What are we to make of Jesus telling his disciples to buy swords?

Advocates of nonviolence as well as gun supporters have used accounts of Jesus’ arrest to bolster their cases

Photo by Jonathan Kemper, licensed by Unsplash.

Both of these statements are true:

• Jesus taught people to love their enemies has long been known as the Prince of Peace.

• In a Gospel account of the night of Jesus’ betrayal, he told his disciples that any of them without a sword should sell his cloak in order to buy one.

The apparent contradiction has been the…