Why I am not a pacifist

I am not a pacifist. But here are my reasons why.

I am too violent, too fearful, to angry, too easily provoked, too unforgiving.

I lust for vengeance, and this is vengeance I crave not justice for it is not in love that I seek it. I have a cruel streak. If my friends have not seen it it is only because in my fear and pride I have very carefully hidden it.

In short I know myself too well

Scripture is most clear. The anger of men does not work the righteousness of God. When men covet something but have it not they fight wars. I should love my enemies, turn the other cheek and resist not evil.

But of course as a sinner I am incapable of doing these things, especially when I see that my efforts, being repression of the impulse I would oppose, is by that very nature hypocrisy

And of course I do not have the God given right to bear arms that I might blow away any who would rob me or harm me, my family  or my friends. Self defence, as we dare call it,  of this kind is not even remotely biblical. Look at the Sermon on the Mount and see how utterly opposed to human nature, my nature, that it is

The state might indeed have the right to execute criminals - I have no principled objection to the death penalty, only profound concerns about the innocent being murdered by the state due to incorrect verdicts, as happens all too often. But that any state claim to be the policeman of the World as Tsar Nicholas  I first himself up as the Gendarme of Europe from the 1830's onward, is arrogant hypocrisy. No country is so saturated in mercy and justice that it has the right to enforce what it calls morals on any other land

War is sin and the fiction of the just war was invented by that heretic Augustine, falsely in my opinion called "saint" of Hippo, the man so out of touch with his own past which included rank heresy as a Manichaean, that he required state persecution of those who were as he was as a young man.

So I am not a pacifist. Not because the contrary line  of doctrine  is even remotely justified, but because it goes against my own nature, as every commandment of God does. For I will not start from the standpoint that my impulse is right and that all doctrinal cloth must be cut to fit this presumption. If it opposes my own nature and thus exposes my own sin it may very well be true. But I cannot oppose my own nature by brute force of will any longer. Thus knowing what I should be I know that I am not and cannot be what I should be, and even my effort is a blasphemous outrage. So I would fight back like any one else

But pacifism is an ideal and by God's grace, when I have confessed and repented, and only by his grace, will He bestow it on as violent and evil a heart as mine.

And if I ever become spiritual what will I do if attacked by an armed man or some such similar?

I will do what scripture commands, and simply die, moreover, by His grace, I will die well.

But not today.

My sin is too intractable till He act, for this  to happen today