Good Death – 4
Violence is not wrong
Over and over again when I read essays decrying “violence” I see no definition of the term. What it seems to mean is doing things another person does not like. So, spanking your child is violent because he does not like it. It is violent because it violates his person.
From a Christian standpoint this is idiocy. From a Christian standpoint sinful violence violates God’s integrity and the integrity of the innocent. Sinners deserve and need to be violated. God is all in favour of violating sinners, and will do so to some people in hell forever. God delights to punish the wicked (Deuteronomy 28:63) and though Jesus wept over Jerusalem in AD30, He was delighting to destroy her in AD70 (Psalm 69:21-28), because she had violated His Bride.
The exercise of violence is not a failure of the community, as some have asserted, because the Trinity does not fail and the Trinity will send some people to hell. Get used to it. It is blasphemy to suggest otherwise. Punishing criminals and spanking children does not reveal a mournful failure of community but is in fact the joyous privilege of maintaining community.
Violence is not wrong. Violence can be good, depending on who’s doing it and what the situation is. The psalms, which we are commanded to sing before God in worship, are full of violence. The only question in violence is who is being violated and why.
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James B. Jordan, Evil Empire?, Biblical Horizons Newsletter No. 199, September 2008. Subscribe at www.biblicalhorizons.com
