Should Christians Have a "Warrior Mindset"? | Apologia Radio Highlight

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00:00

Zach sent me a screenshot from a dear friend of ours. I'm not going to mention his name because we love him very much and he's a faithful brother, so I don't want him to feel attacked or attack him, but I just wanted to address this, what he said and essentially the mindset of what he said.

00:18

He said, I've been a full -time street evangelist for 19 years. Something that has made me a better evangelist, biblically speaking, is something for which

00:26

I am very thankful, is when God, his gracious and kind providence, allowed me to mature to the point of repenting of and dropping the warrior mindset, the warrior persona, and the warrior vernacular.

00:37

What he replaced it with is a love for God's enemies, imperfect as it is, that would rather see my blood dripping from the end of an enemy's sword than his blood dripping from the end of mine.

00:48

It's too easy as an evangelist when donning the warrior mindset to forget that the war is not against flesh and blood.

00:54

It's too to fight with men instead of engaging in a compassionate fight for souls.

00:59

It's too easy to find joy in crushing your opponent instead of loving him. It's too easy to sacrifice others instead of sacrificing myself for others.

01:07

Thinking, talking, acting, and pretending to be a warrior for Christ is easy. Loving like Christ is hard.

01:14

In my life, this monumental change in perspective and personality would not have happened if not for the place and authority of the local church, my local church in my life, which this is one thing we're very thankful for with this man is his love for the local church.

01:33

We'll just stop there. When I read that, I was like, there's so many things in there that I feel like he's promoting that I would say, well, that's part of having a warrior mindset.

01:47

I just want to hear Bill, I want to hear your initial thoughts on that and then we'll just go from there.

01:56

I think number one, if you're equating warrior mindset with doing things in your own strength, then

02:01

I would agree with him. If that's your definition of warriors trying to do things in your own strength, then

02:07

I would say, we shouldn't be doing that. When you first sent me that text,

02:14

I was looking at him like, man, there's so many good, solid things that I agree with in this statement, but I think his view of what a warrior is, or at least a warrior for Christ is,

02:26

I think is wrong. I would say that a warrior for Christ, absolutely, you might be called to lose the physical battle.

02:36

You also, and he references this, the verbal battle or wanting to win an argument.

02:44

Sharing the gospel is not about winning arguments. It's about us being faithful to the scriptures and presenting that.

02:52

It's the Holy Spirit that's going to lead people to saving faith anyways. We're just vessels that have the privilege to be a part of that.

03:02

I would look at that as part of the warrior persona or that the soldier is being disciplined.

03:10

The Bible is full of examples of a soldier type vernacular.

03:19

When he says, endure as a soldier, the farmer, the soldier, the wrestler, like the runner of the race, like all those things, there's all sorts of times.

03:29

It's never mentioned in a negative thing. Looking at that text, he's definitely, his heart is in the right place.

03:39

I just think he has a misunderstanding of what the warrior virtues are. It's been a hard thing for me to think through as a believer and as a guy that teaches people how to protect themselves and their families.

03:52

I do talk about killing and whatnot. There's absolutely a time to protect yourself and your family.

04:00

I do believe there is a time to say, oh, the lawful authorities are going to arrest me for being a believer in Christ.

04:09

Okay. I'm willing to lose that one for the sake of Christ. If you're thinking warrior virtue to always win an argument or to be the tough guy or any of those things, those aren't warrior virtues to begin with.

04:25

Exactly. That's machoism. I get that our friend is saying we shouldn't approach evangelism like we want to slay the enemy.

04:39

I get that, but that's why when I first read this, my initial thought was, and I've gotten this from hanging out with you guys,

04:49

Bill, it's a holistic approach to life, having this mindset.

04:56

What I mean by that is there's times where you might need to resort to defending yourself or your family, but that's the last step.

05:08

You need to be aware of your surroundings. There's a time and a place for everything. I feel like he's compartmentalizing this one aspect of being a warrior when really,

05:20

I feel like in all of life, again, that holistic view, you should have this mindset of all of life and know your surroundings, know what situation you're in, knowing what the proper time and place is for certain things.

05:37

Yeah, we can have this mindset and go preach the gospel and not want to kill the dude.

05:43

We want him to come to Christ and want to share the gospel with him, but again, that's part of that mindset.

05:51

I'll just let you guys talk about that. Zach's nodding his head, so I know he has some thoughts.

05:56

Yeah, well, you stole everything I was going to say, Bill. No, I think it's an unbiblically pacifistic type of mentality here, especially when he says,

06:12

I thank God that I'm not a warrior anymore, because like you said, there's warrior, military, soldier vernacular that the scriptures are commanding us to put on, right?

06:23

Things that are transferable from a soldier to a civilian, I guess, in a spiritual sense, like wage a good warfare.

06:29

I mean, put on the armor of God, Ephesians chapter six. So I think, and especially for me, learning from the military, it's been beneficial to get through hard times.

06:41

Like when we're counseling people and they're going through incredibly hard times, we talk about putting on the mentality of a soldier, which is self -disciplined and strong and knows how to deal with hardship and is skilled.

06:55

And that battle, that kind of understanding that we're in a battle, right? That's so good for a person as they're going through, especially like spiritual warfare.

07:07

And they don't know what's going on. And it's God's ordained time for them to go through this and to say to the men and women through the years, hey, let's be strong.

07:18

Let's be warriors through this. Let's understand we are in a battle. We do have an enemy who's a roaring lion and he wants to devour us.

07:25

I mean, that's absolutely crucial for them to put on those type of thought characteristics or mentality for them to kind of weather the storm and the fight that the enemy wants to throw at them.

07:38

So what I'm saying is we better not take away a warrior mentality when the scriptures are commanding us to have one.

07:45

We better not take away the soldier's mentality because that's God's prescription for us to put on for an absolutely

07:53

God -glorifying purpose and a sanctifying purpose. So I think when you say things like this and you don't quantify it like you're saying, you kind of throw the baby out with the bath water.

08:02

I can understand if you were to say, hey, when you go out evangelizing, and I've had to do this too, especially at the abortion mills, when

08:08

I got somebody spitting in my face or something. Right, I was going to mention that. Yeah. I have to not go into warrior mentality.

08:14

I mean, you want to bite their face off when they spit you in the face, spit in your face, but you have to back off and say, no,

08:19

I have to respond in humility. And like Jesus, like the scriptures say, Jesus was reviled, but he didn't revile.

08:27

So that's important. So I think if you just went in and maybe surgically edited this a little bit better,

08:34

I would be cool with it. But again, I just see some errors. Well, and Bill, I'm going to ask you a direct question in a second, because I actually got this from you.

08:42

Stay on mission, right? That's part of the warrior mindset is you stay on mission.

08:48

So you're talking about being at the abortion mill. What's your mission there? It's to preach the gospel. We know this. We don't carry weapons when we go to the abortion mill.

08:57

We know if we're going there, we're going there to possibly die. We're going to take a punch. We're going to whatever.

09:04

And the mission is the gospel. So in that moment, that's part of that mindset is like staying on mission.

09:10

Now you might be in a different situation where you are armed and someone attacks you and you have to defend yourself.

09:16

You don't, as our friend said here, like that's not the time and place to be like, well, I'd rather be,

09:22

I'd rather have the sword go through me, you know, than him. And you know what I mean? Like, and again, it's just knowing, knowing where you are, knowing what your mission is.

09:32

Yeah, exactly. So he says, uh, you know, he says what he replaced is with what he replaced it with is a love for God's enemies.

09:43

And that would rather see my blood dripping from the end of an enemy's sword than, than his blood dripping from the end of mine.

09:48

I'll tell you one thing. If a guy breaks into my house and he's costing my, my wife and my kids,

09:53

I'd rather see his blood dripping from my sword in mine. If a guy comes into our church and wants to harm our flock, there's no way

10:01

I'm going to lay down and say, Oh, you know what? This is a spiritual war. We're, you know, we're not fighting against flesh and blood in that arena, in that category of life.

10:10

No, you and I, we're going to absolute, we're going to war in that situation. It'd be coward.

10:16

It's nothing. It'd be totally coward. We would not love our sheep. We would not love our family. If we just said, you know what?

10:21

I'd rather you die than me. No, we're going to war to protect our people. And you see that all throughout church history too, especially the covenanters.

10:28

I mean, they did everything they could to abide by the law, but when it gets got so bad that they were going to kill their wife and kids, they picked up the sword and they went to war.