Christian Men Should be Dangerous
Blessed Be The Lord Who Trains My Hands for War
This is a follow-up to a previous article I wrote a while back about why Christian men must pursue physical strength. In that article, I mentioned that one of the many benefits of being strong was being ready to defend yourself and others from violence. Read that one first. A basis of strength is essential to what I am about to discuss in the following paragraphs.
It’s 2024, and there is an election imminent that is likely to be one of the most contentious since 1860. In the past few years, we have seen left wing violence perpetrated against normal people and their communities at increasing rates. Riots have become nearly commonplace. Crime is out of control in many areas despite the cooked books of the official statistics that are released; reporting crime statistics is now optional, and the most crime-ridden places have opted out. Rampant immigration has resulted in the importation of even more criminal offenders than we can grow at home. Even in good times, some of our readers may live in places that hold many dangers.
You must be ready to commit violent action to defend your life, your family and your community.
As I mentioned in the previous article, your life doesn’t belong to you. You have a responsibility to those who depend on you to keep yourself alive and uninjured. Being prepared to defend yourself has an interesting effect in that it tends to reduce the actual need to act. To train and develop combative skills hones the mind to start thinking tactically all the time. This leads to smarter decision-making and presence of mind. Don’t park there, it’s too dark. Don’t go to that side of town at this hour. I don’t like the look of those guys lingering by the door, let’s go on to the next gas station. I don’t have any business here, I am going to move on. Etc. You will begin to view the world as a chess board, and you must set yourself up to win, which usually means not engaging in hostilities in the first place. You will notice where exit doors are in businesses you patronize. You will start to use the stalls every time you go in a public bathroom. You will not sit at the booths at restaurants or with your back to the door. All of these things improve your ability to remove yourself from a dangerous situation more quickly. This is an interesting irony of developing the mind of a dangerous man. You will actually decrease the odds of a violent encounter the more prepared you are to cope with an actual violent encounter. The best kind of violent encounter isn’t the one you win, it’s the one you avoid altogether.
Prepare Your Body
The second-best kind of violent encounter, of course, is the one you win. In the event that a trained man finds himself in a situation he cannot extract himself from by flight or concealment, his training in violent action and the tools he has equipped himself with will then still be at his disposal. This training should be aimed at getting you home in one piece (or as few pieces as possible). To defend yourself is a noble act, and those who castigate Christians who use violence up to and including deadly force to stay alive are not more pious or holy than the man who fights to survive. I would argue that they are in fact less pious. As a father or husband, or even an employee or employer, your life has value to your community without even mentioning the metaphysical value of your human life. People depend on you, be prepared, so you don’t disappoint them.
Training in the skills of violence can take many forms, and men must take careful account of their abilities when approaching this topic. A man who is disabled may be limited to the carrying of a firearm or other weapon that he can operate in his disabled state. A young, fit man ought to be considering a form of martial arts to supplement his abilities as well. Contrary to what your Tae Kwon Do instructor told you when you were 9, the purpose of martial arts is not to instill self-confidence, discipline or develop physical fitness. These are secondary benefits (and very good ones). The purpose of martial arts is to be able to inflict violence against other human beings effectively. That’s it. Approach the martial art you choose with this mentality. It is not primarily recreational or competitive. You may find that you enjoy it enough to consider it a recreational activity or to engage in sanctioned competitions in your martial art of choice, this is a good way to hone your skills too. But, if your instructor is there to have a good time or teach you how to play a sport, I suggest you move on to a school that is there to teach serious survival. If you do not like martial arts, it will not be recreational. It will be work. But you must do it anyway. If you aren’t sure where to start, Jujitsu is a species of martial arts that has stood the test of time as a highly adaptable, friendly to beginners and relatively easy to learn the basics of. You can also derive much benefit from boxing, wresting and kick boxing (Muay Thai).
The stronger you are, the more effective you will be in your art of choice. You will also be more physically imposing, more resistant to injury, and more able to endure serious injury without permanent maiming or death. Training in physical strength is the foundation of defense. Even without any training, a large and strong man is still a more dangerous target. This is why weight classes exist in combat sports. The stronger a person is, the more dangerous they are in a fight. Period. Lightweights may very well be faster and potentially more skilled than larger and stronger opponents, but they stand no realistic chance in a hand-to-hand fight, in spite of what Hollywood tells you. Peak Mike Tyson, at 220 lbs, would demolish peak Bruce Lee, at 148 lbs. Don’t @ me. You can’t control your height and have limited control of your overall mass, but serious weight training will add muscular body weight as your strength rises. This increases the odds in your favor.
Change Your Mindset
You have a responsibility to protect your family from violence. This often means strategically working toward avoiding dangerous situations with a group of oblivious children and a wife distracted by herding oblivious children. Again, being smart is the best way to stay safe from danger. Failing that, you should have been thinking already about how to interfere with a threat to allow them time to escape or hide or end the threat to their lives. For many men, this will be a permanent change to their mindset. This mindset change is the most important step you can take to protect yourself and your loved ones. More important than buying a gun or earning a black belt. To help explain this mindset shift, I would appeal to the work of Colonel Jeff Cooper, a legendary instructor in defensive firearm use. Cooper used a color coded spectrum to describe the awareness level of a given person at a given time. The colors are white, yellow, orange, red, black and, rarely, gray.
Condition white is a condition of relaxation and oblivion toward any potential external threats. Ideally, a man is only really in this condition when he is asleep. Though, it can be tempting to be in this condition when at home or another place of comfort and routine, like our workplaces. To be attacked while in condition white is to be caught completely by surprise and flat-footed. You are already behind schedule and must catch up. Given the rapidity of most violent encounters, you may not get a chance. You must set aside condition white.
Condition yellow is a state of relaxed alertness. This is the optimal condition for most of life. To be in condition yellow is to be present in the moment with loved ones or at your work, but with your mind alert to who and what is around you. This is the condition most of us are in when we drive. We are subconsciously aware that we are in a situation of enhanced danger, surrounded by moving and sometimes unpredictable vehicles on the roadway means we should not be caught by surprise by the presence of other vehicles near us on the roadway. This is not a condition of paranoia. It is merely paying attention to your surroundings. In this state, a casual appraisal of your surroundings will yield awareness of who is nearby and where things like exit doors, fire extinguishers and any odd or out of place items or people may be.
Condition orange is a state of heightened alertness when a potential threat has been identified. This could mean a dubious looking person has entered the shop with you, a troubling noise such as shouting has been detected, people are walking closely behind you or an aggressive looking dog is in your line of sight. Any of these things may become a threat, but they also may not be. In condition orange, your awareness is focused on something that has set off your radar and until it is investigated or is gone, it will remain your focus. While investigating, you should be taking actions to set yourself up for a victorious encounter, such as moving so that the threat is blocked by on obstruction or moving closer to the door or getting out of sight.
Condition red is when an actual threat has been revealed and requires response. This does not mean you shoot the object of your attention right away. But it does mean that it has been confirmed as a threat. Condition red should mean that you are already moving to eliminate the threat or to remove yourself from the area. Condition red often means that, if you are armed, you have taken up your weapon in hand. It is a condition of high alarm and thus rare for most people.
Condition black is a state of catatonic panic or denial. This happens to people in dangerous situations more often than you would think. People who are unprepared for emergencies often have to go through a cycle similar to the stages of grieving, and it can take a few seconds up to several minutes to get some people to accept that they are in a dangerous situation, and they may not survive if they do not act. This mental vapor lock is what is described by condition black. To be prepared for an emergency mentally often prevents or at least mitigates this condition.
Condition gray is a rare but occasionally taught mode that is usually reserved to those who are highly trained in threat management and experienced in emergency situations. Those in condition gray tend to enter an automatic reaction mode that is almost devoid of intentional thought. They have trained to the point that their reflexive reactions are appropriate to dangerous situations and do not have to think about what they are doing. Very few of us have the time and money to train to this level. High level practitioners of martial arts that are attacked have described a sensation of not being aware of their actions when disabling an attacker, yet they executed an appropriate defense. You may also hear police or soldiers describe deadly force encounters where they cannot remember looking at the sights of the weapons to take conscious and intentional aim, yet after-action investigation reveals that their gunfire was highly accurate. These are examples of condition gray.
To sum this up, yellow good. White and black, bad.
Cooper bases his thoughts on this on an underlying assumption known as the OODA loop. This acronym stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. This is the standard decision-making loop that all human beings go through whenever encountering even a very mundane decision in their lives. Most of the time you don’t notice it. If you are tying your shoes and your lace tears off, you must observe it, decide what to do about it, look around for another pair of shoes and then put them on. Unexpected decisions take longer to process than routine ones. We must observe the conditions, orient ourselves to the circumstances, decide on what action to take and then actually do it. Our brains build heuristics for commonly encountered decisions that help us take mental shortcuts, but most people don’t have that firmware prior to a violent encounter unless they seek out training for it ahead of time or spend time mentally preparing. The color code concept that Cooper created is meant to help speed up this process. A person in condition white will take longer to observe and orient themselves to whatever unexpected emergency may pop up. A person in condition yellow, who is always observing and reorienting themselves to their situation, is able to shave time off of the processing loop, which in a potentially deadly encounter means the difference between life and death. This is the basis upon which ambushes are considered effective. One side basically stacks the OODA loop in their favor. The ambushed party has to take longer to understand what is happening and decide what to do. The ambusher has already observed the situation, oriented themselves favorably, decided what they are going to do, and usually is already acting when the victim hasn’t even started this loop. To reduce the likelihood of being ambushed, remain in condition yellow at all times.
Acquire The Tools
In order to be able to defend yourself well, you must equip yourself with the appropriate tools. This doesn’t mean only carrying a firearm. Though, I highly recommend you train with one and carry regularly if you are in a place where that is possible. In fact, I even recommend you avoid going places where you are not authorized to carry a firearm as much as possible. The most appropriate firearm in most circumstances is a concealable and moderately sized pistol or revolver. To use a firearm in a violent encounter, you must assume that the assailant will be killed if you fire it at them. No warning shots. No wounding shots. If you are not justified killing the attacker, do not fire the weapon. Handguns are notoriously weak compared to rifles, and most people shot with pistols survive. Nevertheless, it is legally considered a use of lethal force, and it can only be used if lethal force is justified.
Whole oil tankers full of ink have been spilled on opinion pieces about which carry pistols are the best ones, but a few basic parameters are helpful to know. Your carry gun must be reliable, safe and sufficiently powerful to be useful in a deadly force encounter. It should be a model that is relatively comfortable to your hand. Buy a name brand firearm in a caliber large enough to be in common use as a pistol cartridge used by police or military in their pistols. Be sure the pistol has a high enough ammunition capacity to be useful for defensive purposes. The pistol should not be huge. If it is too big, it will be uncomfortable to carry and after a while, you will stop carrying it because the inconvenience is too much. Purchase a decent, fitted holster that will allow you to carry with confidence that it will not fall out awkwardly or cause you to discharge it accidentally. Do not stick your pistol in your belt and expect it to stay there. Most importantly, practice with the weapon you carry regularly. Accuracy is important, and your ability to operate the weapon in an emergency, when Murphy’s Law will go into effect, will depend on your previous time spent handling it under non-emergency conditions. Draw the pistol regularly. Dry fire the pistol regularly (this will not damage modern firearms).
Always remember that pistols are actually secondary weapons. They are supplementary to rifles, which are better in every way except for ease of carrying in social settings. It is not practical at this point for men to carry rifles around with them (there have been jurisdictions in American history that mandated the carrying of rifles if traveling very far away from your home). Pistols are, in most cases, the most powerful defensive tool you can practically bring to bear. If you can’t defend against the current threat with a decent pistol, you have screwed up by going somewhere you shouldn’t have gone. A man should also have a high-quality, “conflict tier” rifle at home. I choose these words carefully, because the phrase “assault rifle” is scary to some and actually has no clear definition. A home defense weapon should be a long gun (shotgun or rifle) that is durable, high capacity and accurate. AR15s make good defensive weapons. There are a swath of newer long guns that actually use pistol calibers which are excellent close range, interior home defense. Simple pump action shotguns also do. Grandpa’s double barrel 16 gauge bird hunting shotgun, not so much. You may need more than two shots, and you don’t want to be trying to reload that at 2 am with people trying to break down your door in the dark.
Put significant thought into how you plan to defend your home if you are using a firearm. Know where your kids are sleeping and do not shoot in that direction. Have a plan on where everyone should go if something happens. Invest in simple home security measures like decent locks, a dog and exterior lights. Teach your kids about where firearms are located and teach them to handle them safely when they are old enough. Don’t let them stumble on them before you get a chance to teach them. Keep them out of reach of younger ones. Your wife and older children should know how to operate all weapons you intend to use in defense of your home. Any defensive long gun use must be equipped with at least two mandatory accessories: a carry strap or sling of some kind and a weapon-mounted flashlight.
If you carry a firearm, or even if you don’t, carrying a basic emergency medical kit is a good idea. These can be useful in a number of emergencies that are far more likely to occur than a violent encounter such as a car accident. Rendering aid to other victims of violence or even to a disabled assailant is an act of mercy that a Christian should be prepared to visit upon his fellow human beings.
The carrying of knives for defense is a controversial topic and, while I carry a pocketknife myself, I don’t consider it a part of my defensive tools except as a desperate last resort. I shoot right-handed under ideal conditions and my holster is oriented to my right hand, so my knife is in my left pocket. Theoretically, I could use my knife to disengage for an assailant’s grip and free my shooting hand to draw my pistol if that problem arose. Using knives in a violent encounter is not ideal, as it requires you to close the distance with a deadly threat to hand-to-hand range. If they are armed as well, you are now on a level playing field, which is not good. You want to have the odds in your favor. If you do wish to carry a knife with you for defensive use, you must train with it even more than a firearm, in my opinion. You should also invest in an appropriately designed knife for that purpose. A Swiss army knife will not do. Certain martial arts specialize in this kind of edged weapon training. While anyone can flail away with a blade and damage the opponent, to engage in a knife fight is a martial arts struggle, and you are highly likely to be injured by whatever weapon the assailant is using as well. There is an old saying that in a knife fight, the winner goes to the hospital and the loser goes to the morgue. This should not be Plan A. Still, a bad weapon is better than no weapon. Be sure you are aware of your jurisdiction’s laws on carrying defensive knives. In many cases, the “intent to go armed” stipulation of a weapon law violation applies to self-defense also. Use caution when discussing what your every-day-carry knife is for.
If you carry a firearm, you must have a decent pocket flashlight. Everyone who takes self-defense seriously should have one, even if they don’t carry a pistol. Power outages happen. Dark parking lots exist. And, if you have a violent encounter, you must make certain your situation justifies deadly force before using deadly force. Don’t let poor ambient light conditions slow down your OODA loop or cause you to misjudge a situation and make a deadly error.
Conclusion
Christian must take their responsibility to defend themselves and loved ones seriously. In order to do that, they must think like protectors and equip themselves with the tools necessary to be effective. Train your body, arm yourself, but most importantly, train your mind. When Christ dispatched his disciples to go and carry the gospel to the world, he exhorted to take practical measures to prepare. This included being armed. Christians throughout history have understood that it is consistent with the correct understanding of God’s word for men to be able to defend themselves and others with force. Do not be complacent. We all ultimately depend on God for our defense and protection. Nevertheless, our Lord told his disciples that “if any man does not have a sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.” Preparedness for worldly danger is not merely prudent, but it is commanded.
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