Not One More

Not One More

It is enough.

We are done.

If you have nothing to contribute, stop talking.

Your opinion does not matter simply because it is yours.

My opinion does not matter simply because it is mine.

What would you do instead?

Does God judge a lack of care for the young?

When did we decide the young are collateral damage?

Inertia is no defense to doing nothing.

Nothing changes if nothing changes.

I, for one, was stunned to learn that the NRA used to be an organization dedicated to teaching gun safety and used to favor registration.  The New Yorker

I remain confused as to how and why that changed so radically that in my time, the NRA’s public persona seems to have abandoned the advocacy for safe gun use in favor of the advocacy of universal or virtually universal gun access.

Debating the issue gets us nowhere because it is not actually a debate we’re engaged in when it comes to guns and gun control.  It’s not a debate: it’s a shouting match.

But at the risk of wasting a bit more time, here goes: as simply as I can put it, what if we take the things folks are saying about keeping the guns as givens – that government might come and take what is ours if we do not have guns to protect ourselves, that gun control equals the potential for government taking of guns, that Barak Obama really is the antichrist, and nothing we might do to limit guns or gun access will work anyway.

Well, if our President really is the antichrist, then all these opposition measures will not matter one bit – the antichrist really doesn’t need laws to act, now does he?

And whatever the government might do, the fact is that those with guns who are angry or mentally ill in certain ways or whatever else that leads to mass shootings have already done what they intend to do.  And those folks will keep doing it, so long as their motivations, however obscure, continue to exist and so long as they have access to the instrumentalities to do the deed.

So, when I balance what has already happened against the fear of what might yet happen, I go with solving what has already happened.  And mass shootings have already happened.

And to the folks who oppose gun control, my question remains: what would you do instead?  If you knew a mass shooting was going to happen (and here’s the thing: you do know it is – you just don’t know where or when), what would you do to prevent it?

I’m listening.  Really.  What would you do?  (Don't say arm the populace -- the populace is already as armed as it wishes to be and that just hasn't worked, now has it?)

Here’s what I would do: I would experiment with laws and actions that have the aim of eliminating access to guns by those who would engage in such behavior.  I would be willing to be accountable to my fellow citizens about my own ownership of such instruments (much as I am accountable to you all for my ownership of a car).  I would be willing to sacrifice quite a lot to save children from such horrors.

That’s what I’m willing to do.  What about you?

And please spare me the conversation about what you won’t do or what won’t work.  We’ve done beat that dead horse enough, don’t you think?

So really – if you won’t agree to gun registration, to waiting periods, to outlawing the sale or manufacture for the civilian use of certain types of weaponry, what would you do?

And can someone please help me understand why so many of us seem much more frightened of the bogey man who might come (government take over of our lives old Soviet style) than the bogey man that’s already here (the slaughter of innocents going about their day-to-day lives by their fellow citizens)?

I really would like to know.

To My Fellow Christian Sarah Palin: Baptism, Enemies, and Truth – Words That Matter

Governor Sarah Palin recently delivered an address to a gathering of NRA folk in Indianapolis.  I listened to the speech in its entirety and recommend you do the same.

Reasonable people can and do differ on a great many issues, gun use and access among them.  And Governor Palin and I are on different sides of the question.  Fair enough.

What is not so fair, I would suggest, is the appropriation of the language of our shared faith; the clinging to a gospel that is rejected in the same breath; and a disregard of facts (truth) when speaking of one’s enemies.

Regarding our “enemies” (by which Gov. Palin is referring to terrorists), she says, “. . . if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.” [huge applause and cheering]  

1. The appropriation of the language of our shared faith Baptism is the rite, the ritual, the sacrament – the holy sign (one of only two for Protestants) – the outward evidence of the inward reality of having been claimed as God’s very own in Christianity.  When Jesus himself is baptized, the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, descends upon him and God proclaims Jesus as God’s own son, in whom God is well pleased.  (Matthew 3.16-17).  Waterboarding shares with baptism only the use of water.  Waterboarding is to baptism as torture is to the doctor’s smack of a new-born baby’s butt.  To call torture baptism in a speech using other language of faith and God ignores Jesus’ own gospel message, a particular affront in this Easter season, when Christians world-wide celebrate the resurrection of the one who was himself tortured to death by state actors.  I want to believe that Gov. Palin is using the language of ‘baptism’ in a secular way (as in being ‘baptized’ by fire, meaning to be introduced to a certain way of being/acting in extremis).  The problem is that the remainder of her speech is peppered with the language of faith in a way that makes such a dismissal virtually impossible, because she weaves faith into her speech in such a way as to suggest that to carry a gun is not merely a constitutional matter, but also a biblical right or even imprimatur.

2. Clinging to a gospel the speaker rejects all in the same breath Use of the language of ‘enshrinement’ – the language of the sacred or holy –  (as in gun-ownership being ‘enshrined’ in our constitution); referring to baptism when speaking of waterboarding; giving the gratuitous shout-out to prayer in school;  and wrapping up with: “Celebrating family, faith and freedom . . . God shed his grace on thee, America, so stand and fight . . .” co-mingles the language of faith and Christianity in particular with the torture of enemies (waterboarding), killing with a gun as a problem-solving technique (my cold, dead hands language and the implied warning to Attorney General Eric Holder, “you don’t want to go there, buddy”); and the very specific link of “enemies” with torture as an indictment of the claimed lack of political will of those who differ with her on this issue (they would coddle the enemies that she, if in charge, would waterboard) – all this leads to a conclusion that for Gov. Palin, Jesus’ gospel is a call to arms.  The problem, of course, is Jesus, who actually happens to be very specific when it comes to enemies:  “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.  For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?  And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? . . .”  (Matthew 5.43-47; also Luke 6.27 & 35).  You simply cannot, with any integrity, wrap yourself in the gospel and advocate the torture of your enemies in the same breath.  Jesus recognizes the human habit of responding to enemies in exactly the way Gov. Palin recommends.  He recognizes it and rejects it out of hand.  Advocate torture if you will.  But you cannot, you may not, you must not, clothe yourself in The Risen One to do it.

3. Disregarding the facts when speaking of one’s (political) enemy It is popular to the point of hardly meriting notice, let alone response, for folks in the political sphere today to make false claims against their opponents.  But it isn’t okay that they do nor that we allow it to pass by.  Truth matters.  Facts matter.  False claims of facts and truth matter because they misshape our perception of reality.  Gov. Palin takes on and carries as a theme in her speech, with references to the various bracelets she is wearing, a claim that Attorney General Eric Holder advocates the wearing of some sort of tracking bracelet by gun owners.  There is only one problem with the claim: it is false, as attested by the presumably liberal TPM and presumably conservative Bearing Arms.  Facts and truth matter to our faith as well as our practical day-to-day lives (if there can even be any separation of the two): we follow the man who self-identified as the way, the truth, the life, who instructed his followers to allow their yes to be yes, their no, no. (Matthew 5.37).  It may well be that Gov. Palin and/or her speechwriters  believed what she said about the Attorney General to be true.  But that doesn’t solve much: when we are speaking, it is our duty to assure that our words are true, that they are accurate.  That is actually part of the job of being a Christian.  Truthfulness is so important that it is actually enshrined (unlike our constitutional provisions) in our holy writ, which we refer to as the Ten Commandments, among which is the provision: Thou shalt not lie (or more accurately, bear false witness – that is, to say something not true about another person).  Before we say it, it is our job to know whether it is true and if we cannot or do not know, we should not say it.  The fact that it took me less than 5 minutes to find two sites online that referenced the Attorney General’s actual remarks indicates that the truth was easily discoverable.  One simply had to wish to find it.  Gov. Palin claimed that the Attorney General wants to track by bracelet those who own guns.  What he actually said was that there was interest in exploring smart guns that can only be used by the actual owner (via a chip in the gun which links electronically to a bracelet worn by the owner).

Truth matters.  Taking care to tell truth matters.  Taking special care not to speak ill of enemies falsely (recognizing our own inner tendency not to give our enemies the benefit of the doubt) matters.  Making claims about the gospel which directly contradict it matters.  Clothing ourselves with the gospel of the Prince of Peace while proclaiming things like torture matters.

As a fellow Christian, Governor Palin, I beseech you: make your case, but please, please, please, stop standing on Jesus’ back to do it if you're not willing to grapple with the ways in which the gospel challenges your views.

Please.

In the Meantime

Guns, gun violence, gun laws, guns, guns, guns – it’s all the conversation, and rightfully so, given recent events.

Behind that stands the concept of predator and prey.

What makes children prey?  The fact that they are so small, so unaware of the dangers, so, so very vulnerable.

What makes a predator?  I wish I knew.  The potential list seems endless: societal factors (such as growing up in a war zone or culture of violence), nurture issues (such as growing up in a dangerous home), body chemistry, DNA (is it ancestral?), hormones, television and movie violence (what we see/experience affects us), some of the above, all of the above or none of the above.

The fact is that I really do not know.

I know that when it comes to physical violence, because I am a woman, statistically I fall into the prey rather than predator category.  But that does not make me immune from all the influences of and temptations towards violence.  It just makes it less likely that I’ll be a perpetrator of it than the average male in my culture.

Perhaps one fundamental (and unvoiced) difference between advocates and opponents of gun control laws is worldview: advocates believe violence can be controlled, reduced, eliminated; while opponents believe violence is simply part and parcel of who we (or at least some of us) are.

Can it be that both sides are right?  Or at least that both sides hold some of the truth in their hands?  Can it be that we are both a species bound in its violence and (at least potentially) able to be freed from it?  I think so.

Perhaps the cruelest irony of all, if my thesis is correct, is that those (this is a generalization – please remember that) advocating gun control also believe in evolution, yet by their stance on gun control, argue (at least inferentially) against humanity being held captive to our evolutionary place in time, while those who oppose gun control and largely reject evolution, embrace evolution’s strongest argument: that a species is captive to its ‘destiny’ - that is, that the species’ behavior is dictated by evolutionary necessity, which always contains unintended fall out.

So it is that advocates believe we can escape the dictates of evolution while opponents believe we cannot.

Here’s the thing: if we can’t do better; if we really are captive to a reality in which explosive violence, species upon species, is inevitable, then aren’t the gun advocates right and wouldn’t we all be well-advised to arm ourselves to the teeth, for danger is surely at our doorstep every minute of every day – right?

For myself on this issue, the facts on the inevitability of violence are largely irrelevant, for this simple reason: even if gun advocates are right, I choose to live my life as if they are not.  I perhaps am indulging a luxury: after all, I do not live in a war-torn country (although it could be argued, given the prevalence of violence in our society, that I do).  Regardless, I choose to live my life as I do, gun-free, because it’s more about who I am than who the other person is.

And who I am (or who I wish to be, in any event) is someone who holds life sacred . . . all life . . .even the life that would not hold my life equally sacred.

I don’t know how to prescribe a solution for an entire society.

What I do know is that I get to choose the kind of woman that I will be.

And who I choose to be is someone who is not afraid that she will die by gunfire – not that I won’t, but I merely choose not to have that as one of my fears (now spiders are another thing entirely).

I paraphrase freely, but Thomas Merton wrote that it is the duty of each Christian to embrace their own mortality, the recognition that some day, we will cease to be.  In that embracing, Merton believed, lies the true source of our freedom, for then we are freed to exist totally, only and utterly, in the time that we do have, for God.

There will be a day when I am no more.

My job is to worry about who I am, what I do, in the meantime.

In the meantime, I choose to live gun-free, not because it will make me safer, but because it will make you safer.

I don’t love either one of us that much.

But I want to.

Dear Mr. Huckabee

Dear Mr. Huckabee,

As a fellow pastor, here are my problems with your analysis of the question posed to you by Nick Cavuto:

How could God let this happen?

1. Your response was to a question Mr. Cavuto did not ask.  You answered the question “why is there so much violence in our schools”.  While this may be an interesting and important conversation, it was not the question Mr. Cavuto asked.  And here’s the thing: in the immediate aftermath, his was the question that needed and needs answering.  But you wandered off course, doing real harm because those who were listening for an answer to that question were left with nothing.

2. You’re a pastor.  And you were speaking as a representative (evangelist/ambassador) for Christ yesterday, not as (or not merely as) a television commentator.  You were asked the question because of your presumed expertise on the mind and heart of God.  By failing to meet the hard questions head on, the Christ you (and I) represent on earth appears to be a dodger of the tough stuff as well.

3. Crises are not times for answers, especially pat ones.  Even if you’re right (and I do not believe you are), no one can (nor should) hear logic and analysis in such times.  What they, what we, seek; nay, what we require, is comfort.

4. “I don’t know” is an acceptable and honest answer.  Allowing the demands of prime time to push you into a sound-bite response is dishonorable to the body.

Why you’re wrong in what you said.  Here’s the quote:

We ask why there’s violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage? Because we’ve made it a place where we don’t want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability. That we’re not just going to have to be accountable to the police if they catch us, but one day we stand before a holy God in judgment. If we don’t believe that, then we don’t fear that,” said Huckabee.  He added, “Maybe we ought to let (God) in on the front end and we wouldn’t have to call him to show up when it’s all said and done at the back end. Fox News Insider

1. You’re factually wrong in the claimed link between the alleged removal of God from school and this attack.  The shooter was not a school child as in Columbine.  Nor was he an employee or former employee of the school.  He invaded the school as a very unwelcome intruder into its routine and tranquility and presumptive safe haven status.

2. Maybe you have some insider knowledge as a professional journalist, but the information reported yesterday when you were making your remarks included nothing about the young man who did this in terms of his own faith (or lack thereof).  He may have been raised in church.  He may have attended a church school.  At the time of your remarks, that simply was not known.  You made assumptions about him.  They may prove in time to be correct; they may not.

3. Theologically, I am troubled with the premise that the claimed absence of God from any sphere of life creates trouble because we forget the eternal consequences of our actions.  Is this really what we have on offer to the world – a seat in hell if we’re bad?  Isn’t the message of grace in the here and now the gift of changed-ness?  Of being more than we were before?  Of being transformed by God’s grace into someone and something we never before thought possible?  And isn’t the worldly challenge one we have to grapple with – the very real truth that Christians are too often indistinguishable from others in their/our behaviors?  That we too do heinous evil?  That we too fall short?  That our fruit is often rotten?

4. You cannot be the man you are and claim the erasure of faith and faith discussions from the public square, for you are Exhibit A for the case that this simply is not true.  You are a very public figure, paid to offer up just such opinions on the public airwaves.  You are arguing against a straw man.

5. I would say this to all sides: when a tragedy occurs and your first response links the tragedy to your own views of what’s wrong with the world, it probably says more about you than it does the world.  You regret the decision to eliminate verbal prayer from schools; thus this event must be linked to that absence.  Others decry the absence of gun control; thus this event must be linked to that absence (and given that the instrumentality was in fact a gun, they have the better argument – although Michael Moore’s documentary Bowling for Columbine makes a good case that something else is at work in the national psyche of the US by contrasting our gun behavior to that of Canadians, who have similar access to such weaponry, but nothing near our levels of gun deaths).  For my own part, I do not know what the causes were.  I’m not sure that the young man who apparently did this deed even knew himself; that level of awareness generally requires more clarity of thought and judgment than his acts would indicate he possessed – but I am speculating.  The fact is I really do not know.  None of us do.  And we may never know why.

Finally, to Mr. Cavuto’s question, which deserves honest reflection and response.

How could God let this happen?

I do not know the mind and heart of God sufficiently to claim special insight into divine motivations.  So the best answer I have is I don’t know.

But this is not a question demanding of an answer grounded in reason and logic.  This is the cry of the human heart that will not be comforted.  This is Rachel weeping for her children who are no more.

And the answer I have – indeed, it is the only answer I have – to that question, that keening cry, is God’s comfort and the sure and certain knowledge that God weeps with us and that the temple curtain was rent yet again in God’s own cosmic mourning, for these were God’s children before they were ours.

But if the why question demands more attention, this is all I’ve got.  William Slone Coffin once said (I paraphrase), “when you ask God why he let something happen, have you ever considered that God is asking you the same question?”

The first time I read that, I felt as if I were gut-punched.  The truth of it slammed me against the place there is no running from: God does send help – all the time – God sends us.  And we fail.  We fail each other.  We fail ourselves.  We fail God.

My own anger yesterday was directed not at God but at us – the collective us – humanity.

In terms of God’s own responsibility, when some time has passed, those seeking the answer might read Elie Wiesel’s writings on the rabbinic trial of God in the concentration camp.  Finding God guilty of crimes against humanity, the rabbis adjourned and went for their evening prayers.  These were real people experiencing real suffering of epic proportions.  This seeming paradox was the only answer they had.

The fact is that all people of faith will wrestle with the question of how evil and tragedy can occur in a world created by a God claimed to be loving and protective of the divine creation.  And the fact is that there is no answer grounded in logic and reason that will suffice.  How could it?  What possible answer could there be in human understanding that would satisfy a grieving parent?  For my own part, as a person of faith, every answer I can imagine always leaves me responding, “But you’re God!  You can do better than that!”

And in my own heart, God responds, “But you’re humanity.  So can you.”

We’ve failed each other, it seems.

Where we go from there, who can say?

If I’m Lying, I’m Dying: Jacob & Esau & the Cost of Violence: A Conversation Between Me and Myself

Can we say that violence (always) begins with deception?    

I bracket the always, ever wary of the universal claim.


Then I backpedal, just a bit. . . 

Maybe we can say that deception is, perhaps, the most-often unrecognized and perpetrated act of violence by we humans.

Maybe?  Perhaps?  Could I qualify it into meaninglessness any more?

Deception tears us apart from within.

Now we're getting somewhere.

And deception is the handmaid of (physical) violence -- the lies we (must) tell ourselves to justify the violence we do, those particular forms of deception, are, by their very nature . . .

     unending . . .

          shocking in their daring . . .

               infinite in their scope . . .

                    abyss-filling in their capacity destroying . . .

Jacob and Esau serve as paradigms . . . but their reality is achingly human . . . achingly broken . . . achingly true . . .

***

The shooting and the dying continue unabated (Gunman Used AK47 in IHOP Shooting) and we tell ourselves that the profits made from the weapons of destruction have no bearing on the destruction . . . no place in the conversation . . . no impact on our ‘rights’ to be bearers of such destruction . . .(Gun Violence in NYC)

We need not be an infinite string of Jacobs and Esaus locked in eternal combat . . . like the brothers, we too can find the pathway to peace . . . beginning with forgiveness, reconciliation, and putting down our arms, our 'right to be right' . . . and embracing each other in the love and Spirit of God.

We can.