Armor of Light: Pro-Abortion Activist Convinces Notable Pastor to Urge Evangelicals to Disarm

Many of you saw the vile attack my family suffered a few weeks ago by white nationalists who were upset that we’d adopted an African child.  They said we were raising “the enemy,” since whites and blacks are supposedly pitted against each other for survival.  They said horrific things about us (and — worse — our child), threatened us, and posted you-can’t-unsee videos of suicides and porn on this very blog, and made white supremacy memes from our Facebook photos.

It was hair-raising, but not the first time we’ve encountered threats.  A few years ago, a man drove thousands of miles just to walk up our driveway while I was outside with the kids.  Later, school officials saw him at our children’s elementary school, scoping out the place.

I write this not because we have had a particularly hard road (though the past few weeks have been horrible), but to say that evil exists and sometimes targets your very family.  The police have a responsibility to arrest those who commit crimes, but not necessarily to protect you.  As the Bible says, “But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”  That, in my opinion, encompasses the moral responsibility to take care of — and protect — those who live in your home.  That’s why owning and being able to properly use a gun is necessary.

Pastor Rob Schenck disagrees.  He is the star of a new documentary called The Armor of Light, which is directed by Abigail Disney, a progressive, pro-abortion activist.  Disney persuaded Schenck to publicly call for Christians to rethink the gun issue — both owning weapons for self-defense and for opposing gun restrictions.  Here’s the trailer:

My husband David French writes on National Review:

I’ve met Schenck on a number of occasions. He’s been a stalwart pro-life activist for more than a generation, and he’s a kind and thoughtful man. But in making his argument against guns, he appears to have fallen for the sentimentality and stereotyping that so often dominates the left side of the gun-control debate. In an interview with NPR, for example, he said:

When you talk about aiming a weapon at another human being, no matter what the circumstances are, that’s a question of paramount moral and ethical dimensions, so it’s something that we should take very seriously, and I don’t know that a lot of us are.

This is a caricature of the views of many evangelicals. We are willing to aim a weapon at another human being precisely because we’ve thought through the “moral and ethical” dimensions of the act, and understand the profound, biblical responsibility to defend others from deadly aggression. I’ve never in my life met an evangelical who was casual in his use of weapons or philosophy of gun ownership.

#share#Schenck respects those who want to defend themselves or others, but he questions whether self-defense need be lethal:

I understand that impulse [to own a gun for self-defense], and I respect it. I don’t impugn people’s motives on that. I think an awful lot of those people are sincere, and that’s a noble inclination that we have. Now whether the handgun — a lethal weapon — is the best way to manage that security for yourself and your family is another question. Sometimes, a handgun can be a shortcut in the equation.

He’s indeed correct that a handgun can be a “shortcut,” but in an emergency, that “shortcut” is often the difference between life and death. This isn’t a theological argument; it’s an emotive one — and it’s aimed at the wrong problem. Gun deaths in this country typically come not from self-defense gone awry but rather from deliberate, premeditated killings.

Schenck says that he sees “life as having value from the moment of conception, but there’s a whole lot of life after conception.” Of course. And that life is worth defending. Indeed, Nehemiah commanded God’s peopleto “fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.” Jesus’s disciples carried swords, and He even once urged them to arm themselves. There are examples of divinely sanctioned, lethal self-defense throughout scripture.

In other words, this movie — unsurprisingly – misses the mark.  My husband is an Iraq war vet.  He frequently describes his decision to join the Army and fight al-Qaeda — an Islamic death cult — as perhaps “the most effective pro-life thing I’ve ever done.”

David writes, “And if anyone — whether angry white supremacist or deranged stalker — comes after my family, both my wife and I are prepared to defend life by killing the merchants of death. We would do so with a clean conscience and with a singular prayer on our lips: ‘Dear God, don’t let us miss.'”

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