Please don't make the mistake of thinking that I impute moral guilt to somone who acts in self-defence. As I've already said of myself, I'm a pacifist by moral conviction, but not by nature. If you try to take my life, I most assuredly will try to thwart that by taking yours.

I am a spiritual work in progress. I can no more now be a "pure pacifist" than I can be a perfect imitation of Christ: holy. But I shall be these one day; in the meantime, I must be patient with myself, be prayerful and watchful, knowing, in joy, that the aspirations I have for myself are also God's aspirations for me.

I will never talk of the sinfulness of any child of God. I will never say to him or her that they have sinned greviously by not measuring up to the teaching and example of Christ. Did Jesus condemn Peter for his moral frailty in face of grave personal danger.

We are not God, and Jesus knows it. He's not unreasonable: he doesn't ask for what we can't deliver...yet.