What is a Christian Man's MORAL responsibility to protect his own life, or that of his immediate or spiritual family?

[TrueTomHarley]

After we bought the house we now live in, I was poking around and found an old rifle tucked away in the attic. It had a Nazi insignia on it. A previous owner had apparently brought it back from Europe as a war trophy.

I don't know anything about guns and don't want to know. So I called 911. I made very clear that it was an old weapon. The cop who came didn't hear this part. All he was told was "there's a guy with a gun!!!" It's a good thing I did not behave erratically or emerge from the door gun in hand.

He looked at it, said it was deader than a door-nail and suggested it might be worth something. So I checked around but it was not. It was a Berlin model and they were a dime a dozen. Had it been Stuttgart or somewhere, we would have been talking some dough.

[John Houston]

I am a hunter, no fumbling going on here with a firearm in any situation. I have been there in the midst of that chaos. I am comfortable with my own personal situation with my family's security.

[TrueTomHarley]

That's how it generally works. Rural people hunt - some of them. City people don't. A C.O. we had for a time hunted, and he would bring carcasses back to his apartment behind the Kingdom Hall. He was low-key about it in case any city-slickers might be stumbled. It was in his DNA. He hailed from the plains of the Midwest.

So, having a gun handy already, some say (not the C.O.) "If need be, I'll plug a villain if the family is threatened. " I've never heard of anyone packing a weapon at the Kingdom Hall.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

2 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

So, having a gun handy already, some say (not the C.O.) "If need be, I'll plug a villain if the family is threatened. " I've never heard of anyone packing a weapon at the Kingdom Hall.

OF COURSE NOT!

THE PEOPLE THAT DO UNDERSTAND .....  UNDERSTAND  THE PEOPLE THAT DO NOT UNDERSTAND ... 

... and to NOT be a cause for "stumbling", do not advertise, and of course carry concealed so as not to be detected, anywhere.

Inside and outside of the Truth, we have become a nation of Snowflakes, and there is no need to give them unnecessary anxiety and upset them.

That is the whole point of carrying concealed ... so people will NOT be aware of who is "packing" ...  and not cause irrational panic among those  of the sheepish persuasion.

In over 50 years ... NO ONE at the KH has EVER seen my weapon(s), except at my house, and when my kids were at home, the house was always full of their JW friends, and we would all target shoot off of my back deck, and I taught them gun safety ... very important!

They would even take 'selfies" with their cell phones with my weapons. Some look very "James Bond-ish".

 EVERYONE was aware that I packed, we just never talked about it outside my home.

Word got around through back channels, and it was never a problem.

I have been out in Service in very bad neighborhoods, and had Sisters in the group comment almost out of range of my hearing " Nothing is going to happen to us today, .. Bro. Rook is here".  I would keep them in my sight at ALL times, like a hovering helicopter, and be obvious about it.

It's my job. 

An incompetent defense of one's extended family is NO DEFENSE AT ALL.

In OVER a half-century it has never been or created a problem, or even a concern by the Brotherhood in general ... and the Elders were always aware that I  carried weapon(s), either through back channel information, or a letter I gave them when I came to a new Congregation, as I have related here earlier,  several times. 

I know of two other Brothers that "pack", and no one would ever know about it.

It was a different culture back in the time of the Apostles, where almost universally,  men were armed ALL the time, either with knives, or swords, or a long heavy wood staff ... even the Apostles.  

The weapons they had at the Passover and Memorial ( LUKE 22:36) were their own PERSONAL WEAPONS they had with them .... AT THOSE CONGREGATIONAL MEETINGS.

Jesus perhaps did not notice them because they had taken them off to recline at the table to eat, a custom that is considered good manners even today in the West, under the "Cowboy Code".

Here in North Carolina the joke is .... when only Sisters come to the Kingdom Hall on a Sunday ...you know it must be the first week of Deer Season.

[TrueTomHarley]

1 hour ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

THE PEOPLE THAT DO UNDERSTAND .....  UNDERSTAND  THE PEOPLE THAT DO NOT UNDERSTAND ... 

... and to NOT be a cause for "stumbling", do not advertise, and of course carry concealed so as not to be detected, anywhere.

Inside and outside of the Truth, we have become a nation of Snowflakes, and there is no need to give them unnecessary anxiety and upset them.

Not stumbling others is among the most basic principles of the New Testament. Don't tell me you have a problem with that.

You change your conduct on relatively petty matters so as not to stumble new ones or weak ones, or, as a strictly practical matter, not to get some people going. In the case of the C.O, it does not even involve a change of course; it simply is that he doesn't do something openly. If you don't create needless friction over what is small,  then you can hope to work smoothly together on what is big. You have a problem with that?

Look, if you want to carry a gun, carry a gun. I don't think many would have a problem with it, especially if they don't know about it. Just don't carry on as though your very manhood is proved thereby, and that anyone not packing a gun is a girlieman. I submit it is the elders you spoke of disparagingly who are the real men, and you are merely someone who carries a gun, which could conceivably do more harm than good someday. I mean, I can see the headline: "Man Messes With JW's in the Minstry - 'Do Ya Feel Lucky Today, Punk?'"

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

.

TTH:

AS USUAL ... you have misconstrued everything I was stating, and projected your own fantasies and insecurities upon  others.

With Humans, there is infinite variety ... which covers your entire multi-point commentary.

BUT .... since YOU  have brought it up .....

 

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

5 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

I mean, I can see the headline: "Man Messes With JW's in the Minstry - 'Do Ya Feel Lucky Today, Punk?'"

You even managed to misquote Clint Eastwood's performance as Inspector Callahan.

AT LEAST you are 100% consistent!

[TrueTomHarley]

6 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

AS USUAL ... you have misconstrued everything I was stating, and projected your own fantasies and insecurities upon  others.

For purposes of quality control, at times I respond to your remarks in a manner different than you would like, but I do not misconstrue what you have said, let alone misconstrue everything you have said.

Possibly in a Donald Duck - like tirade, you actually do not know what you say, inasmuch as you are blindsided when your words are taken at face value. Possibly you think persons will wilt in the face of them, as they might wilt if you pulled your rod on them.

Moreover, you did not answer my question - 'do the 'Babylonian police officers' agree with your assessment that one has no MORAL RIGHT to call upon them for help if one is not willing to defend oneself with firearms.'?

'You feeling lucky today, Punk? Do ya think they'll agree with ya on that one?'

I might have known I would not be able to misquote that line on your watch. That you would know it by heart AND deride a Christian for not knowing it speaks volumes. It practically says it all.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

TTH:

It is not a police officers job to decide what YOUR moral right is ... it is each individual person's right AND OBLIGATION to decide what HIS OWN moral code is ...

Duty is something you have to decide for yourself what it is... OR, you can let others decide what it is FOR you, but each has consequences and accountability ... sometimes only to your own conscience and moral code, sometimes to God, and sometimes to others.

I personally think it is despicable for a person who WILL NOT defend himself and his family  to ask a Babylonian stranger to do something he himself WOULD not do for himself,  assuming he is able bodied, or to let his friends die during the average seven minutes it takes for the police to respond.

To me, it's NOT REASONABLE.

And,  it is morally bankrupt.

Some people ... pacifists specifically .., have no moral qualms about having someone else put their life on the line, and possibly lose it, protecting them, when they would NOT defend their own lives.

6 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Possibly in a Donald Duck - like tirade, you actually do not know what you say, inasmuch as you are blindsided when your words are taken at face value. Possibly you think persons will wilt in the face of them, as they might wilt if you pulled your rod on them.

You use "possibly" twice in that paragraph... again projecting your personal fantasies on others ... specifically me. I rest my case with the evidence you yourself supplied. Thanks!   Your concept of "face value" is seen through a glass darkly.

And don't gimmee that guff that as a Christian, you did not know the line as well as my admittedly Barbarian self .... that is a cop-out.

You knew the reference well enough ... IT'S YOUR REFERENCE! .... and you THOUGHT you knew the line ... that's why you (incorrectly) quoted it.

 

[TrueTomHarley]

Okay, so at any time my wife might be grabbed from behind by a thug with a knife to her throat and I will regret forever that I did not draw my Glock and clock him between the eyes, SPATTERING HIS VILE BRAINS ON THE WALLS BEHIND!!!, whizzing the bullet past and grazing her ear to nail the SOB and then blowing the smoke from the barrel? Maybe.

I will consider that course once I read the revised updated Bible version: 'At that, Peter, drew his sword and cut off the ear of the high priest's slave. Jesus said to him "Do you call yourself a MAN, with that POPGUN weapon of yours?! This is your LORD AND SAVIOR we're talking about! Why did you not bring a REAL weapon with you and take off his filthy head?"

In the meantime, I will consider that if she or I do not die at the hands of - how did you put it? - five or six armed men spraying the Kingdom Hall with bullets so that blood is flowing down the aisles, or somesuch, she or I will die 10 or 20 years down the road from a villain I cannot plug between the eyes, like cancer. Where is the six-shooter to take that one out? Rather than overindulging in fleshy thinking about this life, I'll do my best to focus on securing and attracting others to the real life of 1 Timothy 6:19.

If you would turn down the bombast and present your views simply as your views, rather than thundering them so loudly that Moses would be hard pressed to hear God giving him the ten commandments, my split personalities you speak of would likely leave you in peace. Oh, and if you would quit doing the 3 John 10 thing with the Governing Body. That would help, too.

[TrueTomHarley]

8 hours ago, James Thomas Rook Jr. said:

You knew the reference well enough ... IT'S YOUR REFERENCE! .... and you THOUGHT you knew the line ... that's why you (incorrectly) quoted it.

Of course I knew the reference. How else could I have used it? But I didn't know it verbatim and I didn't consider it an essential component of Christian life that I should research it. It is Dirty Harry, after all, not the Apostle John.

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

INTERLUDE

( ... The part I like about these interactions is after I have proved my points with actual facts and evidence ... when I get to stand in the background and play the violin to imploding irrational opinions, frothing multiple personalities, lurid fantasy projections,  and cop-out obtuse rationalizations ...)

Humor, is where you find it !