Christian Self Defense (Part 3)

In the second post in this series, we began examining the first argument against a Christian defending themselves: you shouldn’t take justice into your own hands. According to this view, the power of executing justice is given to the government, and not individuals.

The first argument against this view was that the government, itself, does not see self defense as a matter of justice. Justice happens after the event, and is controlled by the government. Self defense occurs during the event, and may be justified or unjustified, depending on the government’s view of what happened.

There is a second argument against this view, as well: justice is not exclusively the domain of the government.

In other words, while the government may be required to execute justice, this doesn’t preclude individuals from executing justice, as well.

To see the extreme end of the argument that only the government should execute justice, let’s consider the following situation: You go into a store and purchase a salad to eat. When you open it, you find there is a fly in the salad. First, is this a breach of justice? Obviously the answer is yes. You’ve been sold a good which cannot be used for it’s intended purpose (or, perhaps, that you would not use for intended purpose—the salad may be technically edible, but you wouldn’t eat it). It is an injustice to sell something not usable.

When you discover this injustice, do you run to the local police department, do you purchase another salad, or do you return to the store, and attempt to resolve the injustice with the seller directly? Generally, you return to the store and attempt to resolve the injustice with the seller directly. Why? Because you understand that in all things financial, you have the responsibility to resolve some injustices yourself—that the power to execute justice, in some situations, is within your hands, rather than given over to the government. This is backed up by various Scriptures, as well; for instance, in Deuteronomy 24:17, we find:

You shall not pervert the justice due to the sojourner or to the fatherless, or take a widow’s garment in pledge, but you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this.

This commandment is to the people of Israel, not to the government, as we can see from the reference to the people being slaves in Egypt, and the taking of widow’s garment in pledge. Hence, while the government can execute justice, individuals can also execute justice.

To summarize, then, self-defense is not an act of justice, or an act of taking justice into your own hands, based on the actions and statements of the State. Further, the command to execute justice is shared between the State and individuals. While we might argue over where the line between the two is drawn, clearly there is no Biblical mandate that justice is solely the responsibility of the State, nor that self-defense is specifically something reserved to the State to execute.