The Thin Line Between Violence and Non-Violence
1.) Christian morality calls for preferential use of non-violence in facing violent evil. Love and justice must prevail.
2.) Human nature goes for self-preservation, and the protection of life, at times to the extent of facing violent evils with some degree of violence to control, if not destroy, such evil and to protect the person's life and the lives of those he love.
Dilemma
How can you reconcile the Christian preference for non-violence in facing a violent evil in an act of self-defense and in defending the lives of those who are helpless? Is it permissible to use some form of violence in order to destroy (kill), if not subdue, the source of violent evil? How can a person exercise love and justice in the face of a violent evil?
Situation
Four robbers entered your home in order to steal and more at whatever the cost. You and your wife have three young girls, and these criminals want to rape them before your eyes. What will you do? Should you let the crime happen? Should you fight to the death to protect them? Please explain your decision for doing it in a way that will reconcile it with Christian morality of nonviolence.
Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another's life, their common good of the family or of the state.
ReplyDeleteThe act of self defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one's life; the killing of the aggressor.. The one is intended, the other is not.
Love toward one's life remains a basic principle of morality. So it is legitimate to insist on respect of one's own right to life. One who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow.
Will this also apply in a potential situation when you have to make a choice between killing the person who attacked you and getting killed yourself? In this case, there will be an "intention" to kill. The choice was made, although under a life-threatening circumstance, to extinguish the life of the attacker in order to preserve your own.
ReplyDeleteIn the case mentioned, for example, the father will need so much rage to overcome three assailants in order to protect his family. And there may be a moment when he need to end the life of each so as to stay alive.
It would be good if the father knows some martial arts, and skillful enough to take down the three alone and overpower them without killing them. But most people don't have those skills, and the only option available to them to preserve his and his families' lives will be to take the assailants' lives. Will that moment of decision to kill be acceptable, meaning not sinful?
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