Violence
1. The key to the proper use of
violence in history is virtue and integrity which uses authority without
abusing authority. There is nothing honourable, however, in the violence of
activism. Civil disobedience is evil.
2. Arrogance abuses authority and
has no sense of responsibility. Therefore because arrogance rejects authority
it uses violence. Using violence under these circumstances is an expression of
evil. Terrorism and terrorist organisations are evil; military in uniform in a
nation is honourable. (The Russian and the Chinese communists use violence
because their ideology is evil and will not work. Therefore their violence is
the power of lawlessness and the power of evil)
3. The lawless abuse of power
through violence is anti-Christian and anti-God.
4. The criminal uses a gun which
gives him power over law-abiding citizens. Hence, the criminal misuses the gun
for illegal power and illegal violence. But because the criminal has a gun it
does not follow that we should forbid the possession of firearms by law-abiding
citizens. The fault does not lie with the weapon, the fault lies with the
criminal. Criminals are criminals whether they have weapons or not.
5. The violence of tyranny and the
murder function of the criminal cannot be blamed, then, on firearms. It is not
the fact that a gun has a trigger, it is the fact that someone pulls the
trigger.
6. Murder and terrorism is a matter
of the volition of the soul, not the gun in the hand. In other words, you
cannot stop crime and violence by passing laws against the means employed by
criminals.
7. The only way to meet the violence
of evil is with the greater violence of integrity and honour. In establishment
there are two systems of honour and integrity: law enforcement and the military.
That means you do not take the law into your own hands. The violence of
righteousness in law enforcement is designed to restrain the violence of crime.
The violence of righteousness in military function provides national freedom so
that the citizens of the client nation can function in privacy and freedom, and
under the principles of the sacredness of property and life.
Our Lord demonstrates this principle
of doctrine at the second advent for He uses the violence of righteousness to
express His justice in both warfare and the judgment of the baptism of fire.
And He ends the last great world war of history by annihilation of the enemy.
Both are a matter of violence.