The nation debates (once again) gun control. Florida passed and then rejected an AR-15 ban in a 15-minute period. The event that triggered the Florida and national debate was, we all agree, horrific and unacceptable. There is no debate about that. But step away from that central locus of agreement and everything gets hazy fast. What to do? Eliminate AR-15's? That would seem an easy one since the kid that did the latest atrocity used one. Ban assault weapons? Well, sure. Arm teachers? Makes sense. Raise the minimum age for buying guns? Of course!
But I'm sure by now you can also hear the objections to all of these. In the past 5 years knives have accounted for 500 times as many deaths as rifles. Why target the AR-15? "It's only used for killing." That is both demonstrably not true and not the point. Ban assault weapons? Maybe ... if we could come to some agreement of what constitutes "assault weapons." Arm teachers? Seems reasonable on the surface, but teachers don't want it, let alone many others. "Well, then, an armed police officer on the premises." You'd think that would work, except there was just such a person on the campus of the Florida school shooting and it didn't make an iota of difference. Throw in the fact that in every mass killing in the last 10 years the laws were broken or not applied in order to get to the point of the killings, and we really get confused. The Sandy Hook killer killed his mother and stole the weapons he used. What laws would have made that work? The perpetrator of the church killing in Texas was documented with mental problems and as dangerous, but the reports never made it to the weapon purchase points. How do we fix that? This most recent killer was also a known danger. Why didn't the law prevent him from buying a weapon?
The point is not gun laws or gun bans. The point is that the system is broken. And by "system" I don't just mean "gun control" or the like. Yes, those are broken, too, but it is so much more. We have no means of intervening in the lives of those who would perpetrate these kinds of crimes. Between "rights" and "privacy" and the lack of mental health care and the disengagement our current society indulges by means of video games and social media and the failure of authorities to properly respond and manage these issues and -- the list goes on and on -- we have no means to deal with this. On the other hand, sane, rational, caring people think that taking away a rifle will solve these kinds of things. Sane, caring, rational people are, simultaneously, appalled that an armed officer would be present at a school and that he would not use that weapon to stop a shooting. It's what we call cognitive dissonance. We don't know how to handle this stuff and we don't know how to think about this stuff. But what we do know is that the kids know how to fix it ... right?
We need to work through these things. We need first to recognize that we cannot fix it. We might be able to affect it, mitigate it, slow it, but we cannot fix it. Neither a totalitarian government who takes away all guns and holds its subjects under its thumb nor a libertarian government that lets its people do as they see fit have solutions for this problem. All claim that they do; they don't. Because the second thing we need to recognize is that the problem is not the weapons or the mental health issues or the age at which guns are purchased or the presence or lack thereof of an armed officer. The problem is us. The problem is the sin that infiltrates and permeates our society. Clearly something has changed over time because these killings have increased. No one seems to be asking, "What changed?" We've always had guns. We've always had mental health issues. We've always had murders. What has changed that causes this to increase like it has? I can tell you it is not the AR-15. Biblically it is "The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?" (Jer 17:9) It is our embracing of the human heart as the ultimate source of wisdom and goodness in the face of all evidence to the contrary and the wholesale and systematic rejection of biblical morality. We declare that killing babies is good if a mother wants to do it and declare that marriage means whatever we want it to mean and declare that how you feel is good and right. And they kill because they want to without a firm definition of right and wrong because it's how they feel and it's good and right. We strip off morality and wonder why morality is failing.
I'm not a radical gun proponent. I'm not opposed to reasonable gun control. I am concerned with the talk that perhaps we ought to eliminate the 2nd Amendment because it seems as if others would follow closely and I'm not at all sure that would be a good thing. But I'm mostly concerned that we are fighting tooth and nail to solve a problem with methods that don't address the problem, and we'll dismantle more than we intended in doing it. I'm concerned that we are not addressing the failure of enforcing the existing laws in these discussions and then concluding that more laws will help. I'm concerned that fewer and fewer people are able to think logically about these things and respond solely with the emotion of it. I'm concerned that the Answer is being asked to leave the public debate and "Please keep Yourself only in the private arena." And I'm concerned that too many of us who know Jesus are keeping quiet as a result.
11 comments:
last night i had a wonderful meal, the knife and fork fed me well, but i still can't get the plates to do the dishes. my friend drank a little too much Saturday night and as a result the car drove him into a tree. what is it with these inanimate objects running our lives. we used to blame the devil for making us do bad things. but we are much more sophisticated today. perhaps we should take all products to counseling to insure that they are not predisposed to causing harm to our children. i really don't want to lay the blame on the mindset of our children because that would be just a red herring argument, aside from the point. but i will blame the president of the united states for all our ill's because..well i just don't like him very much. anything he say's must be wrong because, well, because He said it...
i can't really take credit for this post, the keyboard is having it's way again.
Keyboards type. It's what they do. What are we going to do about it??!!
Society, and parts of the church, have been actively trying to remove faith from the public sphere for decades. The fact that some people who claim to be Christians won’t even allow the discussion of sin as the root cause of what we are seeing speaks volumes to where we are as a society and to what the dominant worldview is. The fact that we are prepared to blame and assign responsibility to an in animate mechanical device instead of the agents who misuse Said mechanical device is also a sad commentary on where we are today.
The fact that our society has reached a point where we can’t even discuss the root cause of the sorts of things in a public setting, and where people who call themselves Christians won’t even consider the role of Sin as part of the conversation says quite a bit about where we are as a society.
The fact (as you said) that there are CHRISTIANS who prefer to ignore the sin problem is most troubling to me.
Not just ignore it, but actively remove even the discussion of the possibility that sin is the problem from the conversation.
Yes, either "not the problem" or "don't think about that and DO SOMETHING ELSE."
I own 2 guns but I haven't touched them in years, in all that time neither got up and killed anyone. Now if a law was passed that required me to turn over Deerslayer and Ol' Smokepole to the government I would have to because I'm a Christian and Romans 13. My main argument against gun control (other than the gun control that demands you take a deep breath, let half of it out, then gently squeeze the trigger) is the Constitution.
The constitution is the 1600 lbs gorilla in the room. This is a country that is ruled by law, which means that the Constitution of the United States is the ruler of this nation. Lucky for is if you don't like the 2nd amendment as it is written, you can change it. The instructions on how to change it are in the constitution. But to arbitrarily come up with a "solution" that violates the constitution cannot be followed by a Christian because Romans 13 says that we must follow our political leadership (the constitution). So what do we do about the lawmakers when they rebel against our leader?
Or look at it on a secular level: ok, you restrict the right to bear arms. What other right are you good at restricting? How about the right to a speedy trial? The right to privacy in your papers? As one who was forced to live in some of the worst barracks in the military, I think the next right to be removed is the right to not have to put soldiers up in your house. (I like pancakes for breakfast, and btw roll call is at 0600, can you give me a lift?)
This is something that needs a lot of prayer.
I know there's a lot of Christians who prefer to ignore the sin problem, they're the ones that are shocked and offended when you tall them that their sin is the reason for Christmas
The “something else” options seem to be either do anything possible without thinking it through, or study the “data” and do nothing until the studying is done.
The interesting (not the right word) thing is when Christians set aside the source of the problem -- sin -- they set aside the reason Christ came, the Gospel. How is this a good thing?
It’s incumbent on this current societal worldview to separate religion in general and Christianity in specific from the realm of reality. Or from the realm of public discourse and exile it to a personal/private realm where it can’t be considered as an answer to these questions.
Once Christianity ceases to even be considered as possibility being True, it simply gets shunted off to the realm of subjective personal experience and ceases to be a factor.
The sad thing is seeing how many “Christians” have bought into this lie and are actively involved in trying to shove Christianity aside.
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