On violence and redemption.

The dominant American fictional narrative of action movies it the idea that we can make the world a beautiful place by killing bad guys. This, as some have rightly termed it, is the myth of redemptive violence. To put the point rather bluntly, Jesus came to die for us, not to kill for us. That means that killing bad guys is never the ideal for the obvious reason that it is always better to redeem (restore, rebuild, refashion, reclaim, recover) something than to destroy it. Precisely because killing prevents the Christian ideal of redemption (from which God would get the maximum glory), it must never be celebrated. But can Christians ever use or endorse it at all? It’s a serious question with a long history, but it also has a simple answer.

Yes.

Sometimes.

As rarely as possible.

Which means more rarely than you are inclined to think.

The key here is to realize that the Gospel reshapes us sometimes by prohibition and other times by telling us we must do something in a very different way. Our money and our sexuality are two big examples, cases where the Gospel prohibits some things and alters everything that remains. Similarly, violence is the sort of thing that, if we Christians do or endorse it at all, we must do so far less often, for better reasons, and in a different way than the secular world around us or our own natural impulses would.

To make things clearer, it’s useful to see that there are at least four kinds of violence. The first kind of violence is capricious, justifying itself by merely appealing to its ability. This is the violence of the strong, and all decent people recognize it as fundamentally evil.

The second sort of violence is vengeance, the sort which invites us to satisfy our bloodlust for revenge under the notion that justice will be done. This is the sort which action movies appeal to and which Christians are told repeatedly in the Bible not to pursue, leaving the prerogative to God.

The third sort of violence is the absolutely necessary. We know this kind of violence exists since in the Bible God kills, instructs people to kill on His behalf, and also endows government with the power to kill under certain circumstances. Therefore, we have to make room in our thinking for some sort of violence which is Divine, even if it is not redemptive.

And the fourth kind of violence is that which seems necessary only because we haven’t been creative enough in finding an alternative or diligent enough in pursuing it. This is actually violence of the first or second sort masquerading as the third sort, hence caprice or vengeance masquerading as necessity.

Yes, some rare violence is necessary. But precisely because violence always fails to redeem, Christians must be extremely cautious about endorsing or using it. This is why every Christian citizen, lawman, soldier, or politician must be constantly and self-critically vigilant lest we go beyond that bare minimum necessity.