Defense Strategies

By Audrey Stallsmith

Guns have been selling at a rattling rate recently. At a local auction representatives of a sporting goods company bought almost all of the firearms offered, obviously not caring how much they had to pay for them because they could sell them for more. 

Part of that demand probably is caused by sportspeople having more time to hunt. But apparently others still fear that the pandemic is going to cause shortages and they have to be able to defend what is theirs. When someone expressed such sentiments to my sister-in-law, she said something to the effect of:  “If anybody who is starving comes to my door out here in the country, it will be my friends or neighbors. Obviously, I’m not going to try to fight them off. I’ll share with them instead.”

She could have added that, according to Christ’s Good Samaritan parable, anyone who needs our help is our neighbor. So, even if ravening hordes were to descend on us farm people from the cities, it still would be our responsibility to feed them as well as we could rather than taking up arms against them.

Granted, that might mean us starving to death faster ourselves, but one of the questions Christ is going to ask us is whether we fed the hungry. And who would want to live in a society where the only people left were the hoarders?

(I’m not a pacifist, so I believe we do have a right to defend lives—including our own. And I might well defend our pet hen as vigorously as the Quaker mother defended her pet goose from Confederate raiders in Friendly Persuasion. But she did feed those men too. And, if it came down to a case of a human life or a chicken’s, I’m afraid Henny Penny would have to go.) 

The person who had raised the subject with my sister-in-law just looked at her blankly, as if he couldn’t comprehend her response. Hers is the Christian attitude, though, which too many people seem to have lost contact with in our current fear-mongering “us or them” culture, where we scamper from one Internet rumor to the next like scared sheep.

As W. Philip Keller points out in A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, “The behavior of sheep and human beings is similar. . .Our mass mind (or mob instincts), our fears and timidity, our stubbornness and stupidity. . .”  However, he notes, “The presence of their master. . .puts them [those sheep] at ease as nothing else could do.” If we aren’t at ease, then, it proves that we don’t believe our Master is present, so we are reduced to protecting ourselves.

Recently in this state a man shot both of his neighbors because they were throwing snow over onto his property.  Then, either in remorse for what he had done or in fear of what was to come, he shot himself. As Dad said, “It was just snow, people. It would melt off in a few days anyway.” 

All of this got me to thinking that many of us may be overly defensive in more ways than these obviously extreme ones. For example, I’ve done a lot of arguing lately with people who have bought into the latest conspiracy theories. As I’ve tried to point out to them, such theories have been around since I was a child, and I can’t recall any of them ever proving to be true. But, since I’m obviously not convincing those people, why do I bother? 

When I argue with anybody about anything, I need to ask myself whether I really am fighting for the truth or just defending my own turf, as in my own opinions. If I get annoyed over what I perceive as other people’s obtuseness, my attitude obviously needs adjusted—and not just because I often turn out to be wrong after all!

I’ve found that we often have too much of our ego intertwined with our opinions, so that we perceive any attack on those opinions to be an attack on us. Then we lash out in retaliation. 

But, in Matthew 5:22, Christ warns us that “whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca [“empty one”], shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. (KJV.)” In other words, if we get angry enough to consider other people foolish or empty of value simply because they disagree with us, we will put our own souls in danger—not to mention making it highly unlikely that we will convince those people of anything! Because Christ considers all souls to be of infinite importance, we must do the same.    

Instead of trying to convince others that we are right and they are wrong, we should be more concerned about what their fears may lead them into. For example, the recent storming of the Capitol building by those who claimed to be defending right  culminated in violence, robbery, and several deaths. Many of those involved seem to have been white supremacists, so it would be tempting to say that they deserve whatever they get by way of punishment. But we have to recall that racists, too, usually are acting out of fear—fear of people who are different than themselves.

And what seems to have hit us in recent years is a kind of political racism, where people believe extremely unlikely stories about those in the opposing party just because they want to see that party as bad and themselves as good. Such antagonism actually isn’t anything new because, back in 1856, a southern representative almost beat an abolitionist senator to death on the floor of the Senate—and was praised by members of his own party for doing so. Obviously, the admonition to “love your enemies” never has been a popular one, but Christ didn’t say that it was optional.

What we need are more politicians like the late John McCain. Although too quick-tempered and foul-mouthed at times, he had friends on both sides of the aisle, actually defended his opponent against unfounded slurs, and would vote with whatever party he thought was in the right on a particular issue. 

He once also apologized to a man who had been the victim of CIA torture, because McCain had experienced torture himself and knew that no excuses made for something so wrong can turn it into right. As he pointed out, if we have to use such appalling methods to defend our society, we have proved ourselves to be no better than those we are defending against.  

And, frankly, on our own we are no better. That’s something the “make America great again” people seem to be missing. Our country’s greatness was not based on our people being more moral than the rest of the world. There are plenty of things in our history which prove otherwise. But we did bring desperate immigrants of many races together under one roof, giving them the freedom to be what they wanted to be and to worship God in whatever way they chose. That—not our wealth—is what made us an ideal to the rest of the world. 

Because God was the first to grant freedom of choice to man, I believe he rewarded us for following His example.  Very imperfectly following his example, of course, since the country that said “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” seems to have had frequent spells of fearing and repudiating those masses too. Not to mention fearing everything else under tarnation. 

Tarnation actually means damnation, which should prove something to us. We need to remember that all of it is snow. All the things we are fighting about now will melt away shortly, including our earthly lives, leaving only the question of Whose we are and how we proved that. So we need to ask ourselves, “Do we trust Him to take care of us or don’t we?” 

That trust must be voluntary, since the Shepherd in the 23rd Psalm leads His sheep. He doesn’t drive them. But that Psalm also assures us that, if we keep our gazes fixed on our Leader, goodness and mercy will follow us. Too often, we seem to be looking over our shoulders instead—expecting something bad to finally catch up with us.

Frank Boreham’s In Pastures Green notes that the sheep who follows the Master is “proof against the shaking of all that can be shaken; secure against the taking of all that can be taken.” Granted, that Master’s priority is protection of souls rather than bodies, so it doesn’t eliminate that Valley of the Shadow of Death somewhere ahead. But, once His priorities become ours too, we can lie down in our green pastures and fear no evil.