Gun Violence: What’s a Church to do?

We have a serious problem in America and its time for the church to step up to the plate and do something about it.  There’s been yet another school shooting with fatalities.  Since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, there have been 74 school shootings in our country, with most occurring in K-12 schools.  We are now up to 1.37 school shootings per week.  What meaningful gun legislation or mental health reforms have taken place?  Our elected officials have either run scared from powerful political action groups or they’ve chosen not to care anymore.  Is there a problem here?  Though some may claim this is primarily a Second Amendment issue, we in the church know otherwise.

Those of us who have mentioned anything about gun control from the pulpit have perhaps already been harshly criticized.  We are told that religion and politics should not be mixed.  To that flawed argument I say that gun violence and any other kind of violence perpetrated on the innocent is primarily a religious issue. 

Contrary to the individualism running rampant in our culture today, where individual rights are held as gospel, the scriptures are more than clear that life in covenant with God is a life lived in community.  Individual rights are trumped by communal needs every time.  There’s no such thing as individualism in the scriptures.  Instead of being preoccupied with the morals and ethics of individuals, the voices of scripture are overwhelmingly concerned with public morality especially when it comes to issues of economic and social justice.  How the widow and orphan are treated matters to God.  How those living on the margins are cared for matters to God.   How victims of violence are healed matters to God.  Life in Christ has nothing to do with walking alone in some remote garden with Jesus, rather it is lived out in our responses to alleviate the suffering of the innocent.  For every admonition about personal behavior, the scriptures give five exhortations toward compassion and social justice.  

When violence in school classrooms and on our streets causes the deaths of children we must take action to heal it and stop it.  A church that claims to follow Jesus and yet stands idly by offering nothing is not worthy of being called a relevant church.

So where do we start?  It seems to me we begin by acknowledging the fact that the One we claim to follow was himself an innocent victim of violence as his tortured body hung dying on a cross.  Tell me where Jesus would advocate that the right to bear arms takes precedent over the right to not die by them.  Only after we have acknowledged that the One whom we follow defines who we are, can we begin to have meaningful conversations as people of faith about gun legislation, mental health issues, and the culture of violence.

How we address the violence inflicted on Jesus and on those who die violently in our schools and in our streets, will in the end prove what kind of a church we really are.  If we, whose Lord was an innocent victim of violence himself, don’t speak out for and act on behalf of all victims of gun violence who will?

Let the holy conversations begin.

Peace and Love,

Pastor Doug