It isn’t worth a duck’s fart, concludes the analysis, because it admits to, among other things, abortion on demand.  True enough, abortion is murder against the innocent, and whether you are a conservative Christian like me, or a committed libertarian (in which case abortion is unjustified aggression against an innocent party), a country that sacrifices its young won’t long last as a viable entity.

I’ll give you the premise of the article, as long as you give me the following stipulations.  The American constitution is the best that man has come up with so far, by a long ways, as long as you consider what John Adams said about it.  “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Implemented by gargoyles, demons and bloodthirsty tyrants, the constitution is like the Book of Church Order for Presbyterians.  It becomes merely a system of protection of those in charge, regardless of what those in charge do.  It can be twisted to say anything you want as long as you see the world through the eyes of evil.  And thus we are back to world and life views.

My own views on this are fairly well known, and I have rehearsed them before.  The views of my teacher, John Calvin, are the very basis of the American war of independence.  Douglas Kelly, my former Systematic Theology Professor (along with C. Gregg Singer), observes the following.

Their experience in Presbyterian polity – with its doctrine of the headship of Christ over the church, the two-powers doctrine giving the church and state equal standing (so that the church’s power is not seen as flowing from the state), and the consequent right of the people to civil resistance in accordance with higher divine law – was a major ingredient in the development of the American approach to church-state relations and the underlying questions of law, authority, order and rights.

[ … ]

It was largely from the congregation polity of these New England puritans that there came the American concept and practice of government by covenant – that is to say: constitutional structure, limited by divine law and based on the consent of the people, with a lasting right in the people to resist tyranny.

When the rulers break covenant, as they did in the case above in Mexico, and as the King did against Americans, revolution is not only just, it is covenantally necessary.  Covenant, to be proper, has two parts: promises and curses, the later applied for breaking covenant.  These beliefs for me are, to use the words of philosopher Alvin Pantinga, incorrigible.  There is never a time when I will not believe these propositions.  Similarly, I don’t care one iota about the second amendment.  As I’ve explained before, my rights are issued by divine decree, not a piece of parchment.

I have come by these beliefs the hard way.  And I am concerned that the bases we claim for our liberties is founded in chaos, anarchy and whatever seems to be popular that particular day.  But these things will not sustain you and your family in difficult times.  Anarchy is the mother of tyranny because you aren’t the baddest person around.  There is always somebody badder than you are.  Into the void will always step a ruler more despotic than the last one.  Ideas that float away with the wind will tire and disappoint you.

The most significant revolutions in the history of Western civilization are the reformation and the American revolution, both of which have their basis in the protestant reformation (and Calvinian theology).  The Brothers of the Common Life taught the reformers everything – Luther was their student, and Calvin was deeply influenced by them.  These men taught the reformers logic, letters, languages, mathematics, and everything else they needed to develop a coherent and powerful world view.

The reformation didn’t proceed and finalize without bloodshed, and lots of it.  Swords were necessary, but the most important part was a world view that sustained the generations who fought this conflict on the European continent and on the British Ilse.  Similarly, the men who founded this nation believed things that sustained them and their families in spite of the horrible losses they suffered.

I am an educated man.  I hold an engineering degree – albeit Bachelor’s degree – from Clemson University.  Clemson isn’t among the top tier schools like RPI or Cal Tech (which is unquestionably the toughest engineering and physics school in the nation), but it’s up there with NC State, Georgia Tech, Ohio State, University of Texas, and so on.  I know fluid mechanics, strength of materials, statics and dynamics, differential equations, and so on.  And I’ve had all of their stupid liberal arts courses, from their revisionist history classes to the English course where the professor couldn’t go a single class without sexual innuendo or double entendre.  Oh, and don’t leave out that ridiculous sociology course where we studied everything from prostitution to poverty, all along the way rejecting the student’s demands that we solve these “problems” because we were just studying them, only to get to the issue of race in America with the professor starting the class that day with “How are we going to solve this problem?”  When I brought up the logical inconsistency with the class heretofore, I was savaged by the other students for being a prejudiced bigot.  A bigot I’m not, a lover of consistency I am.

If you think this is a discussion on how smart I am, you have it all backwards.  In my opinion I left college a dullard and ignoramus.  My real education began in graduate level seminary under Dr. C Gregg Singer, who assigned reading in Francis Turretin, “Institutes of Elenctic Theology.”  I was left on my own with Turretin to self-instruct, as with all graduate level courses.  It was my first introduction to the so-called scholastic writers.  I was overwhelmed and dumbfounded.

Reading through these volumes required lots of coffee, a hard back chair, and lots of time.  I got such severe headaches trying to study these volumes that it made my stomach upset.  I usually couldn’t get more than one or two sentences without having to stop and rehearse what I had read, how it related to the sentence before it, and ensure that I understood his points.  When I shared my experience with my colleagues, they had the same experiences I did with Turretin.  Mine wasn’t unique.

Horrace Mann has done his job well, yes?  I only home schooled my children their final years in High School (I wasted money on Christian education for much of their previous years), and I wish I had home schooled all four of them all twelve years.  The dumbing of the American child has been virtually complete, and combined with common core, the product of the public school system will be truly atrocious (and culpable to be manipulated).  At another time I will share a horrible school experience with one of my sons, but that is saved for later.

By all means, have your AR-15s.  Get your comms gear and learn how to use it.  I don’t begrudge learning how to conduct small unit combat maneuver warfare, patrolling techniques, perhaps satellite patrolling, make and break contact drills, carbine and handgun target acquisition drills, and so on.  I’m not sure that it will be used, but I am certain that any future conflict will be fought in the shadows (more on that later).

But more than AR-15s with optics, good handguns and lots of ammunition and comms gear, you need a world view.  You need an ideology that will sustain you through thick and thin, through life and until death.  I cannot tell you how to craft yours.  Most readers get annoyed or offended when I try to do that.  I know mine – it is incorrigible.  There are worse things than death.  I will meet God face to face one day, and death doesn’t mean that my body cools to ambient temperature and that’s the end.  I have been predistined to whatever God commands, and my life and death are in his hands.  Thus shall my world view honor Him and remain unchanged by the winds opinion.

What about your world and life view?

Prior: I Do Not Fear Terror Because I Am Redeemed, And I Have Been Predistined To This War

There is an interesting comment left at PJM:

Matt Walsh is one of the best Christian bloggers out there. This is what he wrote on facebook today commenting on the election. Strong words, but they should be heard.

Trump won South Carolina, a supposedly conservative Christian state, by a wide margin tonight.

A few quick reactions:

– Don’t rationalize this. He didn’t win because of Democrats. The man won Evangelicals. The man who — JUST THIS WEEK — praised Planned Parenthood, and who fishes for applause lines by cussing out his competitors and mocking disabled people, and who can’t name a book in the Bible, and who said he doesn’t need forgiveness from God, and who brags about sleeping with married women, and who said he’d love to date his own daughter because she has a hot body, and who supported the murder of fully developed infant children, and who blatantly lies and then lies again about lying, and who has encapsulated literally the exact opposite of anything that could remotely be considered a “Christian value,” won with the indispensable assistance of Christians. The anger I feel towards those Christians in this moment cannot be put into words. They should be ashamed. I will pray for them.

– Speaking of winning conservatives, Trump — JUST THIS WEEK — said he likes the Obamacare mandate. This was, according to conservatives, the most important thing to defeat not but two years ago. Now some of those same conservatives are voting for a big government liberal who says he supports the very thing these very people were sure would undo the Republic just a few months ago.

– If Trump wins the nomination, conservatism in this country is officially dead, and the country itself will be close behind it.

– Speaking of the country’s demise, Trump fans are gleefully ushering in tyranny. I am tired of hearing about their “anger.” They claim they are angry at the very thing they now embrace. They aren’t angry. They’re bored. They’re immature. They’re infatuated with celebrity and fame and money.

I am not a Jeb Bush supporter (this comment was left on an article having to do with Bush).  I have openly supported Ted Cruz, but that doesn’t matter now.  It appears that no one can win the nomination except Donald Trump.  Christians have had a lot to do with his success.

My oldest son Josh works with someone who told him when asked why he was voting for Trump, “we need money and Trump knows how to get it!”  So much for the Southerners aren’t dumb hicks like you think they are meme.  This was why it was one time required that you be a head of household and land owner to vote.  Trump won South Carolina partly because of dumb people.

But the commenter is right.  The biggest part of Trump’s success in the S.C. primary had to do with winning the evangelical vote.  I have to hand it to Trump.  He knows how to perform a magic show.  It’s like the magician who shouts “Look here, Obamacare is a disaster …,” noise and flashing lights, and in the other hand he is hiding what he doesn’t want you to see, that he wants a single payer health care system just like Obama.  “Look here, A WALL, and it’s going to be big and beautiful and we’re going to get Mexico to pay for it …,” the people go wild, flashing lights, and in the other hand he holds the truth, that wall has a gigantic door through which they can all pass back in.  “I’ll tear down the system …” flashing lights, and in the other hand he holds the truth, he wants to meet with these people in the oval office and make deals.

Oh, on that last one, it isn’t hidden.  He said so.  Well, to be honest, he said so about the other two as well.  But the idiots didn’t see it for the flashing lights, or they didn’t want to see it because they are members of a religious cult.  But on the biggest one, “Look here, I think abortion is horrible …,” flashing lights, but I’m pro-choice and Planned Parenthood has good people and does good things.

It’s on this last one that the commenter has fixated, and for good reason.  I recall a time when we preached about abortion, and my family picketed the only abortion clinic in our city, and when Christians cared.  Trump has said that Planned Parenthood has good people and does good things.  Listen to me carefully.  Everyone working for Planned Parenthood is evil (or at a minimum, very naïve and deluded), the organization is evil, and it does not do good things.  Moreover, if you give money to any part of it, it’s just like giving money to the United Way.  You designate your giving, and they say “thank you very much,” and readjust and reallocate their dollars so that it all works out the way they wanted it to with the general funds anyway.

Planned Parenthood is a child of Margaret Sanger, a well-known eugenicist, and ideological follower of Adolf Hitler.  She was evil and now suffers in hell with Hitler (the only happy part of this sad story).  Christians who support Trump are supporting a man who unashamedly says that these people are good and do good things, and has given his money so that they can pimp eugenics.

But I don’t care about Trump.  This is the important part.  After hearing all of that, Christians still voted for him.  After searching my memory, my heart and my mind, I can come up with nothing more than the Christian church in America has lost its soul.  It one time cared about doctrine, theology, and good teaching.  At one time in history, theology and philosophy were heard from the pulpit (in the North it would have been from W.G.T. Shedd and Charles Hodge, in the South from James Henley Thornwell and R.L. Dabney).  At one time in history, the church wasn’t anemic.  But those times have long gone.  The Christian church in America may as well not exist.

I feel sorry for this loss – the loss of our scruples and values.  And before it is responded that Trump says he’s a Christian, and said of the Pope that it is disgraceful for a spiritual leader to question a person’s faith, or asks the question can someone’s behavior discredit a profession of faith?, I have some very direct words for you.

I am not a Roman Catholic and don’t believe in the so-called “Chair of Peter.”  No man is my intercessor except the God-man, Christ Jesus.  So I won’t waste my time addressing anything about the papacy.  Who can judge another man’s faith?  We can.  We all can.  We make functional judgments all day, every day.  If you are a Christian, you and your daughter decide whether the man she wants to marry is a Christian because of Paul’s command that husband and wife not be unequally yoked.  As for the words of Christ, you have heard them before: “You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? (Matt 7:16, NASB).  So far from being forbidden from making judgments, we are commanded to judge.  Otherwise, how would be prevent ourselves from being “unequally yoked” (and please, before you cite Matt 7:1, go do some homework and read a dozen or so commentaries so that you understand what you are talking about, and include in your analysis a consideration of John 7:24)).

Works are not necessary for salvation.  But in the order of salvation (ordo salutis), there is still the perseverance of the saints.  We won’t be perfect until we are with Him, we will be in constant need of refreshing and repentance, setting our gaze upon the one who perfected our salvation.  But we who are Christians are being changed more and more to be like Christ.  Works aren’t the cause, but are the evidence of our salvation.

And finally note that I included forgiveness in the list above.  I attended seminary.  But the things I am saying are basic, child like stuff, the work of children’s Sunday School teachers.  If you are a Christian, you know what I’m saying is true.  And if Donald Trump is speaking the truth, he is not a Christian, and yes, I can indeed make that judgment.

“I am not sure that I have” ever asked God for forgiveness, telling the 2015 Iowa Family Leadership Summit that “I just go on and try to do a better job from there.

“I don’t think so,” Trump, who is Presbyterian, said in response to the question from pollster and summit host Frank Luntz. Trump was among 10 Republican presidential candidates at the daylong event in Ames, Iowa.

“If I do something wrong, I think I just try to make it right,” Trump said. “I don’t bring God into that picture. I don’t.

Doing a better job of anything doesn’t cut it.  Our works are as filthy rags, adding only to our judgment on that last day.  Salvation is by grace, through faith, lest any man should boast.  Either Trump is telling the truth, in which he has never sought forgiveness and is trying to work his way to heaven and therefore is not a Christian, or he is lying, for what reason I don’t know, and to what benefit I cannot fathom.

And yet the saddest part of all of this is still that the American church is officially dead.  I confess that I hadn’t seen this much change in the last two or three decades.  Perhaps I wasn’t watching carefully enough.  It was stealthy enough that I missed the death entirely.

Via Uncle, this from Dearborn:

Khalil Abu-Rayyan, 21, was being watched by the feds since May 2015.

He was even having online conversations with an undercover FBI agent.

“I tried to shoot up a church one day,” Abu-Rayyan posted. “It’s one of the biggest ones in Detroit. I had it planned out. I bought a bunch of bullets. I practiced reloading and unloading.”

[ … ]

The complaint filed in federal court doesn’t specify which Detroit church he was allegedly planning to attack, only that it was close and could seat 6,000 members.

The complaint quotes Abu-Rayyan saying:

“It’s easy, and a lot of people go there. Plus people are not allowed to carry guns in church. Plus it would make the news. Everybody would’ve heard. Honestly I regret not doing it. If I can’t do jihad in the Middle East, I would do my jihad over here.”

I’m not surprised that this almost occurred in Dearborn, but it could have occurred anywhere.  Folks, I’ve covered it until I’m exhausted covering it.  Search my religion category for the details of pastors who hate their flocks and would rather see them perish than allow they to carry in worship.  Forget that the jihadist doesn’t understand what a church is (the church is the people, the building they meet in is just that – a building, not a church).

This jihadist understands this much.  When you attend a worship service, in most liturgies, even ones which are atypical, you are a sitting duck, you and your whole family.

You are sitting down, with people in front of you, people behind you, and people to the side of you.  Means of egress, evasion and escape are limited to non-existent.  The attention of most people is focused on the front, on one man or a choir, or in the singing of Psalms, Hymns and spiritual songs, rather than on potential security threats.  This isn’t an argument for not going to worship.  This is an argument for going armed, with your head on a swivel.

And no, a few security people armed with BaoFeng UV-5R comms gear and acting ever so earnest cannot stop a shooter.  You need to carry in worship.  Please, please hear me when I say this.  You need to carry in worship.  If other people don’t, that heightens your responsibility.  If other people are preoccupied, you need to be extra diligent.  Please carry guns in worship.  And if this is disallowed, make your pastor understand, or do it anyway, or change churches.  It’s that important.

Texas Observer:

Christians, arm yourselves.

That, in a nutshell, is what Liberty University students heard from Jerry Falwell Jr., in the wake of the shootings in San Bernardino in December. Falwell — president of the evangelical Christian college and son of the late Moral Majority founder — told students, “If more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in and killed them.” Adding that he was carrying a weapon in his pocket, he encouraged students to take Liberty’s concealed-carry training course.

[ … ]

Yet when it comes to linking lethal weapons to the “gospel of peace,” Falwell and Ramsey have nothing on Texas.

One pastor’s message to attendees of a 2012 Keller church conference went well beyond the suggestion that Christians consider gun ownership. “You can’t be a Christian if you don’t own a gun,” pastor Dr. Gary Cass told attendees at the Deliver Us From Evil Conference. “How can you protect yourself, your family, or your neighbor if you don’t have a gun? If I’m supposed to love my neighbor, and I can’t protect him, what good am I?” While Cass told me recently that there is some hyperbole in these statements — in that gun ownership alone is not sufficient to guarantee salvation — he does believe that self-defense “is a God-given right and duty.”

Cass’ DefendChristians.org is based in California, but several Christian ministers here in the Lone Star State are singing from the same hymnal. Huntsville-area preacher Terry Holcomb Sr. is known for carrying his AR-15 Bushmaster rifle into local businesses as part of his campaign for open carry. Likewise, the Rev. James McAbee, pastor at Beaumont’s Lighthouse Worship Center, has earned the moniker “the pistol-packin’ preacher” for carrying his Glock in church and for offering teachers free handgun training. Last summer, McAbee told KLST-TV that “it’s very important that every church, pastor and all, have a gun.” And yet, as he explained to the Los Angeles Times: “I don’t want to hurt anybody. I believe the Bible teaches peace. But that doesn’t mean I should let them hurt me.”

The notion of pastors packing heat and encouraging their flocks to do likewise strikes many Texas Christians, myself included, as peculiar — even, well, un-Christian. After all, the core teachings of Jesus himself suggest a very different message.

Although his country was under oppressive Roman occupation, Jesus taught nonviolence — “All who take the sword will perish by the sword” — which is not exactly a forceful call to arms. Jesus also instructed his followers to love their enemies.

But, of course, the Bible is a big and complicated book. Some Christian gun advocates cite a puzzling passage in which Jesus tells his disciples that if they don’t have a sword, they should sell their cloak and buy one. In an email to me, Cass even cited this passage as evidence of a biblical right to self-defense. However, many biblical commentators, including the evangelical InterVarsity Press, interpret Jesus as referring to spiritual “swords,” not physical ones. Even when Jesus was arrested, and the disciples asked him if they should defend him with their (physical) swords, he told them no. Based on my studies as both a scholar and a Christian, I believe that if Jesus taught us anything, he taught us that the godly life is one of peace, nonviolence, and love.

[ … ]

… the Second Amendment enshrines what Aledo Christian conservative David Barton has called “the biblical right of self-defense.” The Second Amendment’s “ultimate goal,” Barton contends, “is to make sure you can defend yourself against any kind of illegal force that comes against you,” whether from a neighbor, an outsider, or “your own government.” However doubtful it is that the Founders wanted to allow rebellion against the very government they were creating, this “insurrectionist idea” is very popular in Christian Americanist circles.

Oh good.  Yet another derogatory phrase for Christians who believe in living according to the Bible: “Christian Americanist.”  So this makes twice I’ve heard the author, David Brockman, claim that he is a scholar.  But if you’re going to make that claim, you have to live up to the hype.  Frankly, Brockman fails miserably.

Why is the passage about Jesus telling his disciples to get swords puzzling?  I thought Brockman was a scholar.  In fact, first of all Jesus told his disciples to find swords for self defense (the command is placed in context of having a purse and bag which they didn’t previously have, and being self sufficient in the absence of Jesus who was soon to give His life for His people).  Second, the command sets up the disciples to rely on God’s mercy and grace.  It was against Roman law for anyone but Roman soldiers to have weapons, and Jesus was commanding that they break Roman law.  Finally, this command sets up Peter for good instruction when he slices the ear off one of the Roman soldiers (referred to later by Brockman).  Jesus explained to Peter that His kingdom wouldn’t grow by the power of the sword (contra false religions like Islam).  Jesus had to die and be raised again for His people, and Peter was getting in the way.

Brockman – if he is the scholar he claims he is – should know all of this.  He should also know that the founders set up a system that was intended to be curtailed by the power of weapons, for that is exactly what they did.  They curtailed the power of tyrants in England, and were it not for weapons, there would have been no victory.

But the biggest failure is Brockman’s ignorance concerning the case for biblical self defense.  I’ve explained it before.

I am afraid there have been too many centuries of bad teaching endured by the church, but it makes sense to keep trying.  As I’ve explained before, the simplest and most compelling case for self defense lies in the decalogue.  Thou shall not murder means thou shall protect life.

God’s law requires [us] to be able to defend the children and helpless.  “Relying on Matthew Henry, John Calvin and the Westminster standards, we’ve observed that all Biblical law forbids the contrary of what it enjoins, and enjoins the contrary of what it forbids.”  I’ve tried to put this in the most visceral terms I can find.

God has laid the expectations at the feet of heads of families that they protect, provide for and defend their families and protect and defend their countries.  Little ones cannot do so, and rely solely on those who bore them.  God no more loves the willing neglect of their safety than He loves child abuse.  He no more appreciates the willingness to ignore the sanctity of our own lives than He approves of the abuse of our own bodies and souls.  God hasn’t called us to save the society by sacrificing our children or ourselves to robbers, home invaders, rapists or murderers. Self defense – and defense of the little ones – goes well beyond a right.  It is a duty based on the idea that man is made in God’s image.  It is His expectation that we do the utmost to preserve and defend ourselves when in danger, for it is He who is sovereign and who gives life, and He doesn’t expect us to be dismissive or cavalier about its loss.

And concerning John Calvin’s comments on this subject:

We do not need to prove that when a good thing is commanded, the evil thing that conflicts with it is forbidden.  There is no one who doesn’t concede this.  That the opposite duties are enjoined when evil things are forbidden will also be willingly admitted in common judgment.  Indeed, it is commonplace that when virtues are commended, their opposing vices are condemned.  But we demand something more than what these phrases commonly signify.  For by the virtue of contrary to the vice, men usually mean abstinence from that vice.  We say that the virtue goes beyond this to contrary duties and deeds.  Therefore in this commandment, “You shall not kill,” men’s common sense will see only that we must abstain from wronging anyone or desiring to do so.  Besides this, it contains, I say, the requirement that we give our neighbor’s life all the help we can … the purpose of the commandment always discloses to us whatever it there enjoins or forbids us to do” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 1, Book 2, Chapter viii, Part 9).

Far from a mere right, it is a duty.  Forsaking this duty is equivalent to turning over Brockman’s own children to criminals, rapists, thieves and abusers.  God isn’t impressed with Brockman’s fake morality, a morality that pretends Jesus is a bohemian hippie flower child.  And I don’t think Brockman is the scholar he thinks he is.

Guns.com:

Political commentator, Dana Loesch, was recently featured in an NRA News Commentary, titled, “The Godless Left,”  wherein viewers are treated to a diatribe against what is claimed to be a monolithic left wing of the American political spectrum.  These evil people supposedly have contempt for history and rights, are lacking in values, but will use shaming and silencing to achieve their goals.  They even hate Christmas.

There is so much here that needs addressed.  I hear frequently that the United States is a Christian nation, but we can’t just leave the claim as is.  What, exactly, does it mean?  The majority of Americans identify themselves as Christian—three out of every four, more or less—but that number has been declining lately.  But in legal terms, this country is secular.  Contrary to Loesch’s implication, though, secular doesn’t mean “Godless.”  It simply means that our government has to be neutral with regard to religion, including the constitutional ban on establishment.  In fact, the only mentions of religion are to be found in the Sixth Article barring a religious test for holding public office and in the First Amendment, which as I said, requires government and religion to keep hands off the other.

This fact about the United States is reinforced by a couple of documents, one a letter and the other a treaty, written in our early days.  Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut that “religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions.”  This was in response to the concerns of the Baptists over the then established denomination of Congregationalism.  Someone may say that this was only a letter, though it expresses the opinion of the sitting president.  A treaty, however holds legal standing.  The Treaty of Tripoli between the United States and Tripolitania in an effort to stop piracy in the Mediterranean, and in doing so, in Article XI it assures the North African nation that “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”  The point here was to make plain the fact that any time we involved ourselves in conflict, that action did not come from a religious motivation—that what we did to defend our sailors was not a new crusade.

But a nation is more than its laws.  One of my main themes is that we gun owners need to embrace people of all beliefs and backgrounds, so long as they accept the principle that each of us has the right to make choices about our own lives.  This isn’t about empathy or political correctness.  It’s basic marketing and survival.  The more people we have on our side, the more secure our rights will be.  Loesch’s attack on what she calls the “Godless left” only encourages undecided people to believe the stereotype of the white, Christian, male gun owner.

The author, Greg Camp, assumes that it’s possible to hold to secularism without veering off into a worship of anarchy or statism.  I claim it’s not, and my claim holds up in the light of history.  As philosopher R.J. Rushdoony explains in his book “The One and the Many,” orthodox Christianity is the only thought system that sustains the tripartite designation of power of the state, church and family.

I have no intention of embracing people of all beliefs and backgrounds, because America is a Christian nation at its core and inception.  Again, read “The Emergence of Liberty in the Modern World” by my professor Douglas Kelly, or “The Foundations of Social Order” or “This Independent Republic” by Rousas J. Rushdoony.  Or start with my own brief assessment.  Either way, it you place your trust in embracing people of all beliefs and backgrounds, you’ll be ground into dust right after your wife and daughter are raped and beheaded, or put to work for the state.  Tell me how it goes when they inform you that your children belong to the state.  Take the temperature of your faith in mankind after that happens and let me know how you feel.

Greg can stick with his appeal to the inherent goodness of all men, and be disappointed as time waxes on in his life.  As for me, I and my household will follow the Lord.  The only successful antidote to statism is Christianity.  The Lord tells me in no uncertain terms that my rights don’t come from the second amendment.  They come from God himself.  This is my axiomatic irreducible.  It is my belief, and it is incorrigible.  I will not change.

AP:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Saturday the idea of religious neutrality is not grounded in the country’s constitutional traditions and that God has been good to the U.S. exactly because Americans honor him.

Scalia was speaking at a Catholic high school in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, Louisiana. Scalia, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 is the court’s longest serving justice. He has consistently been one of the court’s more conservative members.

He told the audience at Archbishop Rummel High School that there is “no place” in the country’s constitutional traditions for the idea that the state must be neutral between religion and its absence.

“To tell you the truth there is no place for that in our constitutional tradition. Where did that come from?” he said. “To be sure, you can’t favor one denomination over another but can’t favor religion over non-religion?”

He also said there is “nothing wrong” with the idea of presidents and others invoking God in speeches. He said God has been good to America because Americans have honored him.

Scalia said during the Sept. 11 attacks he was in Rome at a conference. The next morning, after a speech by President George W. Bush in which he invoked God and asked for his blessing, Scalia said many of the other judges approached him and said they wished their presidents or prime ministers would do the same.

“God has been very good to us. That we won the revolution was extraordinary. The Battle of Midway was extraordinary. I think one of the reasons God has been good to us is that we have done him honor. Unlike the other countries of the world that do not even invoke his name we do him honor. In presidential addresses, in Thanksgiving proclamations and in many other ways,” Scalia said.

“There is nothing wrong with that and do not let anybody tell you that there is anything wrong with that,” he added.

He’s right, of course.  Moreover, this thinking is right in line with the historical reformed thinking of men like Cornelius Van Til, Gordon Clark, and my own professor C. Gregg Singer and others, on the logical impossibility of neutrality.  All syllogisms have presuppositions, those presuppositions being axiomatic irreducibles, with the balance of thought and deduction being impossible without them, and the rest of the system able to be judged on its logical consistency based on those presuppositions.  And I agree with Scalia, even if he doesn’t invoke reformed thinkers for his basis.

Unlike Scalia, however, who is Roman Catholic, I don’t think God cares very much whether we invoke His name in a presidential address or some similar charade.  The invocation of His name must be sincere, humble and within the context of repentance.

This is what I don’t see in America, and thus God will not long bless her.  She is even now experiencing the lack of God’s favor because of her stubbornness.

So Scalia is right, and he is wrong.

Washington Post:

Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring announced Tuesday that the commonwealth will no longer recognize out-of-state concealed handgun permits, part of a national push to circumvent legislatures opposed to tightening gun laws.

[ … ]

But Herring’s office could not say how many people are suspected of crossing into Virginia with concealed weapons to commit crimes …

[ … ]

The states losing reciprocity are: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

The Washington Post article comes via Mike Vanderboegh.  As for Mr. Herring, he can’t prove that any crime has ever been committed in Virginia by an out-of-state concealed handgun permit holder, and he knows it.  This is raw politics, progressive statist tactics to deprive men of their right to self defense.  And as we’ve seen before, it’s more than a matter of mere politics, and even more than a matter of rights.  It’s a matter of moral duty.

God expects men to defend themselves and their loved ones as a corollary to being created in His image.  Second amendment or not, men must act to preserve life, their own and that of others.  It is an obligation that attends being servants of the most high God, the only potentate and eternal ruler of the universe.  Your actions, Mr. Herring, go to the heart of God’s expectations for man, and thus there is a deeply moral element to your seemingly political actions.

As I said, we’ve studied this time and time again, and so there is absolutely no question that Mr. Herring is interfering with man’s duty before God and thus has become a stumbling block for God’s chosen people.  There is a whole host of questions and things to consider from this point forward.

For instance, what is the NRA going to do?  If they’re worth two cents, they will go to war over this.  What will Virginia LEOs do?  If they enforce this sinful and unconstitutional law, they are no better than the current Governor and Attorney General Mr. Herring.  I don’t care that those in power want this enforced.  I don’t care that those in power were elected to that office.

Breaking covenant with God’s law means illegitimacy before mankind, and thus their laws must be disobeyed.  I don’t want to hear from LEOs that the people of Virginia should elect better men, different men.  The majority doesn’t have a right to decide when God’s laws are to be dishonored.  If LEOs can’t stand the moral heat, it’s time to get out of the kitchen.  These are weighty questions for weighty times.  What will LEOs do?  Seriously.  LEOs should ponder hard on these words.

But one thing I can do about this is appeal to the most high King over these sinful actions.  In the Christian faith there is a rich tradition of imprecatory prayers, and it’s a tool we don’t use often enough.  It isn’t a substitute for action on our parts, but we must bath everything in prayer.  The last time I prayed an imprecatory prayer it was over Arlen Specter and his support for abortion rights and another candidate who supported abortion rights.  Soon after that prayer, Mr. Specter was diagnosed with cancer and left the senate.  I don’t do this lightly.  But Mr. Herring has forced my hand, and I feel led by the spirit to do this.

“Dear Lord of heaven and earth, whereas Mr. Herring has made it impossible for many of your servants, your children, those for whom your only begotten Son died on a rugged cross, to preserve their lives and the lives of those whom you love, Mr. Herring has declared himself to be your enemy.  Tyrants need willing lieutenants to carry out their evil plans, and Mr. Herring has decided to align himself with the forces of darkness.  This is no small matter to you.

I am hereby constrained by your spirit to pray for his demise.  Bring desolation, destitution and disrepute on the house of Mr. Herring to the fourth and fifth generations.  May his very children and children’s children disavow his beliefs and actions to the fourth and fifth generations.  May Mr. Herring live in shame for what he has done, and I pray that you, oh sovereign Lord, would bring all of his actions to naught and render him impotent and powerless, with the reputation of a worm.”

“He makes my feet like hinds’ feet, and sets me upon my high places.  He trains my hands for battle, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.  Thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation, and thy right hand upholds me; and Thy gentleness makes me great,” Psalm 18:33-36.

The New York Times has published a call for gun control in the wake of the Islamist actions in San Bernardino.  An excerpt follows.

Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership. It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens.

The Washington Post has a pitiful, confused and yet halting agreement with the editorial, as if the writer, in terrible fear for her life, doesn’t know what else to do.

Then, there are those matters that are beyond practical political reach. Suffering, death, danger and maltreatment aside, a policy solution to these problems simply has no real path, no viability at all.

And in this moment, it would seem that any and all policy related to guns would belong in that third group. Gun control — or any discussion of a coordinated effort to stem the tide of gun deaths that set this country apart from almost every other industrialized nation — is going nowhere. It’s a reality we acknowledge regularly on this very blog, most recently on Saturday morning, the day the New York Times saw fit to devote its first front-page editorial in 95 years to gun control.

There are numerous reactions to this editorial, most of them edging towards the “this means war” sentiment.  I want to take a different approach to this call for more gun control, and all of those like it across America.

It’s tempting to take the approach of commenter Mike Bishop at WRSA, who says “The Manhattanites have about as much relevance in my personal, local, life, as a rookery of penguins.”  Mike is right, and such gun control will never obtain, but it goes much deeper than relevance.

There is a war between light and darkness, and it has been advancing since the very beginning.  Statism and Islam are different facets of the same stone (there are other facets), and they are merely the societal manifestations of the struggle between light and darkness.  The war occurs individually and corporately, and while men see the consequences and effects of the war, and get brief glimpses into the deeper things, in large measure we don’t truly see the battle in the heavens.

Angels and demons are warring in the heavenly places, and there is war within the souls of men.  God isn’t barely victorious, nor does be barely win.  Nay, He sits and the heavens and scoffs at the rulers of the world.  It will all end as He has said it will.

“For I am God and there is no other; I am God and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not yet been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’,” Isaiah 46:9-10.

As for individual men, there are those who are lost.  The New York Times editorial board is lost.  No, not collectively, but individually, each and every one of them.  The war is over in their soul, or better, it never occurred.  There are those men who have been given a taste, and who know the truth, but who suppress it in unrighteousness.  They will never find peace or rest, not now and not in eternity.

But there are those who would be lost if left to their own devices, who know their sins, but who have been awakened by the sovereign hand of Almighty God, who reaches down in His kind providence and bestows His love on them.  They are saved by grace and through faith, not of their works, lest they should boast.

For this last category, God “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world … He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself … according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will,” Eph 1:4,5,11.

If the former believes that upon death their bodies cool to ambient temperature and then get planted or burned, and that’s the end, they are merely observers to the great war, not even pawns.  They are worse than irrelevant.  They see the effects, but cannot effect change.  For those of us who believe, there are no volunteers to this war.

We were created for it, and we were drafted to this army.  Our volunteering occurred simultaneously with our being called, and upon being called, we had no other choice.  The sheep know their master’s voice, and only follow Him.

Oh, to be sure, I won’t give up my weapons, not a single one of them, and I will defend myself and my family as we are threatened, whether by the state or other actors.  I will do so because I have been taught by my master that I must do so.  But it goes deeper than a few guns.

I know that the New York Times editorial board, for all their bluster, isn’t relevant to this war because they don’t even know there is one.  Looking for peace, they may as well slash their wrists and bleed before Baal for fire to come down from heaven as to look to the state for a solution to evil.

I have been called with a heavenly calling, like all of His people, not of themselves, but of His great mercy and from before the foundation of the world, to fight this great war.  The war is present everywhere and all of the time, whether visibly and by implements of fighting, or in our souls for our devotion and affection of the divine.

It has become commonplace to charge people carrying weapons with cowardice.

PARIS—For most of the last two centuries, Europeans have been puzzling over their American cousins’ totemic obsession with guns and their passion for concealed weapons. And back in the decades before the American Civil War, several British visitors to American shores thought they’d discerned an important connection: people who owned slaves or lived among them wanted to carry guns to keep the blacks intimidated and docile, but often shot each other, too.

In 1842, the novelist Charles Dickens, on a book tour of the United States, saw a link between the sheer savagery of slave ownership and what he called the cowardly practice of carrying pistols or daggers or both. The author of Oliver Twist listened with a mixture of horror and contempt as Americans defended their utterly indefensible “rights” to tote guns and carry Bowie knives, right along with their “right” to own other human beings who could be shackled, whipped, raped, and mutilated at will.

Charging us with sin is the devil’s game, and in my corner as defender is the Son of God who has paid the price, past, present and future.  I’ll just let Him handle it.  I am unaffected by the game.  Since I am a warrior in the great war of all time, how can any man say that I am a coward?

Coward if left to his own devices, sinner, and even worthless worm.  But saint by the shed blood of the lamb, warrior in the great war, at battle ever since being called, at battle until the end of my life, servant of the most high king.  My days are in His hands.  I will live all of the days to which I have been ordained, and will not perish until it is time that I meet my savior and master.  Who can understand this except those who have been called?

“You will not be afraid of the terror by night, or of the arrow that flies by day,” Psalm 91:5.

Kos is blaming republicans, but better still, others are blaming God.

As yet another mass shooting claimed the lives of 14 people Wednesday in San Bernardino, Calif., a familiar refrain echoed from the lips of politicians: Pray.

But for many fed up with the now seemingly routine shootings and the resulting inaction from each over how to stop another tragedy, pleas to God weren’t enough anymore.

That was the sentiment New York’s Daily News proclaimed on its cover Thursday. With the headline blaring, “God Isn’t Fixing This,” the tabloid highlighted the tweets of GOP politicians, each asking for prayer following the shooting at an office party at the Inland Regional Center.

“Prayers aren’t working,” the paper wrote. “White House hopefuls on the Democratic side of the aisle called for stricter gun laws in the wake of the shooting. … But after yet another mass shooting in America, GOP presidential contenders were conspicuously silent on the issue of gun control. Instead, the Republicans were preaching about prayer.”

This is just rich.  So it’s God’s fault because prayers aren’t working.  The comments at NPR are even better.  They range from frustration, to confusion, to atheistic ramblings about prayer to make-believe characters.

Look, having studied apologetics as I have, I would debate anyone on the existence of God, but it would be on my terms and by my rules.  Atheists don’t scare me one bit.  But trying to persuade someone in unbelief to jettison their lack of belief isn’t the point here.

The notion that we can break God’s holy laws, turn the nation into a melting pot of religious paganism, and turn to the state as the worshipers of Baal did to a statue, and then expect the one true and living God to perform for us like some sort of circus act when the nation utters what it perceives to be an incantation is so ludicrous that it’s amazing anyone believes it.

Bless your heart!  So you think God doesn’t hear your prayers?  Get used to it.  He only knows His sheep, and His sheep know His voice and follow Him.

Put the popcorn in the microwave, take it out and watch the show.  The liberals are eating each others’ livers out.  This should be fun.

Mike Vanderboegh poses the following question: How many of you are willing to kill a Muslim infant because his or her parents are Muslim?  He adds, “I am not arguing about the validity of their faith. I am a Christian, but I also understand that absent the burden of protecting the innocent — ALL innocents — from attack by collectivists of any ilk, including Muslim religious collectivists, it is not up to me to execute God’s judgment upon someone simply because of their faith, however mistaken it is.”

Well, this poses a complex set of issues that isn’t fertile ground for talking points or rapid fire exchange.  This is a thinking man’s territory.  He later links (but does not comment on) Ralph Peters and his view that “The generals who won World War II would start by leveling Raqqa, the ISIS caliphate’s capital. Civilians would die, but those remaining in Raqqa have embraced ISIS, as Germans did Hitler. The jihadis must be crushed. Start with their “Berlin.” Kill ten thousand, save a million.”

This is enough to keep us busy for a while.  Reader and commenter BluesStringer1955 also links Mike’s piece, and with absolutely no basis whatsoever charged me with wanting to kill all Muslims around me (this wasn’t even the point of the article), and continues that Mike and David make a mistake to link to anything I write.  Mike and David will have to decide if it’s a mistake for them to link to anything I write, and I never said anything about killing all Muslims.  I think BluesStringer1995 was having a bad day.

But I did assert that making the decision to kill ISIS fighters should be an easy ethical decision for us.  I would sleep well if I flew an A-10 and got the chance to blow a convoy of ISIS fighters into oblivion (but this would only happen in my dreams – flying the A-10, that is).  So let’s fill in the blanks a bit.  For BlueStringer1955, I don’t take you by the hand and lead you to simplistic conclusions.  My goal is to force you to ponder, to make you think.  Even if you end the process disagreeing with me, that’s okay if you have spent time pondering the hard issues we will all face.

There isn’t another writer who has covered more about rules of engagement than have I, from news reports, to AR 15-6 investigations, to private communications from deployed NCOs and others on the situations they are facing.  I won’t rehearse the quotes I am using or the examples I cite.  There isn’t enough time to find the many references I supply in my rules of engagement category, and it would break the flow of what I want to say.  So bear with me, and if you want proof, please visit my prior posts.

I’m willing to listen to just about any argument you wish to make, and I’ll respect your opinion if it’s well researched and well reasoned, and that last point bears repeating.  Well reasoned.  If you cannot bear to face the logical conclusions of your own views, I might show pity, but I won’t be persuaded in the least by emotion, accusations, shouting or hurt feelings.

There are things to which you should stipulate as you ponder these hard issues in order to have the respect of your colleagues and family.  They will listen with a critical ear and they know when you are being irrational.  If you claim that the U.S. shouldn’t have dropped nuclear bombs on Japan to end WWII, then you must stipulate either that (a) it was acceptable to lose half a million Americans in a land invasion of Japan, or that (b) the U.S. should have just stopped, potentially leaving WWII to continue ad infinitum.  If you claim that Marcus Luttrell and his team should have done what they did and leave those goat herders alone, then you must stipulate that it’s acceptable to you for Americans to perish by leaving enemy spotters alive since they weren’t armed at the time.

If you assert that no one can be ethically killed who isn’t armed, they you must stipulate, along with one American general in Afghanistan who wanted to charge two Army snipers with murder for killing an unarmed known Taliban leader with a long distance shot, that many if not most American sniper kills were unethical.  Furthermore, most sniper shots can never be taken under such a rule, or at least, you must stipulate to that.

If you claim that under no circumstances can non-combatant casualties be tolerated, then you must stipulate that when Hezbollah ensconced their artillery among the citizen homes in Lebanon, the Israeli military cannot target those same installation in return.

There are many more examples in my rules of engagement category, but you can see that the issues begin to be complicated.  Only moral and thinking men need apply for the job.  As for me, while I won’t bore you with the details of my own responses to all of the above, I will try as best as I can to answer Mike’s question.

First of all, I am a Calvinist, and there is no one who is innocent.  We are all guilty by virtue of being born of the seed of Adam and equally deserving of damnation, regardless of age, ethnicity, race, or gender.  Those of us who believe were saved because of God’s sovereign choice, by His grace, and through faith alone.  You may disagree, and I’m okay with that.  But I won’t apologize for my beliefs.  They are incorrigible and there will never be a time when I don’t believe those things.

I prefer to speak of non-combatants rather than “the innocent.”  In the entire history of warfare, notwithstanding whether non-combatants were targeted, no war has ever been fought without non-combatant casualties.  The question is whether they should be targeted.  I understand the decision made by the generals in WWII, who knew that Germany wouldn’t be defeated as long as its war machine was supplied by its industry.  I didn’t say I would have made the same decision, and I didn’t say I wouldn’t have.  I said I understand it.  But that’s quite a bit different than killing a Muslim infant simply because his parents are Muslim.

As the choice stands, my answer is no, not just for being children of Muslims, and not at all if I don’t have to.  Let’s use Ralph Peters’ approach to Raqqa to illustrate.  I will no more assert that we should turn Raqqa into a sea of glass that I will assert that we shouldn’t be allowed to shoot Iraqi insurgents who are throwing cinder blocks off of bridges into American convoys.  The goal is to “stay between the ditches” in our decisions.

Turning Raqqa into a sea of glass is a profoundly bad idea for a number of reasons, none of which have to do with there being Muslim infants there.  First of all, al Baghdadi might be away and avoid death, thereby adding to his mystique.  This would be a terrible outcome.  Furthermore, bombing Raqqa would be likely to create more haters of America than it killed.  Again, this would be a terrible outcome.

As to there being infants there, God is the only sovereign and decisions of life and death are His alone if we don’t have to make that choice.  And herein lies the crux of the issue.  Ralph is playing the devil’s game.  He wants to bomb Raqqa into dust, but that wouldn’t solve the problem and we don’t have to make that choice.  The administration doesn’t want to solve the problem, which is open borders.

It isn’t necessary to kill the enemy or his children thousands of miles away, when the answer is to seal the borders, completely and immediately.  It’s like the game my fifth grade teacher wanted the class to play.  We were supposedly all aboard a life boat, and there was only enough food and water for four of us, whereas there were five on board.  What do we do?

I refused to play the game, pissing her off but standing my ground.  There are worse things than death, one of which would be throwing someone overboard in order to stay alive.  Someone wanted Ralph to play this game, perhaps Ralph.  But what they don’t want to do is what is necessary to make the decision unnecessary in the first place.

Look folks, this example is a fairly easy one, but I honestly think that things aren’t going to go down so easy for us.  I think the answers are going to be much tougher, much more involved, and much murkier than this example.  Again with commenter BluesStringer1955, he believes that Muslims ought to be free to practice their religion in America.  I don’t think BluesStringer1955 understands what it means for Muslims to practice their religion.

No civilization in more than a millennia has been able to peaceably coexist with Islam.  BluesStringer1955 sees the world through Western eyes, not through the Islamic world view.  In order to assist here, I wanted to convey a little short story.

This is a story about a man we will call Mark, who lives in Boiling Springs, S.C.  He lived far enough from the center of urban problems that he didn’t figure that any of this would come his way.  But then resettlement of Syrians happened in Spartanburg, S.C., right down the road from him.

At first it was all benign.  But soon enough a few Muslim families moved into his neighborhood – on the government dime, and problems started.  They began to demand that the school system get Arabic translators, and his taxes were going up in order to pay for the translators.  Furthermore, it was said that there might be more days in school in the summer to make up for the Muslim holidays that they were demanding.  No, they weren’t demanding those holidays for themselves, but that everyone observe them as well.

Next, they demanded footwashing stations in the airports, malls and stores, and prayer rooms with arrows towards Mecca, complete with prayer rugs.  All of this was going to cost money, and while he thought that no one would give this kind of thing the time of day, state senator Larry Martin of Pickens, along with others from Greenville and the lower part of the state, were considering actual changes to the law to allow Sharia courts for the Muslims for certain things.

But there was a more immediate and personal concern for Mark.  One Muslim family near him had been eyeballing his dog, who had gotten lose and was playing with their younger children.  Not biting, but playing.  It happened only once, but now every time Mark goes out to walk the dog, the Muslims say something to him and the teenagers even make obscene gestures.  They hate dogs.  They consider them unclean.

Mark was weeping this particular day.  Mark has no fence, and while his dog did not leave the yard, while he wasn’t watching someone had apparently shot the dog’s eyes out with a pellet rifle, or so the vet thinks.  The dog, who had been with him for ten years, had begun to nip at anyone who came near in self defense because he was blind.  Understandable, but Mark couldn’t let that go on with his own children.  Mark was headed to the veterinarian to put his dog down.

As he was driving, he pondered what he was going to do?  The Muslim teenagers had been ogling his own daughter, and had even yelled that she was a whore and daughter of a whore since she isn’t Muslim, dressed unseemly and didn’t wear a hijab.  He wanted his wife and daughters to have weapons and carry them, but the government had cracked down on the purchase of guns since the advent of the heavier Muslim immigration to America.

America, Mark thought, wasn’t the same country in which he grew up.  And this wasn’t even Dearborn, Michigan.  It was Boiling Springs, S.C.

Now, as for the little short story, Mark is fictitious, but Mark’s saga is just beginning.  And if you haven’t pondered long and hard about the borders, Muslim immigration, Hispanic and Latino immigration, government intrusion, and what you will and won’t allow yourself to do, including the broader moral rules you will follow and down to the tactical level, then you need to.  Mike’s question is a good one, but folks, this is only the beginning.  You’d better seek for clarity of thought and a strong moral compass.

For the record, so-called just war theory was constructed for centuries old models for warfare with great armies lining up in fields of battle against other armies, fought in the daylight, with non-combatants left out of the mix, with hand-to-hand tactics using implements that didn’t act as standoff weapons.  Christian theologians, as I have pointed out many times, have let us down.  You don’t see papers written in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society on modern warfare and its ethical exigencies.  They haven’t updated their theory of warfare for modernity, with weapons that kill large numbers of people, and with non-combatants being brought into the mix (along with or against their will).  Much less have Christian theologians pondered fourth or fifth generation warfare and its implications for mankind.  We have been let down, abandoned, and ignored.  Perhaps because of ignorance, perhaps because of cowardice, but abandoned nonetheless.  As you ponder these issues, you are on your own, you and your conscience and your copy of the word of God.