Guns, Graves, and American Idols

Today is no joke. I want to talk about something serious and something that is on all of our hearts. So stay tuned. Conversations with a Calvinist begins right now. And welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist. As the world knows, yesterday we all watched in horror as the news unfolded of yet another mass murder carried out, this time in an elementary school in the state of Texas.

Why This Episode Responds to the Texas Shooting and a Relevant Magazine Article

Now, I want to say a few preliminary words. One, I'm going to be sticking very closely to my notes today. I have written out my thoughts and so you'll see me referencing my notes. And I want to also mention that a friend of mine commented that with an event like this, there should be at least a 24-hour moment of silence before the Internet comments begin.

And he said, for ones like this, maybe it should be 48 hours. And I agree. Speaking publicly about this particular incident quickly and impetuously is very unadvised. And that is not what I am trying to do.

In fact, I want to try to speak with some sobriety today. But I do want to mention just because people should be quiet doesn't mean that they have. There have been all kinds of things already said all over the Internet and much of it has not been useful.

And for what it's worth, I want to say this. My point really is not to discuss the tragedy that happened yesterday, even though that is certainly going to come up. I want to say that it's really too early to measure the magnitude of the event or to assign motives to the one who perpetrated the act.

I mean, we there are just too many things unknown at this point to to have conversations that dive deep into the situation. So somebody might say, well, why why do the podcast then? You know, if you're if you're not going to address that specifically, why why do a podcast, especially one where you said from the beginning it's going to be serious?

Well, really, what today's podcast is about is about an article that was sent to me from Relevant magazine, which I thought warranted at least a short response. Now, I'm not a subscriber to Relevant magazine.

In fact, I don't think I've ever read an article from them before today. But I did read this article and it was in response to the tragedy, which is interesting because, again, it's 24 hours ago is when the news really hit.

But this article was already written, already published, already on their Web site. And. Just, you know, I have no idea. Maybe they had maybe they already had sort of an article waiting on the next tragedy or maybe the person writing it just is very talented and was able to crank out an article very quickly.

He is the senior editor. His name's Tyler Huckabee. So, again, don't know anything about him. But this article that was written was in response to the tragedy. And it makes the case that violence is the idol of America.

That is that is really the heart of the article. If you read it, he he tries to make that argument that that violence is an idol which is worshipped, trusted in, believed in, held to as sort of a pseudo god in America.

And again, it was written by Tyler Huckabee. He is relevant senior editor and he compares America's obsession with violence to Israel forming the Golden Calf when Moses was on Mount Sinai. And he says, I'm going to quote a few things from the article.

He says, first, quote, Warfare is so baked into our culture. We cannot imagine a solution that does not invoke it. This is why at this point we must ask, has violence become an idol? Well, that is the question.

And it really is the assumption that he's making in the article. By asking the question, he goes on to assume that he has nailed it, that he is correct. And he goes on to say this, quote, If violence is an idol, then it demands sacrifice.

And it is one we Americans have paid with the blood of our most vulnerable. And we'll pay it again and again because the thirst of our false god can never be sated. End quote. Now that was the part that made me want to do this podcast.

Just want to be clear. I have no bone to pick with this gentleman. I have no idea who he is. I even wonder with the name Huckabee if he's related maybe to the Huckabee family that was the one who ran for president.

Who knows? It doesn't matter. But when I read that, I thought this is well thought out, but I don't think it's really filled with wisdom. It's just filled with a rhetorical panache. If violence is an idol, then it demands sacrifice, and this god must be sated.

Those are words of a very talented writer, but as I was reading it, these are words that are intended to evoke an emotional response, intended to make people try to think of violence as the thing that is really the issue here, that violence is the issue.

Moreover, what you learn by going further into the article is that the solution is that we need to manage firearms better. That really is the point of the article, is that what the problem is is violence, but it's the guns that are causing the violence.

Therefore, if we just did away with the guns, then we would be okay. Again, I'm overstating a bit, maybe strawmanning a bit, but the heart of this is that the violence is really not violence that's the idol.

It's the guns that is the idol. Those who are familiar with me, many of you know that I have taught on the subject of personal protection in light of Scripture, and specifically in regard to the fact that I actually do teach personal protection classes.

Some of you maybe have heard me use a term. Now, I didn't coin this term. I didn't create it. I first heard it from Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman in his seminar, The Bulletproof Mind, which he gives to police and military.

I happened to have an opportunity to sit in on that seminar, and he used a term, benevolent violence. I remember hearing it, and I said, wow, that is something to consider, because that term, benevolent violence, is based on the idea that not all violence is wicked, but rather there's a form of violence which is virtuous, not the lesser of two evils, but actually could be a moral good if it is used to save life, that there can be a moral good form of violence.

I imagine that that thought would probably be right in the bullseye of Mr. Huckabee, who wrote the article, because he's assuming that people who think this way are infatuated with violence. They've sought it to be their safety and security and are willing to offer sacrifices to it.

Now, his word's not mine. We have a god of violence, and we're offering sacrifices to it. Yet the idea that violence can be a benevolent act, that it can actually be used to save, that concept did not originate in America.

It did not originate recently. That concept, that there can be benevolent violence, is actually something with a tremendous pedigree in Christian thinking. It was Augustine who gave us the very foundation which we build upon to arrive at the concept known as just war theory.

Just war theory is the idea that there are times where violence can be a moral good if it is used in a just way for the purpose of saving life. Augustine was not an American. That needs to be understood.

Augustine lived in the 4th and 5th century. He's not American. So the idea that this is just an American concept I think is wrong. And so Augustine posed the following ethical scenario. He said, imagine you were to come upon someone who was being beaten and they were about to be killed.

And the question Augustine poses, would you be morally obligated to stand idly by and not intervene based on a commitment to nonviolence? And how can one do so and justifiably state that he is loving his neighbor who is in distress?

If you see someone who is being beaten, I've always had this picture in my mind when I think about Augustine's maxim. I think about someone literally being held against a tree. Someone is smashing their head into the tree.

And I have the capacity to walk over and stop them. And the only way to do it would be through a violent act. I would have to grab them. I would have to hold them. I would have to suppress their freedom for a moment so that they would stop.

And that's the picture in my mind of what would have to happen. And yet it would be a loving act because by engaging in that, I'm stopping the person who's harming the other person. I'm not doing it out of hatred for the one.

I'm doing it out of love for the other. This is so vital that we understand this, this idea of benevolent violence, that we're doing it out of love for the one who is being hurt, who is being injured.

We're protecting life by possibly having to do violence to this person. We do that a lot. We protect life in violent ways other times. I mean, I've used this example. Maybe some might think it's a silly example, but I think it's very, very wise, is the example of CPR.

CPR is a very violent act. It cracks ribs. It can break the sternum if it's done too hard or incorrectly. But it's necessary because it saves a life. So if my child is running out into the street and I grab them and I yank them back, I may accidentally sprain their wrist by pulling them back quickly.

And that's a violent act, but it's saving them from being run over. So this is what we mean by benevolent violence. And when someone says violence is an idol, I say maybe for some. I wouldn't say that violence is not an idol for some, but I would say that there is a sense in which some of us understand the value of actually understanding how to use violence for good.

And that there is a sense in which violence can be used benevolently to protect others. I mean, this is what we teach our police and military. This is what we are supposed to be doing so that people can protect from the evil and dangerous people.

And some may claim that I have too much personal bias to teach, to even speak on this subject. People would say, you are a martial artist. I am. I have 25 years experience. I have a black belt in Shotokan karate.

I have a black belt in modern arnis. I'm also certified as an instructor with the National Rifle Association and with Sabre, which is a pepper spray manufacturer. I also have my own organization, Kodiak Life Protection Systems, where I teach people how to be instructors and teach others to protect themselves.

Therefore, some may say you can't speak fairly on this subject because you already have a bias. However, I would say this. I've never met a person who didn't have some preconceived ideas about this subject before entering into the conversation.

I've never met a person who was absolutely neutral. And at least as an instructor, I'm speaking from a position of at least having trained and thought through these issues. I have certified many people to receive their concealed weapons permits in the state of Florida because I am able to do that.

I'm able to provide that certification. In all of my classes, I talk about the serious weight that comes along with carrying a concealed weapon. You're putting yourself in a different category because you're carrying a tool that can quickly and decisively end a human life.

I make that point in all of my classes that a firearm is a tool that can quickly and decisively end a human life. And the firearm doesn't have any motivations. I compare a firearm to a skill saw. And the reason why I do that is because when I was a kid, I had a friend who cut a portion of his toes off with a skill saw.

He was cutting a piece of wood. What he was cutting fell, and the saw fell and hit his foot, cut into his foot. And I always thought, man, skill saws are so dangerous. And I wouldn't use one for years.

Finally, I decided I wanted to get into woodworking. And so I had to learn how to use a skill saw and a table saw and a band saw and all those different things, a miter saw. And I started to learn that it isn't the saw that's really the danger.

It's me because I have to always be responsible for the tool that I'm using and understand how it works and the dangers of how it works. And to alleviate any accidents, I have to understand that tool is going to cut whatever's in front of it, whether it's a board or my thumb.

It's going to cut whatever's there. Same way with a gun. It's going to shoot whatever's in front of it. It doesn't act on its own. If you load a rifle and you set it down on a shelf and you leave it and no one ever touches it, it's never acted on by any outside stimuli.

It's never going to do anything on its own. It doesn't have a will. It doesn't have a motive. It's a tool. And this is where we have to step back and we have to say, okay, Mr. Huckabee is arguing that it's the idol of violence, but the tool, the way to solve it is dealing with the tool that is the firearm.

And, again, I would take much issue with what he had to say. Now, I don't want to say everything he said was wrong. I do want to say that there are things in Mr. Huckabee's article that are true, to a point.

I do believe that there are those who are fascinated with violence. I think our television movies and things do prove that, violence for violence' sake. But, again, this, again, is hardly limited to America.

To say that this is America's problem or our current age that this is our problem, I think, is overstating the case. Boxing and wrestling have both a long history. Both of them mentioned in the Bible, actually.

Combative sports have been around for a very long time. People like to do combat as an activity. Gladiators were battling in arenas far before Columbus ever sailed the ocean blue. So, you can't really blame that on America.

And men were carrying out mass killings long before the Chinese ever invented gunpowder. So, you know, have you read Genesis? There's a story about the genocide of the Shechemites that was pretty rough.

We just studied this in our church just a few weeks ago. So, really my issue with the article is not that he didn't say some true things. It's really my issue with overstating some of his case, the argument that America has an idol that's violent, as if this is only an American problem, as if this is only a modern problem.

Violence has been around forever. And assuming that all violence is necessarily wrong, because he does seem to indicate in the article that if you can't find any other way to solve the problem, then we're not doing enough.

We need to find nonviolent ways to deal with violent crime. And the issue with that is sometimes violence is what is necessary to end a violent encounter, as has been often said by many firearms instructors.

Many times the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. And I didn't invent that phrase, but that is a phrase I believe in, because at a certain point there are some people that are not going to be stopped unless they are stopped with violence.

They are intending to do evil, and the only way that they are going to stop doing evil is if they are acted upon in a way that forces them to stop, and that is using benevolent violence. Now, I want to read his conclusion.

This is a conclusion to the article. He says, quote, We offer up our prayers, but for what? What are we praying for specifically? We dare not take action against our idols. They have fearsome power over us, and until that power is ground into powder and spread into the water, they will continue to exact their terrible demands.

Again, he's a good writer. He's writing with colorful language and good use of words here. But what is he saying? He's saying that his argument in the article was violence was the problem, but really it's the guns that are the problem.

And so he's sort of done a bait and switch. He has sort of said, you know, I'm going to prove, or at least seek to prove, this was his argument, I'm going to seek to prove that violence is the idol, but really it's the guns.

If we just did something about the guns, then that idol of violence would go away. But you see, that's a non sequitur. One does not lead to the other, Mr. Huckabee. Doing away with guns is not going to do away with the violent heart of men, and that's the problem.

Your article offers no solutions. It only offers vague finger-pointing at a problem which you identify as an idol of violence and that needs to be ground into powder. But what does that look like? You don't tell us.

You don't give us any ideas. You mentioned common sense, gun control, but since when do any one of our leaders function with any modicum of common sense? Have you seen our leaders? They don't make a lot of sense most of the time.

And he says that he wants a reasonable debate, but he dismisses out of hand the reality that there are legitimate desires on the part of many people in leadership to take guns away. He calls that a straw man.

He says anybody who says they're trying to take guns away is a straw man. But how are we to have a debate with you if you don't consider the possibility that there are, in fact, those who want to have a conversation about eliminating the ability for people to protect themselves with firearms?

In fact, there's an article from The Atlantic by David Frame, September 1st, 2021. It's entitled, How to Persuade Americans to Give Up Their Guns. And he says this in the article. He says, The way to reduce gun violence is by convincing ordinary responsible handgun owners that their weapons make them, their families, and those around them less safe.

Again, that's not a politician. That's an article written in The Atlantic. But still, this is the idea that is on the minds of many people. So to say that that's a straw man, that there are people who just want everyone to give up their guns, and to live in this sort of utopian idea of never having to use violence to solve any problem, this is, you've called it a straw man, but my friend, it's a reality.

There are those that have demanded that. And again, I know the argument, well, nobody's trying to take away your shotgun. Nobody wants to keep you from hunting. We just want to take away your assault rifles.

But then you ask them, can you define what an assault rifle is? And they say, well, it's a gun that holds more than this many bullets, or it's a gun that is an automatic, or it's a gun that's this. Typically, they don't even understand how guns function.

And they don't understand that most of what they call assault rifles, which are the black rifles that hold more than 10 rounds, the ones that hold the magazines that hold sometimes 20 or 30 rounds, that's usually what they're talking about with assault rifles.

But those are still semi-automatic rifles. They still have the same internal function as does a semi-automatic hunting rifle. It just has a larger capacity magazine. So generally, there's not a lot of knowledge about the subject that they're even talking about.

I've heard them talk about—there was a man, I can't think of his name right now, but there was a politician who was talking about guns, and he was so ignorant. He had no idea what he was talking about.

But these are the folks that want to control the conversation and say that all of us are just building straw men by saying that there are people out there that actually want to take away guns. But again, is that really the issue?

The Idol of Ignorance, Human Wickedness, and the Limits of Gun Control

See, here's the problem. Again, going back to the article is Mr. Huckabee, in the article he argues that violence is an idol, but the issue is guns. If you read the last part, I just read it to you, you read that last part is that we need to deal with gun control measures.

That's really the heart of it. So I want to propose an equally dangerous idol as a counter to Mr. Huckabee's article. Mr. Huckabee's article is that violence is an idol, and if you read deeper, it's guns that are the problem.

Well, I want to propose that there's another idol, an idol that I don't know if Mr. Huckabee would agree with. He, writing for what is supposed to be a Christian publication, I would assume he would call himself a Christian.

But I want to propose that the dangerous idol that's not being considered is the idol of ignorance, and it's ignorance when it comes to violence and human behavior. There are people in this world who are hell-bent on doing harm.

They have no remorse. They have no conscience. This is the type of person who murders their grandmother and then goes into an elementary school and murders as many children and teachers as possible. They have no remorse.

They have no conscience. And what often is the case is instead of addressing evil as evil, we excuse evil as some form of mental deficiency, some form of mistreatment. This person behaved this way because of this or that.

We refuse to recognize what the Bible tells us, and that is that men have wicked hearts, and when their hearts are allowed to express their wickedness, sometimes it is in grievous and terrible and explosive ways that we can't even imagine until it happens, and then we're reminded again that total depravity actually is true.

It's not about guns. It's about the heart of man. On October 13, 2021, in Norway, there was a man who killed five people, and he injured four more, and he did so using a bow and arrow. This was October 13, 2021.

That's less than a year ago. He attacked, killed five, injured four more with a bow and arrow. There's video pictures online that you can see, and according to ABC News, he's probably not even going to go to prison.

I'll quote the ABC News article. It says, although he has confessed, he may not end up in a Norwegian prison. Prosecutors want him sentenced to compulsory mental health care, saying that he was in a strongly deviated state of mind during last year's attack, according to charging documents obtained by the Associated Press.

He wasn't a wicked man. He was just mentally disturbed. I point this out not only to say here is a man who killed people without a gun. That's obvious. If the guns go away, they're just going to find another way to kill people.

That is the fact, but also to address the response by lawmakers. He's not evil. He's just mentally ill. We've abandoned the idea of calling evil evil. In fact, our nation has become very good at doing what Isaiah forbid.

Isaiah said, do not call good evil an evil good, but we've become good at that. We've abandoned the idea that people are evil. Even in film, we have now made excuses for every villain. Every new story is now a villain origin story where they're trying to show us their motivations and why Cruella de Vil wanted to kill dogs.

That's okay because she went through this difficult time or why this person over here did this or whatever. No one wants to face the truth that while all people are sinners, some are exceptionally good at expressing that sinful nature and some people need to simply be dealt with as evil.

The issue facing us is not really an issue of guns. Even though guns are a tool used by evil people, they're also a tool used by good people, but the issue isn't guns and it's not bows and arrows. The issue is the wicked heart of men and women.

Until we deal with that, no amount of legislation will ever be enough. Thank you for listening today. I know this has been a serious episode. I hope something that I have said has been helpful, and I pray that God will bless you.

Thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist. May God bless you.