I went to the pharmacy today to pick up some meds. The technician says hello Garry and then later asked my birthday. She said she remembered my name but not my birthday (jokingly). I gave it to her and then said, " Don't trouble yourself, cash is a perfectly acceptable gift."

She said, " Wouldn't like something nice?" to which I replied, "Yeah, but you'd have to go to a gun shop for that and I'm pretty picky."

That lead into her commenting of people with CHL's stepping up to defend others. I made this statement, "If someone is in peril of life by someone else, especially a woman, it is my duty as a Christian and as a man to defend that woman if I have the means. If I don't do that then that woman's blood is on me and I have sinned."

She seemed astounded that I would say that. That causes me to reflect on what we as men have become. In days past a woman would expect a man to come to her aid. Is that really lost?

Many Christians would not agree with that, too many in my opinion. Yet I reflect on James 4:17 Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.

Simply to say that God puts in your heart personally what is right and wrong. To do wrong, even by failing to act, in contrast to what God put in your heart, is a sin.

James 1:27 says: Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. NKJV

I think the concept here is to help those who cannot help their selves. So I am with you. We help and protect the weak.

Agreed

The principle there seems to extend well beyond protection of a woman in peril. Maybe it always has been so, but I know of women who would consider it beneath them to accept such help/protection from a man - any man - even a Christian.

Met more than a few of those during a one-semester "sabbatical" at the University of Wisconsin back in the 1970s. Kind of a shock to a polite, southern boy!

I totally agree with you.

Catholic here ... totally, absolutely agree with you.

BUT, faith or no faith, that's just what a man is and it's what a man does.

Blessings,

Steve

I was taught you always stuck up for Women,Children the Old And the weak.It had nothing to do with Religion.I would do it even if I was not armed.

You don't need religion to tell you to defend the defenseless. That's just what decent men do.

Well said friend Steve.

A fundamental of Christianity is to help those in need. Age and gender is irreverent. This is a mission in which we bust our azzes but there is much more to do.

Resist evil. Hopefully it flees from you. If not, shoot it several times.

I don't think this has as much to do with religion, as it does with basic human decency, although I understand what you are saying, and do not disagree with the concept. Read any older western story, and the common denominator then was people as a whole did not allow women and children to be abused in any way, that was simply a code to live by. Mankind has strayed a long way in a few years, but all of life, including his history, will often circle back.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Well, yes ... maybe.

My greatest and highest responsibility is to my wife if I have one and kids if I have them.

Where does the risk I place them in, risk of losing their father / husband / provider by losing either my life or my freedom to prison, or risk losing the roof I put over their heads to a jury award by standing up for someone else besides them?

You may be right but I think it is irresponsible not to think of my ability to meet my existing obligations before taking on a new one. Does this come into your thinking as well? Your wife might want to know where she fits in your priorities, whether you even think of her at all before acting precipitously for others.

Tom

my wife would be pi$$ed if I didn't step up to defend someone in need...

Mine too! Life is not so precious that I could live being a coward. Fact is, every day I go to work there is that risk I might not come home. I have left work on my back several times.

Back to the Christian concept, You serve God, not man, and He will provide for His faithful. God is in control of all in this world. That's a tuff and some times hard TRUTH to remember.

Compelling

God ain't never made a mortgage payment for me. How about you?

Did the line work? Did you score?

My pet-peeve. Gang bangers, ISIS terrorists, knock-out- gamers, etc. thinking they are all bad-ass when they cold-cock and worse, a random women or child. I don't get it.

If you have to think about wether it might be inconvenient for you to help some one in need,the time will be past and you will have done nothing and have to live with it.

He provided me with a job so I could. Wife, kids, grandkids. He didn't say "sit and be lazy" either.

If a man does not work he should not eat... God.

Those here who think they come up with helping others on their own don't realize they are made in God's image and those thoughts come from Him.

You're right. I didn't realize that because I don't believe it. I don't need a creepy legend from a 2000 year old book of fiction to tell me to do the right thing.

doover72,



Because you believe or disbelieve something does not make it true or untrue. It seems you lack information. The people who have gone to the Middle East trying prove the Bible wrong have returned as believers. There is more evidence for the veracity of the Bible than anything else from history prior to the printing press. Do a little research. Josh McDowell, after his effort, wrote Evidence that Demands a Verdict. If you check this book your search will take you to many more.

or maybe people intervene because they don't like to see granny get bullied.

Hey, last time my wife got called to the hospital she found me with a broken nose and a cracked orbital socket. Note that 2-1/2 years before she got called because I had a 6 inch long slice down the length of my forearm from a shank. She yelled at me, " Why do you have to get in that? Why can't someone else do that?"

She's a woman, she does not understand, nor can she. Yet this same woman who yelled out of her emotion would hold me in shame for doing anything else, and I would expect her to. She would never see me as the same again.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on the whole god thing. But if I walk up and someone's got a gun on you, I've got your back.

doover72,



Don't claim to reject God from an intellectual basis and I will agree to disagree amiably.

Jesus taught that one's devotion to God is authenticated by one's love for other people.

eh, not sure I agree with your interpretation of scripture. But, run with it.

Most people who aren't religious accept the concept of good and evil, and when evil appears and tries to harm others, it's a universal duty for good people to step forward and resist evil up to and including shooting it full of holes.

The disciples were known to carry swords and yet nowhere in the gospels does Christ forbid them to carry them. The only admonishment to sword play was when Peter lopped off the ear of Malchus only because doing so was interrupting the fulfillment of prophesy.

In that light people say not to carry ares due to this, not to defend themselves. Yet this is from the same Jesus who said to sell your cloak and buy a sword.

Of course Jesus says that to live by the sword will die by the sword. What he is saying is those who use the sword maliciously will likely die by one. Self defense is not a malicious act. It is not out of any of the sins of greed, covetousness, vengeance or lust.

Proverbs 24:11-12King James Version (KJV)

11 If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain;

12 If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall not he render to every man according to his works?

Robert_White,

Can you translate that into modern English?

A bit out of context really, it actually speaks of those who are sinning and stumbling to their slaughter in hell.

If you falter in a time of trouble,
how small is your strength!
11
Rescue those being led away to death;
hold back those staggering toward slaughter.
12
If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,”
does not he who weighs the heart perceive it?
Does not he who guards your life know it?
Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done?

Historically Proverbs 24:11 shows up again and again in the Protestant resistance literature, ie., Locke, Rutherford, In Defense of Liberty against tyrants etc.

They applied it in the context of fighting lawful wars of self defense. Deliver those being led away to death. An unjust death by the hand of a tyrant. Rutherford uses this verse again and again in Lex Rex.

The Old Testament, (and the New) supports lawful execution of murderers in the context of public justice. So the verse in Proverbs 24:11 would not fit into a Quaker context of delivering someone going justly to the gallows. In context, the person or persons are being led away to death, and an unjust death. Jeremiah talks at length of the leaders of apostate Judah using every means of murder and injustice to oppress the people. He cries out that they must stop shedding innocent blood and that Jerusalem is full of it.

John Gill's commentary:

Verse 11. If thou forbear to deliver [them that are] drawn unto death,.... Or "taken for or unto death" {h}, in a violent way; who are taken by thieves and robbers, and used in a barbarous manner, as the man in the parable, whom the priest and Levite took no notice of, and was helped by the good Samaritan; or who are unjustly sentenced and appointed to death by the civil magistrate; if any know their innocency, it becomes them to do all they can to save their lives, by bearing a testimony for them; for "a true witness delivereth souls," Proverbs 14:25; or by interceding for them, and giving counsel and advice concerning them, or by any lawful way they can; as Reuben delivered Joseph, Jonathan interceded for David, and Ahikam and Ebedmelech for Jeremiah. Life is valuable, and all means should be taken to save it, and to prevent the shedding of innocent blood; and a man should not forbear or spare any cost, or pains, or time, to such service: likewise such as are drawn into snares and temptations, into immorality or heresy, which tend to the ruin of the souls of men, and bring them to eternal death; all proper, methods should be taken to restore such persons, to recover them out of the snare of the devil, which is saving souls from death, and covering a multitude of sins; see 2 Timothy 2:25 James 5:19;

and [those that are] ready to be slain; or {i} "bending to slaughter"; are within a little of being executed, or put to death, upon a false accusation; for about others that suffer righteously there need not be that concern here pressed, or whose works and ways incline to destruction and lead to it, of which they seem not very far off.

Excerpt from Lex Rex

Lex Rex [Law Is King, or The Law & The Prince] (1644)
Samuel Rutherford
QUESTION 36
Whether the Power of War Be Only in the King

Because if a king should sell his kingdom, and invite a bloody conqueror to come in with an army of men to destroy his people, impose upon their conscience an idolatrous religion, they may lawfully rise against that army without the king’s consent; for, though royalists say, they need not come in asinine patience, and offer their throats to cut-throats, but may flee, yet several things hinders a flight.
1st. They are obliged by virtue of the fifth commandment to remain, and, with their sword, defend the cities of the Lord and the king (2 Sam. 10:12; 1 Chron. 19:13); for if to defend our country and children, and the church of God, from unjust invaders and cut-throats, by the sword, be an act of charity that God and the law of nature requires of a people, as is evident, (Prov. 24:11,) and if the fifth commandment oblige the land to defend their aged parents and young children from these invaders, and if the sixth commandment lay on us the like bond, all the land are to act works of mercy and charity, though the king unjustly command the contrary, except, royalists say, that we are not to perform the duties of the second table commanded by God, if an earthly king forbid us; and if we exercise not acts of mercy towards our brethren, when their life is in hazard, to save them, we are murderers; and so men may murder their neighbor if the king command them so to do; this is like the court-faith.2nd. The king’s power of wars is for the safety of his people; if he deny his consent to their raising of arms till they be destroyed, he plays the tyrant, not the king, and the Law of nature will necessitate them either to defend themselves, (seeing flight of all in that case is harder than death,) else they must be guilty of self-murder.