whendeadlyforceismoral-flowchart.docLast Sunday morning when 24 year old Matthew Murray headed into the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, he had already shot ten innocent people, killing four young people at a YWAM dorm in Denver and in the parking lot of the church, and he carried with him the intent and the weapons to kill even a hundred or more members inside the 3,000 member church. 

However, the church has some twenty volunteer armed security guards, all licensed to carry arms.  One of them, Jeanne Assam, was on duty that morning.  When Jeanne heard the gun blasts, she rushed toward the gunfire.   On encountering Murray with his weapons, she shot him twice.  Murray, wounded, then shot himself in the head, killing himself. 

On Monday, Jeanne Assam reported that her faith allowed her to remain steady under pressure.  She said, “It seemed like it was me, the gunman and God.” 

Though glad that this confused young man was stopped before killing many more—even scores more—of innocents, a lot of people are uncomfortable with the idea that a church has armed security guards ready to use violence to protect its members and that in fact guns were used under the church’s authority to kill a man.  And not a few people are questioning the killing of Matthew Murray, seeing this as contradictory to the 4th commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”, and especially alien to Christ’s ethic of love that calls us to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. 

However, This Reflects A Few Significant Misunderstandings:   First, the fourth commandment is not, “Thou shall not kill”, but rather is, “Thou shall not murder,” meaning that you cannot kill an innocent person.  Though many modern Biblcal translations translate the Hebrew word for “murder” as “kill”, in the Hebrew there is a distinct difference.   This is clearly evident just in the fact that the prescribed penalty for breaking the 4^th command is that the “murderer” be killed by the community of faithful and ethical Jews, which of course be breaking the 4^th commandment if the command were meant to prevent all killing.    

Second, Christ’s teachings about loving your enemies, praying for those who persecute you, and turning the your left cheek to one who has already slapped your right cheek rather than retaliating in kind belongs to the category of personal ethics in dealing with conflict in relationships between decent people with whom we are in community rather than a social ethic concerning how a community is to protect itself from violent aggressors with no regard for human life.   

This is clear in that John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin and disciple taught Roman soldiers, some of most violent military personnel who ever lived, that faith meant that they could not use their powerful position to extort money from innocents.  He, nor Jesus when dealing with a Roman centurion who had come to believe in him, never told Roman soldiers that faith meant they had to quit the Roman army.   This silence can be understood in the light of Paul, Jesus’ apostle to the Roman world, explaining in a letter to the Roman church that God’s intention for human governments and laws is that they would reward good and punish evil.   

Third, because we are not omnipotent, desirable choices are not always within our range of options.  At times we face situations in which we are forced choose between several options, none of which is desirable to us.  Let’s examine this issue a little further. 

Of course, Decent People Never Decide That Another Person Should Die Today. It should be intuitively clear to most of us that no human being with good-will toward others ever decides, “I am going to rob some person of her life, liberty, or property today!”  However, people are robbed of their lives, liberty, and property every day.  Why?  Obviously because all things desired by decent people are not possible.   Why?  Because we are not omnipotent.  

We do not have the power to force the real world to always give us choices that include desirable alternatives.  For instance, though we may not like either alternative, we at times have to choose between allowing a person to die of gangrene or to amputate a limb. One major reason that we at times cannot choose that no one will be robbed of their lives, liberty, or property today is that people of ill-will toward others also have freedom of choice.  And, sadly, such evil people at times do choose to use their freedom to prey upon others.  No amount of good-will or praying can exorcise an evil person’s freedom to choose—including his freedom to choose to harm others. 

An Evil Person’s Evil Choice Limits The Options Available To The Rest Of Us. Once such an evil person begins acting out his intentions to prey upon innocents, it may not be within your range of choices—it may not be within the world of reality—for you to choose that all people’s rights will be respected today.   Once an evil person has begun an attack on you or other innocents, to be sane (to live in reality) is to face the fact that the only choice that may still be available to you is to choose which person will lose his life, liberty, or property—the innocent or the guilty?   

This is the choice that faced Jeanne Assam last Sunday.   As a Christian, as a person who supposedly loves others, what was she to do last Sunday?  If Jeanne Assam loved her fellow human beings, once Murray had left her with only the capacity to decide that EITHER a large number of innocents OR the perpetrator who intended to kill more humans would die, then how could she possibly have refused to stop Murray even though she could stop him only by using deadly force?   

Yes, I know.  There are times that one might be a way to stop the evil person without deadly force.  This, however, is simply to evade the question. 

“What If The ONLY Way You Can Stop An Evil Man Is To Use Deadly Force?”   The moral question is, “What is right for you to do if the only way to stop the evil man is to use deadly force?”  Is it moral to sit, content in your pacifism, saying, “At least I didn’t hurt anyone,” while the evil man slaughters innocents?  Is it possible that it is so incredibly immoral, so immeasurably selfish, for you NOT to act that by not acting you actually become a participant in the perpetrator’s evil? 

And what does Jeanne Assam as a loving person say to herself now, or what do you say to yourself if you do kill an assailant today?  That you are a killer?  NO!  What you say to yourself is, “Thank God that He allowed me to save some precious innocents’ lives today!”   

Jeanne Assam DID NOT cause a death on Sunday.  She did not decide to kill someone that day.  Matthew Murray did.  All Jeanne did was make the only moral choice that was still available to her:  that the evil person who decided to kill some innocents would be the one to die rather than more of his innocent prey! 

This is not incompatible with love.  In the circumstance, it was the only truly loving thing that could have been done.  We should thank God that Jeanne Assam had the courage and the love to do what love required.  I guarantee you, the innumerable families whose loved ones were at New Life Church last Sunday ARE THANKING God that Jeanne did so.