When It Comes to Banning Guns, What Would Jesus Say?

The truth is I have no idea.  Neither do you.  And the real question is not what Jesus would say or do.  The real question for a Christian is what would Jesus have me do?

It’s always at least a bit cheeky to presume to speak for The One.  That being said, and with (I hope) a big dose of humility, here goes:

1. He would have me listen.  Have you noticed what a great listener Jesus was?  Even with folks who didn’t (seem to) have much to say, Jesus listened.  And he heard.  To hear by listening requires stillness of spirit and mind, the ability to hear with an interior ear that discerns beyond the spoken to the intended.  No one tops Jesus on this, but we are all called, I think, to listen to others – especially, perhaps, to those who care about us least, who understand us least.  Even his words often seem intended not to be The Final Word, but rather to spur the conversation, the engagement, to newer, greater depths of meaning.

2. He would have me take him seriously.  John Calvin held to the notion that a person could even be killed in love.  I think he was wrong.  I think John Calvin, who, at least arguably, took Jesus seriously every waking minute of his life, got it wrong precisely because he failed to take Jesus seriously when it comes to the notion of the parameters of ‘discipline’.  Maybe Calvin chose Paul over Jesus.  But anytime we look at a human being as a disease, we’ve failed fundamentally to believe in the amazing and transformative power of the Risen Christ.   In the spiritual sense of the world, I have no need of protection from you, for you cannot do me lasting harm.  Of course you can hurt me.  But that is not the same as lasting harm.  If I take Jesus at his Word, I am not saved, but safe, from all comers.

3. In whatever context I make a choice, Jesus would have me choose wisely.  That is not always easy.  Nor is it obvious.  Wisdom requires a depth of understanding of all possible attendant consequences.  I seldom, if ever, am in a position to have such powers of observation and discernment.  Yet I am obligated to try.  I am obligated to ask, to seek, to knock at the door of the very heart of God to seek out understanding and become wise, wise in the knowing of God’s providing sufficiency.  Does this mean I am to reenact the posture of the domesticated turkey and simply open my mouth skyward out of a silly belief that God will magically drop food into my waiting mouth?  Of course not.  But I suspect it does mean that I am to take God’s promised providing seriously.  I am to take God’s purpose for my existence seriously.  Was I put on earth to assure that my vision of the nation-state of the US of A prevail?  Or was I put here for something far bigger?

4. I must always examine and reexamine my ‘sacred cows’ to assure that I do not make an idol of my own opinions.  I must perpetually resist the temptation to put my thoughts into God’s mouth, to make myself and my way my God.  I must be humble.  Perhaps that begins with #1 – I must practice being a listener.

5. If I would know what Jesus would do, I might do well to examine what Jesus actually did.  Jesus came wielding not the instrumentalities of death, but the instrumentalities of life.  It was risky, even dangerous.  And the tyranny of the state was the ultimate danger to Jesus.  He did not take Rome lightly.  Rome, I think, was merely beside the point Jesus’ own life and death was making.  Tyrannies know well what to do with force; they simply meet it with a force greater than.  That’s how tyrannies succeed.  Where tyrannies cannot compete is in the arena of ideas whose holders will sacrifice all to live out.

6. The radical proclamation of care for ‘the least of these’ was more than a bumper sticker.  The weak, the vulnerable, the unloveable, were and are Jesus’ table guests, his asylum seekers, his refugees, his beloved.  Thus are they to be mine when I am the strong.

7. Jesus was a Messiah of the now as much as of the not yet.  Repeatedly, Jesus deals with the person before him without regard to any thought to the ‘greater good’.  All I know to take from this is the notion that the greater good is standing right before me.  Perhaps this is as simple as understanding that tomorrow is guaranteed to no one.  Maybe it’s remembering that Jesus himself was killed out of the (misplaced) belief that his death could secure the protection of a nation from its tyrannical ruler.  Maybe it is in understanding that the proverbial terrorist with the nuke (the hypothetical justification for torture) in the right now of life is as important to God as the theoretical (as yet unrealized) harm he would do.

8. A godly life is a life of sacrifice.  At the launch of Sandy Hook Promise, one of the parents posed the question (I paraphrase): what wouldn’t we do for our children?  We inhabit a culture that teaches all around us that force and might are the solutions to our problems.  In this sense, we have become our own greatest enemy when it comes to violence.  One of the few things I hear in the many debates on all sides of the gun violence question is the challenge for us to change, to change fundamentally, as a people.  As hard as it might be to either arm or disarm, it is so much harder to do the work of change.  But do not the claims of so many lives challenge us to become something different – something that does not incubate and nurture violence as a problem-solving technique?

If I become the peace I wish to see in the world; if I do that work, the answers to things like gun control and how to create a safer world, will, I suspect, follow.  The question is whether I am, whether we are, willing to do the work.  I hope so.