People of Hope:
Content Warning: this letter will contain conversations around school shootings, general violence (especially gun violence), and the recent murder of conservative pundit Charlie Kirk.
When I was in high school, I remember coming home from school on the school bus, walking in the door, and my mother insisting on giving me a massive hug. Being in high school, I found this a combination of suspicious and annoying, so I asked my mother what was up. She responded by telling me of a school in Colorado, where two students walked into their school armed with shotguns and semiautomatic handguns, and proceeded to kill fourteen people before killing themselves. For years, “Columbine” became synonymous with the concept of mass killings in schools, where all too often youth and young adults were able to gain access to guns without raising significant red flags that may have limited the tragedies that followed.
I honestly was relatively removed from the consequences of school security measures that would soon follow. It wasn’t until after I had graduated high school that most of our nation began to truly reckon with the fact that shootings in our school were not an issue that could be ignored. My own personal concern regarding the issue was primarily focused on helping the youth in my congregations that I served navigate the realities of living in a nation that saw school shootings as inevitable. The hope and prayer was simply that it would happen somewhere else. When I had my own children, I was soon shocked to learn that even the daycare that my children attended would regularly hold lockdown drills, where teachers would turn out the lights, gather the children in the classroom into a bathroom, and tell the children they had to be quiet as they gathered into these contained spaces together. I vividly recall the first time I had a conversation with my then two year old son about his day, as he broke down in tears telling me of the fear and inability to understand what was happening in the moment. Now eight years old, his own elementary school has been the target of (thankfully unfulfilled) threats of violence. As a parent, I find that I regularly turn on the news and have to resist the urge to drop everything to travel to where my children are learning and simply hug them and then wrap them in proverbial bubble wrap.
As of writing this letter, we are less than two days removed from reports of the targeted shooting of Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist known for his penchant for staging debates on college campuses, gaining a significant following among the younger generation, primarily young white males. Some consider him a martyr. Some say that his uncharitable treatment of some vulnerable populations made him a target. Most people across the political spectrum have rightly condemned his murder and called for an end to politically motivated violence. Regardless of all these things, one thing that is certainly true is that a child of God has lost his life, and his family – including two young children – are now in mourning. There is little question his political beliefs and actions were the primary reasons for his being murdered, and again we are challenged to ask how we can truly confront this recent uptick in political violence.
Beyond even this horrific incident, only hours later, there was another school shooting in Colorado (in the same county as Columbine) and an incident just last night at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. At the center of all these things is the specter of the gun, which has been used for generations as a tool for defense and providence through hunting, and a weapon to right perceived slights and take power through violent means. While there are many who believe that there are reasonable ways to address the availability and overall lethality of guns, there are also some who claim that our problem isn’t a “gun problem, it’s a sin problem.” As with many of these issues, I think it’s apparent that both things can be true at once.
First, I don’t intend to be making broad policy recommendations in this letter. What I am attempting to do is to place our current moment in this nation within the context of how guns, sin, and rhetoric seem to work against God’s intent for us to be people of the way of the cross in our world. So if even using terms attached to the gun control discussion raises your blood pressure, I invite you to take a deep breath before continuing.
I think there’s a lot of truth to the comments that claim that our primary problem when it comes to incidents of violence in this nation begin with the problem of sin in our world. Obviously, acts of violence are in and of themselves sinful. But to get to the root of the sin, we’re challenged to confront the reality that the sin of violence often is an evolution of other sins that happened along the way. There’s the sin of devaluing other human beings, so that their lives matter far less than the pain or anger of the person who commits the acts of violence. There’s the sin of pride, in feeling that any challenge to the perspective or belief of the self is in fact worthy of a violent reaction. There’s also the sin of idolatry – idolatry of self and idolatry of perceived power. And often this is where guns have a very significant role to play. They have a role to play because when people place too much value on their own perceived righteousness, there is a very certain subset who will see violence, or the threat of violence as the tool needed to enforce their own righteousness. And guns are often the physical representation for how this idolatry takes root.
Over the past generation, much of our national discourse – especially in our national news media – has revolved less around what is right and kind and more on who “wins” when topics of great importance are discussed in our world. And when the emphasis is on “winning” rather than working to compromise and come up with the best possible solution to complex problems, our political divisions become more and more pronounced over time. And as this happens, pride and idolatry can sometimes mingle with violent consequences. This is where our “sin” problem often collides with our “gun” problem. Guns become a tool to achieve victory at any cost – even the cost of the lives of other beloved children of God. When there is not room for true dialog and compromise, violence can become the necessary consequence in order to “win” against another.
So what is our role as people of hope to respond to this challenging societal landscape we find ourselves in? First, we recommit ourselves to the challenge of dialog. We keep connected and communicate with each other, even when we don’t always agree. And we always seek the path of peace for the sake of our neighbor. We see each other as the beloved children of God we all are – even when we don’t necessarily like each other very much all of the time. And above all else, we are challenged to lay down our idols in whatever form they take and trust and rely on Christ above all things. Because our salvation doesn’t rely on being right – it relies on Christ alone. And in Christ, we see and know that love and peace are the ways of the cross, and in following Christ in this way, we do our small part to change the world toward love of God and neighbor. As we confront the pain and hurt of our world, I pray that we choose to rely on God and hope in the promises of the Lord above all things. May we continue to be people of hope, who live in this world as visible signs of love and community beyond all the things that separate us. May we live as instruments of God’s peace, by doing the hard work of mutuality and respect that defies our need to be “right” above all others. And the world will know our love, and this love still changes the world.
Pastor Chris