Christians as Soft Targets

Reprint of an essay called Christians as Soft Targets written by Howard Kainz on December 5, 2015 (Part 1 of 2)

 

The gun lobby and their sympathizers (and some cartoonists) have recently been bringing public attention to the fact that “gun-free” signs on the entrances of museums, schools, churches, shopping malls, etc. can be an unintended invitation to homicidal maniacs or suicidal nihilists who want to take as many possible souls with them in exiting the world. Christianity is in a sense a “gun-free” zone. The Christian religion is so devoted to peace that it could incite similar aggressive responses in malevolent persons or systems. There are, of course, violent Christians and Christian leaders, but in all of the New Testament there is not one sentence that could reasonably incite a Christian to violence or to forced conversions.

 

Quakers and other Christian pacifists are in part justified for interpreting Christianity as going even further than Buddhism in avoiding all types of violence. They focus on Jesus’ messages to “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39), “go the extra mile” (Matthew 5:41), “forgive seventy times seven times” (Matthew 18:22), “lend without expecting repayment” (Luke 6:35), “give them your coat also” (Luke 6:29), and “put away the sword" (Matthew 26:52). Ethicists now would call such rules “supererogatory”; going far beyond the basic requirements of duty and justice.

 

There is nothing in the New Testament about the basic rights of self-defense. St. Augustine and other theologians thus needed to wrestle with questions about the justification of wars. They came up with the strict criteria of “just war theory,” requiring multiple conditions for declaring wars and multiple restrictions of conduct when engaging in wars. Just war theory is rational. The New Testament goes beyond, but does not abrogate, the natural law of self-preservation and its corollaries. An individual may go over and above duty in certain cases to “turn the other cheek,” but social and political duties of those in authority may call for use of force to preserve lives and sustenance.

There is, however, a special problem for a “soft-target” religion: It could be the proverbial “sitting duck”, not only for unscrupulous cultures and governments, but also for a militant political religious cult. As I mentioned in a previous column, the Islam we are dealing with in the contemporary world harbors no supererogatory exhortations to non-violence. The fact that Islam is constantly referred to as a “religion of peace” is an anomaly, a species of Orwellian “new-speak”; in the same way that murdering the unborn is called a “reproductive right,” institutionalized sodomy is called “marriage,” and sex has been replaced with “gender.”

 

The stark difference between the concept of martyrdom in Christianity and Islam helps to bring out the dangers for “soft targets.” For Christianity, the martyr deserving of eternal bliss through the vision of God is one willing to suffer and die as a witness for his faith. For Islam, the martyr deserving of an eternal bliss of sensual pleasure is one who is killed while killing “unbelievers” (Quran 9:111), even unknown crowds of men, women, and children, thus advancing the jihadist movement in the world.