TIME FOR THE CHURCH TO BE THE CHURCH - OUR GUN CULTURE AND THE CHURCH'S WITNESS - PART III
It has been almost 12 weeks since the sound of gunfire at Noblesville West Middle School in Indiana. USAmerica has gotten a summer reprieve from the all-too-frequent school shootings, but schools are reopening across the country now. It is in this season that I offer this last reflection – at least for now – on our gun culture and the role of the church. I pray that I am wrong, but history teaches us that there is yet more heartbreak on the horizon and the response of offering “thoughts and prayers.”
THE DEATH OF GUN CONTROL DEBATE
WHAT WILL THE AUTOPSY SHOW?
On June 19, 2015, British columnist Dan Hodges tweeted this:
In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the gun control debate.
Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.
There are many who would say today that Dan Hodges was correct. Only the most optimistic would still hold to the notion that there is still time for the kind of sweeping change that would end our idolatrous relationship with guns and transform our violent culture. This is not to belittle the inspiring efforts of the students from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School and their nationally known activist and prolific tweeter, Cameron Kasky. They fostered the national MARCH FOR OUR LIVES movement. They took on people in high places. Since the Parkland, Florida massacre there have been 50 new gun laws enacted in various states, fourteen of them led by Republican governors. Bump stocks have been banned. In some cases, the age to buy a gun has been raised to 21. Some have restricted the use of high magazine weapons. Dick’s Sporting Goods no longer sells assault rifles, high magazine guns, and to persons under 21 years of age. A few others have similarly followed suit.
But there has still been no nationally embraced status confessionis that has led to true game-changing legislation. We have nibbled around the edges but have not gotten to the heart of the matter. There has been nothing even remotely close to the radically bold action taken by Australia. In 1996, Australia was so moved by a mass shooting that soon legislation was enacted that worked to change the culture. The government bought back guns in circulation and there have been no mass shootings in Australia in the last 22 years. After the Parkland shootings, A. Odysseus Patrick, an Op-Ed contributor in Sydney, Australia wrote this:
The Australian model won’t work in the United States. Here’s why:
We Australians have a profoundly different relationship with weapons.
Americans love guns. We’re scared of them.
THE BEAT GOES ON
In the first 23 weeks of 2018’s school season from January 1st through Memorial Day, there were 30 school shootings in this country. That’s 1.3 shootings per week. This summer has also been one of the most violent in recent history in terms of deaths by firearms, but that reality has been obscured by the other headline news – immigration issues and the separation of families, the ongoing investigation led by Mueller, the coming midterm elections, and the non-stop circus in the White House.
Though the gun debate has been on the back page for a while, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that we can somehow expect a reprieve from the heartache of gun violence now that schools are starting. Even though we might be able to learn something from Australia’s playbook, such as a national gun registry, a 30 day wait period, and a ban on assault and military-style weapons, it is not going to happen. The NRA is suddenly not going to develop a conscience. Politicians will not grow a spine, do their job and make our country safer, especially for children.
GOD’S MISSION HAS A CHURCH
I concluded the previous blogpost in this series on our gun culture and the role of the church with these words:
The alliance of faith, patriotism, and guns is not of Jesus. It is of Constantine.
The role of the church in our idolatrous gun-worshipping culture is one of claiming and living out of our identity and calling. God’s mission has always been to heal and bless the entire world – all peoples – and that mission of God has a church. Thus, a little discussion on ecclesiology is useful here.
From the time that the women ran from the empty tomb and first proclaimed, “Jesus is risen,” the church understood itself to be in the world but not off it – an authentic contrast society. With the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost they clearly understood themselves as witnesses to a new reality, or as the author of Luke-Acts posits it, the church lives as witness to the resurrection. In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus from the dead, God has entered the most desperate stations of human existence and has overcome as fait accompli everything that would fragment us, cheapen us, or crush us. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead both owns and gives life to the church, and the church then lives as the continuation of Jesus in the world. It is the Body of Christ called and sent to bring hope, healing, and life to all.
As the church got going it knew that as the church it was always confronted with two stories, and only one of them could be true. Only one was worthy of one’s allegiance. There was the story of empire and the emperor as Lord and story that belongs to the church – the gospel of the crucified and risen messiah with Jesus as Lord. The two stories could not be more different. One story is driven by a narrative DNA traced back to Cain killing his brother Abel and has never been resolved. It is a story of the quest for power, wealth, division, and the use of force to achieve what one desires. The other is about a God who so loves the world that this God comes to us as a defenseless baby declaring amnesty to all – one who was so radically inclusive and extravagant with grace that the powers at hand crucified him. But God raised him up as Lord and Messiah of all and authenticating the way of Jesus. In short, there is the way of the world, and the way of Jesus. One offers false hope and security; the other has the final word where love and life win.
The church persisted in its mission of distinct witness to the world and loyalty to Jesus as Lord, even under atrocious persecution propagated by the empire, until Emperor Constantine experienced his quasi-conversion to Christianity in 313 AD. Believing that the Christian God would be good for the Roman Empire and for him, Constantine brought about the Christianization of the Roman Empire. In the Christianization, the two distinct stories of the church and empire became one. The church lived in service to Constantine and the empire’s agenda. Just about every movement that has claimed to know the will of God, certain of God’s blessing on their agenda, and willing to use force to achieve or protect it finds its roots in the Constantinian synthesis. So it is with God blessing the individual right to bear arms.
THE CALL FOR COURAGEOUS ADAPTIVE CHURCH LEADERS
An adaptive leader can adapt to changing circumstances; however, the defining attribute of an adaptive leader is that she or he is able to re-story persons and have them adapt to a different reality, assumptions, and set of loyalties. The transformational work of an adaptive leader and the role of the church is to so re-story persons that they abandon their loyalty to the story of the world and allow themselves to be owned and inspired by the story of the church. In biblical terminology, it means to repent. To repent means to unlearn and abandon long-held positions, worldviews, and loyalties and to relearn the peace and promise of the church’s story and the way of Jesus.
UNLEARING AND RELEARNING
As an authentic witness to the church’s identity and calling, consider the following:
1) The teachings of Jesus are incompatible with a gun culture. (i.e. Matthew 5:5, 5:21ff, and many more.)
2) Followers of Jesus do not demonize anyone. We love our enemies and do good to those who want to hurt us. (i.e. Matthew 5:43ff and more.)
3) USAmerica’s deep loyalty to individualism is not a biblical value. In the way of Jesus, community is valued. Every person is a unique individual, created in God’s image, but the gifts of the individual are in service to building up the community. (i.e. I Corinthians 12 & Ephesians 4.)
4) In the way of Jesus, the ONE has infinite value – the one widow, the one blind man, the one leper, the one outcast, the one child, and the one sheep for whom the leader will abandon all to search, find, and restore. Following the way of Jesus, we cannot just say that one student injured or killed in a school shooting is simply collateral damage in service to the right to bear arms. It is because of the vulnerability of the one that arms should be laid down. (i.e. Luke 15.)
5) USAmerica’s fascination with individual “rights” has no biblical foundation. Rather than speak about “rights” as a foundation of citizenship, the way of Jesus points to agape love. (i.e. John 13:34 and many others).
6) In the way of Jesus there is an a priori orientation not toward the most powerful but toward the most vulnerable. (i.e. Luke 6:20-26 and Matthew 25:31-46.)
IF NOT THE CHURCH, THEN WHO?
It is the church and its gospel story that is uniquely called for the transformation of the culture from one that loves guns to one that loves people. Yet claiming this mission has its perils in speaking the seemingly strange ways of Jesus in our highly polarized culture. Pastors and other leaders have been maligned, persecuted, lied about, threatened, and even been removed because they dared to speak a “Word from the Lord.” But do we have another choice?
When the church gathers and celebrates the Eucharist, it is not a private event. It is our own witness to ourselves and to the world. We proclaim through words and our movements that, as Isaiah 25 writes, one day God will throw a party for all people, and all means all. God will swallow up suffering and death and tear down everything that divides us – gender, nationalities, political affiliations, social and economic differences and replace it with dignity and love and life for all people. So, if what we proclaim and do when we gather for worship is true, let’s get on with it now!
Now is the time for the church to be the church – on every corner, on every street, in every venue – for the healing, blessing, and the transformation of our world. This is the hope for the world!
In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,
