Love and Self-Defense
The title of this article is sensationalistic. But the piece raises important issues.
It is worth noting that the right to life is a basic moral right, and plausibly it entails the right to defend one’s life and others’ lives for whom one is responsible, which further entails the entitlement to possess and, in appropriate circumstances, use responsibly whatever means are necessary for such defense. This is all consistent with the ethic of love taught by Jesus and the ethic of “do no evil” taught by Socrates.
Moral principles that apply to the sphere of private citizens, such as “turn your cheek” when assaulted (Mt. 5:39), “love your enemies” (Mt. 5:44), and “don’t requite evil with evil” (Socrates, Crito) are compatible with morally permissible self-defense, just war, justified capital punishment, etc.* (Recall that Socrates was a soldier in the Peloponnesian War and didn’t object to the wielding of the sword on the battlefield. He served as a hoplite, and hoplite combat involved fierce hand-to-hand conflict. Jesus didn’t teach that soldiers should leave their military posts and become pacifists. Moreover, both men were put to death via capital punishment. Neither objected to such punishment per se despite the fact that the Roman use of the death penalty against Jesus and the Athenian use against Socrates were unjust.)
By the way, the sort of love Jesus taught and commanded is not an emotion. Rather, it’s benevolence, which is an act of will. (Latin: benevolentia; bene (good) + volēns (willing).)
It makes no sense to command someone to have an emotion, since our emotions are not under our control — at least not directly. You cannot choose, on the spot, to have a pleasant feeling toward someone, especially if that someone is quite unpleasant. But the will can be commanded. It makes sense to command that we be of goodwill toward one another, since we can freely choose to do so.
*I grant that one can object to my claim of compatibility here. But given the constraints of time and space, I must defer my response to such objections for another day. I have a car to pick up at the mechanic shop. My skid plate came loose and my friends at the shop are tightening things up for me.