A Time to Kill

“A time to kill and a time to heal…” Ecclesiastes 3:3a

I want to talk about the occasional necessity to kill. In wars, obviously, killing is expected. But is killing necessary for anything?

Yes, it is. We couldn’t have meat without death. We couldn’t have certain plants without their death. Now, I’m not about to go talking about how we need to protect the plants and animals and not kill anything and ban guns and hunting, no. I’m not doing that. I like guns! But I will talk about how dangerous killing can be.

If you look at the majority of video games these days, they revolve around killing and death. Zombies, assassins, and so on. Even if you are (in the video game or computer game) the good guy defeating the bad guy, that’s still killing.

Killing is extremely overused in this world. Animals are killed by little kids just for the fun. What fun is death? And why is it fun to kill the little animals, while it becomes not fun when it becomes personal death? Death is not fun.

Let’s look at killing: It is, in fact, ending somebody’s life prematurely when in fact that person had yet to fulfill God’s plan for their life. Yes, God knew it would happen, and He works in every situation, but needlessly taking a life is a selfish decision some make that has a result much greater than we will ever see from our earthly perspective.

Now, there is a time for killing. It is necessary. But not necessary in your everyday life. There is a need to defend yourself. That’s why people have CHL’s; primarily for self defense. If you were attacked at the store parking lot or in your home even, you would have to defend yourself. This is acceptable.

What is not acceptable is when people make it a joke. Make it obsessive. Where your everyday thought is violent death. And people do that! Millions of people daily play video games, watch movies, or read books in which there are people killed. These glorify death and violence.

“God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

God says here we are the masters of every living creature that moves on the ground. That means that we are to care for and protect the animals, fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects and rodents alike, because the LORD made it. But if we are purposefully killing, wounding, and beating animals for no cause – this is disobeying God’s commands for everyone! I understand mistakes. Everybody understands that. But we do have some control. See the snake in the road, go around. Don’t swerve to hit that armadillo, or the raccoon, or the opossum. They are animals! They didn’t do anything to hurt you! (They could though.) Going hunting? Don’t kill just for “fun”.  Ensure that when you are hunting that what you kill gets eaten by you or someone else and not just left to rot in the forest or be scavenged by some other creature.  Don’t just kill to kill. Kill with a purpose. If there is a cockroach or mouse or ant infestation in your house, that is an acceptable time to kill something. But if something is just doing what God made it to do, it doesn’t deserve death.

        Acts 11:17: “Then I heard a voice telling me, ‘Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.'” An acceptable act of killing, because it’s going to a purpose.

        1 Samuel 25:31: “…the staggering burden of needless bloodshed…“

    Ryan

  Mark 16:15