NC pastor: Jesus has thoughts about Mark Robinson’s call to kill the wicked | Opinion

On June 30, the people of Lake Church in Bladen County gathered for a special God and Country worship service in celebration of July Fourth. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the Republican candidate for governor, was the guest preacher.

Several members of my Charlotte congregation sent me a video clip in which Robinson, standing behind a pulpit told the church it was time to act. “Get mad at me if you want to. Some folks need killing. It’s time for somebody to say it. It’s not a matter of vengeance. It’s not a matter of being mean or spiteful. It’s a matter of necessity. We have wicked people doing wicked things — torturing and murdering and raping. It’s time to call out those guys in green, go have them handle it. Those boys in blue, have them go handle it. We need to start handling our business again.”

I won’t call Robinson’s remarks a sermon because he did not read or discuss any Biblical text. In fact, the service began with a pledge of allegiance to the American flag, then the Christian flag, then to the Bible. But no one read scripture at any point during the service.

Throughout his speech, Robinson conflated the death of Jesus Christ on the cross with the combat deaths of soldiers, crediting both as the source of American freedom.

Robinson believes that conservative Christians are being targeted by the government and their freedom is threatened. He believes contemporary Americans owe a debt to soldiers who died fighting evil in the past and must protect freedom for future generations, declaring “now it is time for us to show them what we will do with their sacrifice.” Robinson believes freedom can only be secured with blood sacrifice. He believes others were willing to kill to make us free and we must be willing to kill to maintain freedom.

Robinson’s communications director, Mike Lonergan, denied that Robinson was calling Christians to begin killing, saying: “He literally and specifically states in that portion of the speech that killing refers to the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese in WWII.” But Robinson didn’t say “some folks needed killing.” He said it is time, currently, for someone to say that some people need, present tense, killing.

Robinson acknowledged his call to violence was going to make “Some liberal somewhere...say that sounds awful.” But I don’t hear his words as a political liberal. I hear them as a follower of Jesus Christ. I don’t think they sound awful. I think they sound like sin.

I know Robinson isn’t worried about what I think about his words, but he ought to worry about what Jesus thinks about them. Because in Luke Chapter 9, Jesus rebukes his disciples when they want permission to pray for fire to rain down and destroy villagers who wouldn’t listen to him. In Matthew Chapter 26, when Peter pulled a sword and attacked the soldiers who came to arrest him, Jesus told him to put it away because “those who live by the sword will die by the sword,” and then he healed the person Peter had wounded. Jesus goes on to say, “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?”

Jesus had the power to destroy “wicked people doing wicked things.” But Jesus didn’t want to destroy, he wanted to save. Jesus died on the cross to free us from the power of violence, sin and death. In his resurrection we find the freedom and power to love, even those who are determined to destroy us.

I believe Robinson fundamentally misunderstands the nature of Christian freedom, but that doesn’t make him unique. The apostle Paul was correcting the same misunderstanding in his letter to the Galatians when he wrote in Chapter 5 Verse 17, “you, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge in sin, but rather to serve one another humbly in love.”

To state what should be obvious, but clearly no longer is: It is not loving to kill people. But if you don’t want to take my word for it, check out the Sixth Commandment. The cross of Jesus Christ makes Christians free to love. And love will serve, love will heal, love will resist evil, and love might even get us killed — but it will never allow us to be killers.

This story was originally published July 11, 2024 at 9:44 AM.