Our Gun Culture And The Church's Witness - Part 1
April 21, 1999, Littleton, Colorado - The First Day after “Columbine”
Through falling rain under a dreary evening sky, they came.
They came into the worship center clutching and hanging onto each other. They hung their soccer t-shirts and other sportswear identifying them as Columbine High School students over the communion rail. Three young ladies put their high school yearbook on the altar. Our worship center was filled to overflowing a half hour before the service would start. Standing room only awaited the later arrivals, and yet they kept coming.
We sang,
God of grace and God of glory on your people pour your pow’r…
Cure your children’s warring madness, bend our pride to your control…
Save us from our wonton gladness, rich in things and poor in soul…
Grant us wisdom. Grant us courage for the facing of this hour…
We also sang,
A mighty fortress is our God…
Though hordes of devils fill the land all threatening to devour us…
Were they to take our house, goods, honor child or spouse,
Though life be wrenched away, they cannot win the day…
Where is God?
We spoke about the falling rain as a sign of a God weeping over the senseless slaughter of his innocent children. After all, God is the first to cry. We also spoke of the falling rain as a sign of baptismal promises. Sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever, the worst thing that could ever happen to us will not be the last thing.
We spoke of a God who so incarnates with the human predicament that Jesus took a bullet in the school.
A forgotten detail about the Columbine shootings is that the slain students spent the night on the floor of the high school because of the difficulty of moving bodies in a booby-trapped environment.
Informed by a theology of the cross, we proclaimed that Jesus also laid there with them. Of course, we also know the outcome of the Jesus story, and the outcome of the Jesus story is also our outcome. The tomb is empty. Jesus is risen. And because Jesus is risen we also will rise, meaning that love and life finally win.
BC and AC
In the days and weeks following Columbine and as congregations and people of faith worked to heal our community, we became totally convinced that the experience of “Columbine” would so shock us and so move us that we would one day speak of time as BC and AC. Before Columbine and After Columbine.
Surely the easily availability and evil use of guns, surely the sights and sounds of children being murdered, families being shattered, and a community in deep mourning would rattle us into being made into a new culture. Wishful thinking.
Photo: Columbine Memorial Littleton, Colorado
Spiritual Warfare and the Idolatry of the Gun Culture
Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
For our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities,
against the cosmic powers of the present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil…
-Ephesians 6:11-12
Since that awful day on April 20, 1999, there have been more than 200 school shootings in the United States. That’s right. Over 200. Columbine no longer holds the hideous distinction as the deadliest school massacre in U.S. history. And schools represent only a piece of the story.
Beyond the schools there was Blacksburg, Aurora, Las Vegas, Orlando, Charleston, Sutherland Springs, and countless more. Of the 30 deadliest shootings in the US dating back to 1949, 18 have occurred in the last 10 years. Two of the five deadliest took place in just the last 35 days.
We have an entire generation of young people who have grown up in a violent gun culture; some call them the “Columbine Generation.” Yet the availability of guns, especially weapons for military purpose, goes unabated.
Part of the NRA’s agenda is to be sure that the next generation has its own allegiance to a gun culture. From 2010 through 2016, the NRA gave $7.3 million to about 500 schools for use in programs that promote the use of firearms.
The November 8th edition of The Christian Century featured a shocking graph titled “American Exceptionalism.” It illustrates the United States as a pronounced outlier among other countries in terms of homicides by firearms.
One is almost six times more likely to be murdered by a firearm in the U.S. than in Canada, eleven times more likely than in Denmark, and twenty-one times more likely than in Australia.
A Confession for This Day
After Parkland and hearing the rhetoric of the culture – including students calling BS on much of what was being said and the impotent expressions of “thoughts and prayers” – I imagined that we needed a new Lenten Confessions. After all, Parkland happened on Ash Wednesday (as well as Valentine’s Day).
Almighty God to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid we confess that we are in bondage to a gun culture and cannot free ourselves.
Rather than address the heart of the matter, our idolatry, we deflect the matter by making the issue about mental health or about stronger background checks, or about arming teachers in our schools.
We point fingers at those who failed or should have done something.
We speak of the 2nd Amendment as a God-given right, even to the point of making the right to have almost any kind of weapon a fundamental value of what makes America great.
And those of us who do not believe in the prevalent interpretation of the 2nd Amendment as an anything goes right to have whatever arms one can buy, especially pastors and politicians, we confess our fear to speak our mind.
The pastor fears the wealthy parishioner who disagrees and who will walk out.
The politician fears the NRA.
Gracious God, have mercy on us.
Assist us to think differently.
Assist us to see what we cannot see, dream what we would not dare dream and to work for an alternative culture in which we beat our assault rifles into ploughshares and our hand guns into pruning hooks and gun violence shall be no more. Amen.
Stay tuned for more…
In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,
