Woke Preacher Clips on Gab posted this (video at end of article):

In a Gospel Coalition “Good Faith Debate,” a pro-gun control pastor says that using a firearm to stop an attempted massacre in a church is as erroneous as trying to stop Christ’s crucifixion: “at a theological level, this is basically exactly what Peter was doing when he picked up the sword and chopped the guy’s ear off.”

ANDREW WILSON: The legislation required to limit this guy from defending [Christians], if applied nationally, might actually save more lives rather than cost them.

JIM DAVIS, MODERATOR: That makes sense.

John Piper was the first contemporary Christian voice I heard speaking about the need to stand down whenever a threat presents itself. His response to the question “Can I shoot my wife’s assailant?” is “sevenfold”, and in those seven separate points, but he summarizes his response this way:

This instinct is understandable. But it seems to me that the New Testament resists this kind of ethical reduction, and does not satisfy our demand for a yes or no on that question. 

I always took this as a sort of strange theological stance. Pacifism is unbiblical, but this is pacifism to the utter extreme. Piper even suggests that calling the police is bad:

I realize that even to call the police when threatened — which, in general, it seems right to do in view of Romans 13:1–4 — may come from a heart that is out of step with the mind of Christ. If one’s heart is controlled mainly by fear, or anger, or revenge, that sinful disposition may be expressed by using the police as well as taking up arms yourself.

He says that the police and the army should respond with lethal force, but of course this necessarily means that Christians could never be police or soldiers, even though we see examples of godly Christians as soldiers in the New Testament without any rebuff from the Apostles.

I’ll give Piper the benefit of the doubt and say he might not be acting out an emasculated cowardice, but I am reasonably confident he’s still acting out of emasculation. If your wife is being attacked by someone and your immediate response isn’t to stop the attacker, you have failed in your duty as her husband and you should be ashamed. I have many other problems with Piper, but I bring this up in particular to point out that the attitude in the quote at the top is not new.

However, unlike with Piper, I would attribute the attitude held by these men to be a form of cowardice. They spiritualize their cowardice, but that’s still what it is. These are men who would have stood side-by-side with the Israelite army in fear of the Philistines, calling out to God to help them, and then mocking the man God had chosen to deal with them and his method of slaying the giant.

The single best piece on this sort of cowardice I’ve ever read is at the On the Rocks Blog and is entitled “Spiritual Cowardice: The Christian Bystander Effect”. It’s better than anything I could write on the subject.

I’ll conclude by saying that I’m not surprised that neutered men at The Gospel Coalition support the neutering of men more generally.

Resist them.

Here’s the video: