Preach It,
Sister
“Fear
brings out our basest instincts and narrows our sense of belonging to
self-preservation.” Sue Gross
I've been told that I am
sometimes “preachy” in my blog. It's true, I am. So if you don't
want to read preachy, you have my blessing to click the delete button
right now—cause, as we say around here, “I'm bout to go to
preachin'.”
Last Sunday, a lone man
walked into a small Baptist Church in Texas and shot dead twenty-six
people, half of whom were children; he wounded twenty more. Before
the bodies were out of the church, people had begun to argue about
gun control, especially in light of the fact that this particular
person had spent one year in a military brig for beating his former
wife and baby, and should not have had access to guns at all. Some
said that if a “good man” with a gun had been inside the church,
he would have shot the killer and fewer people would have died;
others said, military style weapons should not be available to
ordinary citizens. We argue—we lie to ourselves—we do nothing.
Bottom line, we would rather have innocent children gunned down in
Sunday worship than give up our assault weapons.
Fear has narrowed our
ability to think clearly—because only a terribly confused person
would think it a good idea to arm the world and expect no violence to
occur. Do you see how screwed up that kind of thinking is? Especially
in light of the fact that we are now having multiple mass shootings
every month. “This isn't a gun problem, it's a mental health
problem,” sounds more ridiculous by the minute. The percentage of
the population with mental illness is fairly constant across the
world—and no other country, except those without functioning
central governments, has the level of violence that we in America do.
Please don't talk to me
about what a “Christian country” we are, and in the same breath,
justify selling semi-automatic weapons to whomever wants them. Those
two things are mutually exclusive. Jesus was a healer, not a warrior.
We must stop hiding behind empty platitudes and rote phrases like
sleep-walkers in a fog, and free our hearts from the fear that is
making us blind.
Before I launch into a
sermon, let me simply say this: God is still Love. If you can imagine
the Prince of Peace with a semi-automatic weapon slung across his
back, then you and I worship different Gods. Jesus would spit in the
dirt, smear mud on our eyes and heal us from our blindness. I pray
for that every single day.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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