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Q: "What does God say about killing? What about war? Didn't He tell some people to kill? What about self defense?"
A: I think that there are a whole lot of misconceptions about this one, especially among Christians. First of all, the Bible doesn't say "Thou shalt not kill." OK, well in the King James version it does, but that is honestly a poor translation. If you look at the New International Version, or any other version that I know of (including the New King James Version) at Exodus 20:13, or Deuteronomy 5:17 (both different tellings of the Ten Commandments) it says "Do not murder." There is a big difference between, "Do not kill," and "Do not murder." One means you can't have chicken nuggets, or bug spray.
In fact, the Bible actually says that there is a time for war and killing (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8) and there are several times where God tells His people to go to war, and yes, to kill the enemy. That is not what God wants for this world. In heaven there will be no war and killing (refer to the heaven question), but on earth sometimes the unfortunate becomes necessary.
There have been Christian groups throughout history who have felt that war and killing were wrong for Christians. They felt so strongly about that, that many even went to jail refusing to fight in wars. That even happened here in America with the Amish, Mennonites, and others. I think that is very admirable. I know that God hates death. If a Christian feels that it would be wrong for them to be any part of a war, I totally understand.
There is another side to that, though. If Canada attacked America tomorrow and started sending soldiers into our homes, made people their slaves, and killed innocent men, women, and children, then the only thing that could stop them would be for Americans to fight and defend our country to prevent more people from being abused and killed. In that case, I believe that God would want me to fight to protect those people who need protecting. Sometimes people have to give and take lives in order for innocent people to live.
In World War II the Nazis had a plan to take over the world. They also murdered millions of people for no reason, other than the fact that they didn't like them. At first, many countries said, "Oh, well. We don't want to get involved. We don't want to fight wars." The United States was one of those countries. We know how that turned out. Certainly if more countries had stepped up and fought against the Nazis at first then millions of lives could have been saved. We will never know.
The difficult thing is that most wars are not as clear as Nazis killing 6 million Jews, Christians, and Gypsies, or even our fictitious "Canada attacks" analogy. Many wars occur that leave us wondering, "did people really have to die for this?" That is a horrible thing. God hates that, I'm sure. But, do know that usually things are not as simple. That is why good people have long arguments about these things.