Screen capture from CBS News
Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message
More Gun Violence
November 8, 2017
Awful news last Sunday from Texas: 26
worshippers, including infants and elderly people, killed in Church by an angry
white male wielding high-capacity firearms.
On Monday at Morning Prayer, we tolled our bell once more for victims of
gun violence. And we said once more
this prayer:
All nurturing God, you cannot bear the violence of your creatures and have promised with a rainbow to keep your creation safe. Turn far from us the violent, and keep us from vengeance, anger, and fear. Heal us and help us to love. Remove from us the root of bitterness and bigotry. Help us to find ways to reduce and eliminate the scourge of violence in our society, especially the harm wrought through firearms. This we pray for your tender mercy’s sake, Amen.
The pattern is all too familiar: an angry male with a history of domestic
abuse and rage control issues obtains high capacity and rapid fire weapons and
uses them to kill scores of innocents in short order. The right reacts by saying it is a problem of
mental health or general societal immorality, or of not enforcing the laws
already on the books, and says we should not politicize the deaths by calling
for tighter gun control. “Our thoughts
and prayers are with the victims and their families.” The left replies with “prayers without
action are an obscenity.” They point to
the contributions of the NRA to members of Congress who oppose more rigorous
limits on access to guns and ask that we work for their electoral defeat. Frequently mentioned is our own Congressman,
Greg Walden (an Episcopalian from Hood River), who appears on most lists of the
top recipients of NRA money in Congress: about $40,000 over the last 15
years.
It seems that the violence that plagues
us here in the U.S. is uncontrollable.
We glorify violence in our arts, have movies that tell stories of
the good guys blowing the bad guys away, use armed force as a major component
of our foreign policy, proclaim it in our political memes, and think that
capital punishment is the ultimate solution to horrible crime. Guns are an important part of this culture of
violence.
Richard Slotkin in Gunfighter
Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth Century America says that our
culture embraces the idea that there is no problem so severe that it wouldn’t
improve if we could just shoot someone. Walter Wink called this the false
“myth of redemptive violence.” To
this, Jesus says, “those who live by the sword will die by it,” and “if someone
strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him your left.”
Closely tied to this fascination with
violence is fear. Most people who buy
guns and who argue for no restrictions on gun ownership appeal to
“self-defense” as their motivation. They
buy guns and want others to buy guns because of fear. After mass killings at churches, fear-mongers
urge worshipers to bring their own weapons to Church (!) They urge us to better “secure” our churches
by locking all the doors and keeping outsiders outside, where they belong. These
are not options for those of us who follow Jesus. Fear makes us hunger at a banquet, be stingy
with abundance, and externalize all our problems. To this, Jesus says, “be not afraid, I am
with you.”
Blaming our problems on someone else,
we scapegoat. The right says it’s the
left who are violent, and who are more interested in limiting freedom than in
enforcing laws already on the books. The left says the right has blood on its
hands. Our common life is further
eroded, and we talk less and less across the divide about ways to rid our
society of this scourge. We make someone
else—anyone other than us—bear the blame. Make the stranger pay for it. But we all share at least in part
responsibility for the perpetuation of the myth of redemptive violence, not
addressing domestic abuse and mental illness, the fear-mongering, bias, and
obscene numbers in our midst of weapons designed for no other purpose than to
kill other human beings.
The gun lobby draws its strength from
the money of gun manufacturers and sellers and the greed of politicians eager
for it. To all these, Jesus says “You
need to lose your life in order to save it,” “not as I will, but as you will,”
and “You cannot serve both God and money.”
Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.
Fr. Tony+
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