TGC Imports Another Brit To Lecture Us on Guns!?!?! - Part 2

Okay, let's get this gun control debate going. Let's get it over with, part two. Nah, I'm just kidding. I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to it. I hope you had a great weekend. I had a good weekend and I had a good Lord's Day and all of that kind of thing.

I hope you did as well. This morning I went fishing and I went, I woke up really early, like 4 .30 and I got to the lake or the river at five and I was really excited. It's dark, it's perfect. So I throw my line out there.

I get a fish on the very first cast. It's not a huge one, but you know, I'm thinking, wow, this is going to be a trout slay fest. I'm just going to be catching trout like crazy. So first cast, got a fish and then two hours of nothing.

I had a few bites, but I did not hook anything. And man, I just, fishing is so weird. It's just, how does that happen? How do you get one fish, one cast, one fish and then nothing? I don't get it, but hey, it's all good.

It's all good. I'm thinking about starting a fishing channel. Yeah, not so much on this channel. This channel is going to remain, you know, sort of the typical content that we do, but I'm thinking about starting a new channel all about fishing.

So fishing tutorials for people that want to get into it. A lot of people want to get into fishing these days. Look, the world is crazy. So get outside and do some old school stuff. In any case, let's stop delaying here.

Winsomeness, Christian Goals, and the Civil Authority

Let's get to this. What I figured I'd do is I'd try to display true winsomeness, right? Because we all make fun of the word winsome and Big Eva, the way that they are winsome. It's totally ridiculous.

It's totally unreal. It's not, it's totally artificial and it's not really winsome. It's like, this is not a winsome debate. These debates, these good faith debates, they're not good faith. They're not debates either.

They're not good faith. And it's just fake, phony version of winsomeness. But being winsome is actually not bad, like actually winsome, right? So let me just try to demonstrate what I think being winsome is all about.

So let's do this. We're gonna get the pro gun control guy up here. So nothing's more annoying than a gun control advocate. Let's just face it. So let's see how much I can control myself and be winsome in the face of what is sure to be abject stupidity, starting now.

You can't say stupid when you're trying to be winsome. Well, it's great to be with you. Thank you for having me. There is a How am I supposed to be winsome? This is the problem. All right, pause the winsomeness for a second.

How am I supposed to be winsome when a guy with a British accent is trying to lecture Americans about gun control? I should never have promised to try to be winsome. This is gonna be so hard. I don't take lectures on gun control from Brits, obviously.

This is hard. Why didn't anybody tell me? Is he a Brit? I don't know, he's got an accent, I know that. Oh, wow. Wow. If I could just unpause my winsomeness and then say unwinsome things, I don't know if it really counts.

So, okay, starting, I'm gonna be winsome, starting now.

And distinguished tradition of British people crossing the Atlantic and telling the Americans that they should lay down their guns. And we're having this conversation just a few hundred yards away from the Capitol building and the presidential mansion that my ancestors burnt down two centuries ago.

So it's probably worth clarifying that my paper today, this presentation is not motivated by a desire to get any of you to surrender your empire, become loyal subjects of Her Majesty, and give us back our tea.

Although I would not be untoward, that kind of thing. But if anything, it's actually motivated by a more serious desire, which overlaps, I think, very closely with Bob's, which is a desire to save American lives, particularly those who are most vulnerable in society, rather than to take

I think so. One of the things I'll say right off the bat here, and man, this is gonna be difficult, but that was a funny thing about giving the empire back. That's funny. I gotta give him credit for that.

But I think one of the things that I think a lot of Christians get tripped up in, and this is how they end up supporting all kinds of things that we should not be supporting, is that we actually have the wrong goals, right?

If you see what he just said there, he said that there's a lot of overlap in what he believes and what the previous person with the pro-gun presentation believed, and that's we ought to be trying to save as many lives as possible.

And while it's good to try to save lives, when it comes to the law and when it comes to the civil governing authority, actually, we have a more important goal. We have a more important mission, I think, as civil governing authorities.

And so, pretending I was a civil governing authority, actually, I should be seeking to honor Christ in everything that I do, right? So, as I'm an instrument of wrath in God's hands, I'm the revenger, I'm the deacon, I'm the servant of God.

That's how I ought to look at myself if I was gonna be a civil governing authority. Now, I'm not a civil governing authority, at least in the traditional sense, but if I was, my goal is actually not to save as many lives as possible.

It's actually to honor Christ and to do what Christ has commanded me to do. I'm his servant, I'm his deacon. That's what it says in the Bible, I'm his deacon. And so, therefore, my job is ministerial, right?

I'm a minister, right? I'm not someone who decides what's right and decides how to do things. I'm one who takes orders from the Most High, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. He's my Lord, he's my King.

And so, I have to organize society and do justice according to what Christ says in the scripture. See, because when you say, oh, we should be trying to save as many lives as possible, that's the goal, which is something that Jonathan Lehman argues as well, you can justify all kinds of nonsense that we should not be doing, things that are unbiblical, in the name of saving lives.

So, how could people that have the same goal, to save as many lives as possible, as Christians come up with two different ideas on how to do it, like in this debate? Well, the reason why that's happening is because one person is submitting to Christ in what he said the civil governing authority is for, and the other person, Andrew, is really actually not submitting to Christ.

They have, Andrew has another plan for how to save lives. Christ has one plan, Andrew has a different one. And so, as Christians, it's good to want to save lives, but obviously, honoring Christ and doing what Christ has commanded is of the utmost importance.

And if you do that, you actually will save lives, and you won't be tricked by schemes that are intended to save lives. Like, do we even know that people that were mandated to get the vaccine, were they actually protected or hurt by the vaccine?

Well, we actually don't really even know that. The information is still coming in. It certainly doesn't seem like it's really helped very much, but the point is not actually that. Like, as Christians, we shouldn't be deciding, okay, as Christians, we got to figure out if this vaccine is good or not, because we got to save as many lives as possible, and we'll demand that we'll do the mandates based on if it's good or not.

That's actually not the Christian way. The Christian way is, what does God tell me to do? Well, this is none of my business, because the civil governing authority does not have authority over what kind of chemicals to inject into your body.

And so, I stay out of it, and that's what a Christian ought to be doing. It's not about saving lives, it's about honoring Christ and staying in your lane, staying in your God-ordained role is what it's about.

In any case, let's go.

Gun Violence Statistics and the Limits of a Utilitarian Argument

Now, you all know the statistics, I expect. If you don't, a paragraph, if you'll bear with me. America is a striking outlier amongst rich countries when it comes to gun deaths, and indeed, homicide rates in general are significantly higher here than elsewhere in the rich world.

Over 100 people are shot and killed every day in this country. 25 times as many people are murdered with firearms than in other rich countries proportionately, and 28 times as many women are murdered with firearms in this country.

Guns appear to substantially increase the total number of homicides. Last year, there were as many murders in Philadelphia as there were in England, although England has 30 times the population that Philadelphia does, and those deaths are disproportionately clustered amongst poor communities, African Americans, Black Americans are 10 times more likely to be shot dead than white Americans.

One million American women have been shot at by a domestic partner. Firearms are the leading cause of death for American children, and so on. Now, I doubt there's anybody here who isn't, see, I hope there's nobody here who isn't seriously troubled by those statistics and doesn't see them as a significant problem.

The question, of course, is not, is that bad? The question is whether anything can or should be done about that, and if so, what it is.

Right, and central to that is whether or not something can or should be done about that. Central to that is not, can I come up with a scheme that sounds pretty good? What it should be is, what does the scripture say regarding this?

How do we handle this situation with murders and assaults and various kinds of crimes that you could do with a firearm? It's not like the Bible's silent about this, and this is the point, right? There are some of us that pretend that the Bible really doesn't actually speak to these things, and so we've got to kind of fill in the gaps with whatever sounds good and might save as many lives as we possibly can.

Of course, nobody could ever know that, but that's actually not true. The Bible actually does address murder. It does address assaults. It does address these kinds of things, and so that has to be central.

What does the scripture, what authority does the scripture give to the church, to the individual families, to the civil governing authorities regarding gun violence, regarding murders? We have a high murder rate.

Okay, what does God say about murders? God is not silent about this, and God is not ambiguous about this. God is not vague about this. This is not something that's really up for debate for someone that's honestly dealing with the text.

So when we're talking about gun violence and you hear the statistics, it makes you sick to your stomach, and it's just disgusting, I can't believe it, we have to think, okay, what can and should be done about this according to God's commands, according to the authority that God gives to the various spheres of authority?

That's what we should be laser-focused on. It's got to be scripturally based. It's got to be something that the Bible either commands explicitly or the good and necessary consequence, and we obviously don't want to play too fast and loose with that, but yes, that's the point.

And so if you do that, there is no argument for gun control, none.

Australia, Gun Restrictions, and the Question of Civilian Arms

Australia faced that question in 1996. After 35 people were killed in a mass shooting in Tasmania, the government took robust action banning all semi-automatic and automatic weapons. They imposed longer and stricter waiting periods and more rigorous licensing and storage restrictions, and they required a genuine reason to own a gun, which included hunting and target shooting, but did not include self-defense.

Since then, the government has brought back one million semi-automatic weapons, halving the total number of gun-owning households in the country. The number of gun homicides has dramatically reduced in that time, and the overall homicide rate has halved.

Now, I mention the Australian example because I'm a sort of squishy British guy who probably doesn't have the moral authority to speak on these things to this audience, but the Australian example also because Australia seems to me to share a lot of cultural traits with the USA, which European countries like mine do not.

Australia, like America, has a low population density, dangerous animals, a legacy of hunting, a wild west, a popular culture of rugged masculinity, so a lot of cultural things which it has in common with the States, which might not be true in Britain, but it also has a tragic recent history of mass shooting, and interestingly, shares with America a high popular support for tightening firearm restrictions.

Of course, there are additional political and legal obstacles to reform in the US, which do not exist in Australia, but that won't trouble most people in this audience because pro-life Christians in this country have a track record of advocacy for what they believe is right in the face of congressional intransigence or whatever.

Now, here's the thing, and I haven't watched this, so I don't know what he's gonna do, but I'm gonna predict that he's actually not gonna address any real issues regarding deaths and murder rates and things like that when it comes to the governments that perpetrate them, right?

Because here's the thing, he's really only telling part of the story. Okay, they had this murder problem, and so they made it hard to own guns, they banned semi-automatic firearms, whatever it was he said.

I'm not gonna go back and get the details, right? But the thing is, when guns are confiscated, there are also a lot of unintended consequences, and we have to have a longer time horizon than just what happened in the next few decades.

The murder rates went down. Okay, that's really good, but also, let's look at what also happens with governments that ban guns. Maybe they don't have a high gun murder rate, but then there's atrocities committed by the governments themselves, and the people are defenseless against that.

So the thing is, you can't just take a few of these variables and say, oh, see, it's perfect, because there's a lot more to this story than meets the eye. But again, it's not really about what the governments can and can't do disconnected from the commands from God.

We really gotta stay focused on this. Yeah, sure, maybe Tasmania or Australia or wherever he said did this, and it had this result in the next few decades, whatever, but that's actually all irrelevant because what does the scripture say the civil governing authority is supposed to do?

What kinds of general equity laws can we glean from the scripture? What's the role of the civil governing authority? And all of this. That's actually what matters. Not so much these statistics and all of that.

That's an interesting kind of sideshow, and of course, we can dispute all this, and we can say, look, you have a short time horizon, we need to have a longer time horizon. Do you properly adjudicate the risks of this?

But all of that is kind of a sideshow. What matters is what does the scripture allow the civil governing authority to do? Because that's, as Christians, we have to insist that the civil governing authority rules as a deacon, a servant of God, which it says that in the scripture.

You can't deny that. Promoting what's good according to the scripture and punishing evildoers according to the scripture. That's what we ought to be demanding. That's the only thing that matters in a debate like this.

These statistics are interesting, but, and we can debate about them and we can argue about them, but really at the end of the day, that's not what a Christian ought to be debating a Christian against.

Four Claims About Gun Violence and the Christian’s Duty

My case today basically involves four claims and I've already made the first two. I'm going to save the fourth one to the very end for fear of losing the audience. I hope I'm reading it correctly on that front.

But the first two claims I've made are these. One, gun violence is a massive and tragic problem which afflicts America far more than comparable nations and disadvantaged Americans significantly worse than anybody else.

And that is a grievous injustice. That's the first claim.

There's a problem. The second claim The other thing as Christians we need to understand is that that problem could have lots of other reasons for it, right? It's like, like you can't, obviously you just can't blame that on guns.

That's a problem. That's a spiritual problem that there's so many murders here. And we have to, we do have to figure out why that is. We do have to address that, but we have to address that in a godly way, a way that does not use disordered authority.

I think I have some ideas as far as why there's so much gun violence in the United States. It has absolutely nothing to do with the guns themselves. I've got some ideas about that. But again, that actually is a side issue.

What we're talking about here is, does the civil governing authority have the right to ban guns or whatever, you know, common sense gun laws that you want to, you know, put into play there? Does the civil governing authority have that authority?

And the answer for a Christian is no, it does not.

National examples suggest that this injustice could be reduced if tighter gun restrictions were applied. And domestic examples do as well, because regression analysis comparing US states has shown that greater restrictions are strongly correlated with lower gun deaths.

Now, there's a lot of debate, unsurprisingly, about which drives which, but the correlation is itself interesting, I think. The third claim I want to make is that the benefits of tighter gun control, both for potential victims and for the communities in which they live and die, outweigh the limitations on personal freedom that they involve.

As I said, I'll save you the fourth one for later. Let's assume for a moment that no one here is proposing an absolute ban on all potentially deadly weapons for all citizens. So I don't propose a ban on carving knives.

I don't propose a ban on baseball bats or moving vehicles, even though all three of them can be used to kill people and have been. I don't even propose a ban on hunting rifles or target ranges, both of which are actually legal in the UK and both of which I have used myself, for what that may be worth.

But on the other hand, at the same time, I'm going to assume that nobody here believes that there should be no limits on the potentially deadly weapons that a citizen can own. I would be amazed if anybody watching this thought that a private citizen should be allowed to own nuclear devices or cluster bombs or howitzers or VX gas on the grounds that a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state.

In other words, you have both extremes, and I don't think anyone's really at either of those positions. There may be some, but that's certainly not where I am. I'm pretty sure it's not where Bob is either.

In other words, I suspect that most of us already believe that citizens have the right to bear some arms and that the right to bear other arms should be infringed no matter what the Second Amendment says and so on.

And put differently, there's a spectrum with carving knives at one end and weapons of mass destruction at the other end. At the light end, we might issue a warning on the packaging or refuse to sell them to children or restrict their carriage in public spaces, including the space in which I'm speaking now, in which guns are not allowed.

At the heavy end, we would refuse anyone found making or owning one of those heavier items of domestic terrorism. There's a right.

I assume he's in a private location. And look, a private location has the right to say anything they want to about what they own. If I don't want you to bring an AR -15 to my house, guess what? You don't have a right to bring an AR -15 to my house.

This is my house, right? If I don't want you to have an AR -15 and a business that I own, that's my job. It's my business. It's my property, right? So that's not what we're talking about here.

It's in each case, they're not absolute. They're balanced with the right of other people to cut up their stake. In other words, that's why you're allowed to own a carving knife. They all play baseball, but they're also balanced with the rights not to be blown to smithereens while walking home from the office.

We think the benefits of using carving knives are greater than the risk of being stabbed by them, meanwhile, we think that the personal freedom to own a Molotov cocktail is dramatically outweighed by the chance of killing or maiming an innocent person.

Our assessment of where something sits... I don't understand that.

That's a weird one, because a Molotov cocktail is something that you make with stuff that you have at home, you know, a bottle of liquor and a rag, and I don't even understand that. So like, but for that to make sense, you'd have to be talking about banning liquor bottles.

I mean, obviously, like, you can't, like, obviously, like, making a bomb, a Molotov cocktail, to like, hurt someone or break a house or whatever is illegal, of course, but what is he talking about, banning liquor bottles and rags?

I don't understand. That's weird.

It's a weird example. It's on that spectrum. Trying to be Winston here. I think it's a function of lethality, how many people it could kill, teleology, what it's designed for, and utility, what it's typically used for.

And that would be a way of grading the spectrum. Maybe we could talk about that in a moment. So let me ask this, on that spectrum, where would we place assault weapons?

Machine guns, AR -15s? You notice, like, there's just no scripture in here. Like, there's none. He's not referencing the Bible at all. I mean, maybe he will at some point. This is all like, how can we come up with an idea to allegedly save lives?

And the thing is, you just simply don't know because you're not God if this is gonna save lives or cost lives. You can quote statistics, but again, we can argue the time horizons. We can argue things he's leaving out because he's leaving out stuff in those.

He's got, like, two variables. He's like, gun control and death counts. Like, those are the two variables, and pretends like that means something. It's obviously a lot more complicated than that, but again, all of that is sort of irrelevant.

We need to be talking about the scripture here. This is a Christian debate. This is an alleged debate. This is a Christian conversation, right? And so this is not a conversation in the halls of secular academia where, of course, the statistics and all this stuff, that's all they have.

This is about what the scripture says, right? It's very weird.

Some weapons that Australia banned 25 years ago successfully. And I put it to you that when it comes to lethality, teleology, and utility, how likely it is to kill, what it's designed for, what it's used for, all of those weapons, the weapons that are assault weapons, AR -15s or whatever, are very much at the heavier end of the spectrum.

They are designed

Jesus, the Sword, and the Rejection of Christian Pacifism

When Jesus was walking the earth, there was a time when he told his disciples to sell their cloak or their staff and buy a sword, right? A sword is literally only for lethality. It's only to kill. That's what it's for.

It's for killing. And it's like, so like, okay, so why did Jesus say that? And of course we know he was trying to teach something, you know, different, whatever. But like, but again, it's like, why aren't we bringing any scripture into this, right?

Like we're talking about this hypothetical stuff, all the lethality and the theology and stuff like that. And it kind of like dazzles your mind. Like, whoa, this sounds like a really good argument. But again, for a Christian, this is not the point.

This is not the question. We can argue lethality and teleology all day long. And really, what's the difference? To injure and kill people.

They're used to injure and kill people with appalling frequency. And in that sense, they're more like a Molotov cocktail than a baseball bat or a carving knife. So if implementing Does he know what a Molotov cocktail is?

I just, it's a very weird example.

A, Australian-style restrictions, which are not as tight as British ones. But if implementing the Australian

Like nobody sells Molotov cocktails. Like you make them at home. That's what the whole point is. That's why it's used, because it's something that the common person can use. Like, it's just very weird, very strange.

I have something to say in my brain, but I'm trying to be winsome right now. So I'm not gonna say it. Being a Christian man, I can't say it.

For innocent people being killed by them or even close to it, then that benefit should take precedence over the personal freedom to own them. And nothing I've said so far is uniquely Christian, you will have noticed.

This is a common good argument that could be used in the public square, regardless of whether the audience is evangelical or even Christian, because many who make the laws are not. And that's a deficiency.

You see, it's so interesting. He just said, look, none of this is unique to a Christian. You can make this argument to anybody and all of that. And he presents that as if that's a good thing. No, that's a bad thing.

We need to be referencing the scripture, right? That's the authority, right? Because otherwise, who cares? It's just your idea. It's just your opinion. So I'm very confused as to why he would think that actually helps his case.

That hurts your case. Because the point is God has definitively spoken on these issues, on what to do with murderers, what to do with people who assault other people, what to do with people who steal and things like that.

And maybe someone dies in the commission of the crime or something like that. Like we have a word from the Lord. Why would we lay down this word that's just so good? It's so helpful. It's like such a blessing to have it.

Why would we set it aside as if that helps our case? By the way, while he was talking, I just looked up quickly what a Molotov cocktail is because I started doubting myself on what a Molotov cocktail is.

Because he's like so confidently talking about it as if it's like a weapon of war. Look at this. This is what a Molotov cocktail is. It's a homemade explosive device using a flammable thing and a glass bottle.

A lot of people use alcohol, but you could use anything. And a rag for the fuse and you throw it. Like, what is he talking? Is he actually talking about banning alcohol or glass bottles? What is he talking about?

Well, my fourth claim is more radical. The fourth claim is that Christians should oppose the use of deadly weapons on principle because we're committed to the way of Jesus, the way of the cross, the practice of nonviolence.

Followers of Jesus should oppose the use of AR -15s or machine guns in self-defense for the same reason that we should oppose landmines, drone strikes, capital punishment, abortion, you name it. Christians should never kill people.

It's so interesting. That's just, it's not true at all. That's not true. Christians should never kill people. That's not true, number one. And number two, did you notice like he's got such, I would use stronger language because I'm trying to be winsome, I won't.

His categories are all mixed up. Like, I agree, Christians should be against drone strikes completely because drone strikes are oftentimes indiscriminate and they're a weapon of war. Typically offensive wars is what they're used for.

You don't usually defend yourself with a drone strike. You're usually going into other people's countries and handing out a little bit of peacekeeping, if you know what I mean. Christians should be against that.

But then he's like, you should also, and the same breath, he's like, and be against defending yourself with an AR -15. What, what? Christians should never kill. Where would he get that? I mean, does he, has, the Bible is full of killing and some of it is bad killing and some of it is good killing, killing that needs to happen, killing that a Christian ought to engage himself in if the time came kind of thing.

So yeah, trying to be winsome. Let's just hear him out.

Key case to make in 60 seconds, but here goes. Jesus never used violence against people, whether to defend himself or to defend the innocent. Incorrect.

That's not true. So he's lied right off the bat. And honestly, I'm being winsome here. Dude, you just lied. What do you think the chord, the whip that he made was? When he was driving people out of the money temple was for?

Like, did he just have it and he didn't use it? It says he drove them out. What do you think that was for? Like, what do you think that scene was like? I mean, I know that in my own reading of the scriptures, I oftentimes disconnect it from reality.

And this is something I've struggled to fight against. You've got to put real life into the scripture, right? Because it didn't happen like, Jesus wasn't walking around like Spock and saying, excuse me, money changers, it's illogical for you to be here.

Now I've made this whip. Of course, I'm not gonna use it. I'm just gonna, I don't even really know why I made it. But if you would please leave the temple area, this is not honoring to Christ. This is not honoring to God.

Like, that's not how it was. Like, in the scripture when it says that Jesus, when he's preaching, right? He's at the, I believe it's the Feast of Booths. I think it's Feast of Booths. And in the scripture, it says, he cried out with a loud voice.

I have the tendency of reading that and taking the life out of it. But no, when it says he cried out with a loud voice, you know what he sounded like? He probably sounded like that street preacher at the baseball game you went to the other day that you were embarrassed by.

Crying out with a loud voice, repent, repent. That's probably what he sounded like. You gotta put life into it, man. Like, and I'm not saying this is necessarily easy to do because when I read it, sometimes reading just turns into an academic pursuit.

And that's a problem when you're reading the scripture because the scripture is a true story. It's real life. Jesus had real emotions. One of my favorite passages in the scripture is, and this is one of the ones I've street preached on a number of times, is Lazarus come forth, right?

So Lazarus dies and there's a passage in that section where Jesus, it says in the ESV, he was deeply troubled and all of that. And the KJV, I think, I believe, it says he was angry. And then it says Jesus wept, right?

The shortest sentence in the Bible, Jesus wept. And we read that and we're just like, oh, it must've been like that Indian guy when he sees the landfill and the little tear goes like that you know what I mean?

Like, you know that commercial. That's not what it says in the Greek. Jesus didn't weep like this with a little tear drop like that. Jesus was weeping. Like the emotional language in that passage is Jesus was weeping, weeping.

Like I would probably say that it was closer to an ugly cry than, and I would never call Jesus ugly, so don't hear me being sacrilegious, but you know what I'm saying, is closer to that than the little tear drop of the Indian guy.

You can't take the life out of the scripture. Let's hear him out. I mean, he's just told, that's a lie, dude. Like, why would you lie like that? I think I know why, because the Bible doesn't make the case you're trying to make.

So you've gotta come up with something.

New Testament Passages on Nonresistance and the Example of Christ

He teaches his followers to live the same way, not resisting evil and turning the other cheek. Matthew 5, Luke 6. Every time a disciple tries or threatens to use violence in the gospels, even in defense of the innocent, Christ rebukes them.

Luke 9, Luke 22, John 19. The apostles regularly present Jesus' suffering as an example for believers to follow. Romans 12, Philippians 2, 1 Peter 2. Disciples are commended for joyfully accepting the plunder of their property.

Hebrews 10. Our struggle is not with worldly enemies or worldly weapons, Ephesians 6. Christians conquer not by killing, but by dying, by the blood of the lamb, the word of our testimony, and not loving our lives even unto death, Revelation 12.

And every church father before Constantine who addressed the subject, Oregon, Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius, Athenagoras, agreed that killing image bearers of God is always morally wrong. Now, I'm not naive.

I know my audience will almost entirely disagree.

With me on this, and that's fine. Of course we do, because the scripture specifically denies what you're saying. All of what he said about not resisting the evildoer and turning the other cheek and not taking one another to court, I think he brought up.

I'm not sure if he brought that one up, but that's kind of where my mind went. Rather preferring to be defrauded than to take a brother to court and stuff like that. All of that is good stuff that I defend all the time.

I've done this to people that are on my team. I've said you shouldn't have done that, taking that person to court, whatever, you know, all that kind of stuff. This is something that I've got integrity on, right?

And then he goes and says, so all that's good. And then he says, Christians should never kill. That's not what the scripture says. That's not what the scripture says. And the civil governing authority has the right to kill, of course.

And again, the civil governing authority is not like this separate entity that's just not really people there. It's just like this hypothetical, like, you know, esoteric. No, no, there's people there.

Christians are gonna be in the seat of the civil magistrates. Christians are gonna be the ones executing justice according to God's word and all of that kind of stuff. There's so many examples, so many reasons why a Christian not only could kill, but ought to kill lawfully, that it's just embarrassing that a Christian could say such a thing.

It's embarrassing. And again, this is what happens when you disconnect your argument of what the civil governing authority should do. You disconnect it from the law of God. You end up saying things that are just completely false.