As a Good Samaritan Elisjsha Dicken deserves a medal

Elisjsha Dicken, the 22-year-old who killed the mass shooter in Indiana was armed because of 'Constitutional Carry'

The 22-year-old man did a brave thing when he used his own gun to stop a gunman who had already killed three people at an Indiana mall.

On Sunday night, July 17, 2022, a gunman opened fire in a food court at the Greenwood Park Mall in Indiana. Three people were killed, and two others were hurt. He might have killed a lot more people if a man named Elisjsha Dicken hadn't quickly pulled out his own gun and shot the killer.

Dicken was praised as a "Good Samaritan" for saving lives. He was carrying a gun legally because of the state's constitutional carry law. The next day, the Greenwood police chief said, "If it weren't for the responsible armed citizen, many more people would have died last night."

Gun control supporters were quick to criticize the police chief for his "Good Samaritan" comment, which was based on a famous parable Jesus told. A local reporter exclaimed:

The term, ‘Good Samaritan’ came from a Bible passage of a man from Samaria who stopped on the side of the road to help a man who was injured and ignored. I cannot believe we live in a world where the term can equally apply to someone killing someone.

Who is right in this situation, the police chief or the reporter? A similar question is: Did Jesus agree with self-defense or killing a guilty person to save the lives of innocent people?

In the New Testament, the story of the Good Samaritan is found in Chapter 10 of the Book of Luke. The Samaritan is considered "good" because, when he saw a man who had been beaten and robbed, he chose to help the man with his own money. As I wrote in my 2020 book, Was Jesus a Socialist?, if the Samaritan had ignored the man or thought the government would help him, we might know him today as the "Good-for-nothing" Samaritan.

In Jesus' story, the Good Samaritan did not do anything violent himself. The people who hurt the man were probably long gone. He helped those who were being attacked. So, in a strict sense, the Greenwood police chief's comment wasn't exactly like what Elisjsha Dicken did when she stopped the shooter at the mall.

People have used the term "Good Samaritan" for hundreds of years to describe someone who doesn't have to help an innocent person but does so anyway. A Good Samaritan takes charge of a bad situation, makes it better as much as he can, and stops it from getting worse. In Greenwood, that's just what Elisjsha Dicken did.

In this case, it's clear that the criticizing reporter is a good person. Jesus was a man of peace, so he can't imagine that Jesus would agree with Dickens's actions. He might even bring up Matthew 5:39, where Jesus tells us to "turn the other cheek" when someone insults us or hits us in the face.

Lars Larson writes in Does Jesus Christ Support Self-Defense? that the question of giving insult for insult is very different from defending yourself against a mugger or a rapist. To "turn the other cheek" means to avoid making a bad situation worse than it needs to be. Elisjsha Dicken did not make the situation worse; in fact, he made it worse in the only way that was possible given the situation.

The reporter probably agrees with the "namby-pamby" or "extremely pacifist" view of Jesus that says he would never approve of violence, even if it's needed to save lives. It means that Elisjsha Dicken should have run for cover and let the Greenwood shooter kill another dozen or two people. That is wrong and might even be blasphemous.

During The Last Supper, when Jesus ate with his disciples, he gave them specific instructions, such as this one (Luke 22:36):

He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.

Note that he did not advise anyone, then or at any other time, to stand idly by and allow wanton slaughter of innocents. And he offered support for the threat of force to prevent the theft of property as well. In Luke 11:21, Jesus said:

When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted, and divides up his plunder.

This is the same Jesus who, in Luke 12:39, says, “If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.” It’s the same Jesus who never criticized anyone for possessing a lethal weapon such as a sword, though he certainly condemned the initiation of force or the impetuous and unnecessary use of it.

In Jesus, Guns and Self-Defense: What Does the Bible Say?, Gary DeMar maintains that

Being armed and willing to defend ourselves, our family, and our neighbors is not being unchristian or even unloving. Self-defense can go a long way to protect the innocent from people who are intent on murder for whatever reason.

The Greenwood reporter’s errant perspective is not untypical of people who think they know Jesus and Christianity but spend more time criticizing them than learning about them. I see evidence of this all the time, most recently from a speaker at an April 2022 conference in Prague, Czech Republic.

“When it comes to the source of individual rights,” the speaker pontificated with misplaced confidence, “there are only three possibilities.” One, he said, is a Creator (God), which he summarily dismissed as a ridiculous, untenable proposition. The second is government, which he ruled out as equally ridiculous and untenable. The only logical option, he said, was “nature”—something which he suggested evolved out of nothing from nobody. As I listened with the largely student audience, I thought to myself, “This supposed expert hasn’t even considered a fourth option, namely, a combination of the first and third—which is to say that God, as the author of nature, is in fact the author of individual rights as well.”

The speaker added another uninformed dig at Christianity by claiming it was stupid for Jesus to ever suggest you should love your neighbor. “What if your neighbor is an axe-murderer? How much sense would that make?” he asked derisively. If he had known of the passages I cite above, he would have been embarrassed by his own ignorance. As a general principle, Jesus argued, you should love your neighbor but the same Jesus would urge you to arm yourself if your neighbor threatens your life or property.

In The Life and Death Debate: Moral Issues of Our Time, Christian theologians Norman Geisler and J. P. Moreland write:

To permit murder when one could have prevented it is morally wrong. To allow a rape when one could have hindered it is evil. To watch an act of cruelty to children without trying to intervene is morally inexcusable. In brief, not resisting evil is an evil of omission, and an evil of omission can be just as evil as an evil of commission. Any man who refuses to protect his wife and children against a violent intruder fails them morally.

When Elisjsha Dicken pulled out his gun to stop a shooting spree, he had every reason to think he might become the shooter's target and be killed. He wasn't, though, and is one of the people whose lives he saved.

If Elisjsha Dicken had been killed, the words of Jesus in John 15:13 would have given us some comfort. There is no greater love than giving up your life for your friends.

Elisjsha Dicken is not just a Good Samaritan. He's really good. He deserves a medal.

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