As is typical when someone murders a whole bunch of people with guns, pro-gun folk are posting on social media and in the press how guns don't kill people and the answer to tragedies like this is even more guns. Meanwhile, many religious folk have brought out the old "If only Jesus was allowed in school, this wouldn't have happened," shtick.
Here's Mike Huckabee:
We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we’ve 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?
This is, of course, absolute nonsense. We've been a majority Christian country for over 200 years. We've had 61 mass murders in the last 30 years when a huge majority of Americans have been Christian and the overwhelming majority of these crimes have been committed by Christians. Historically, the stats are the same, even when Christian doctrine was taught regularly in public schools. Removing "God" from public schools, a nonsense idea in itself, has nothing to do with the horror inflicted today. These tragedies cannot be prevented, but in America we don't take even common sense steps to mitigate them in any way.
But I want to focus on a different aspect of this.
The Christians who say these things are typically conservative and they say these things because they don't want an open, honest discussion of gun control. Because the Christians who say things like this support easy access to guns and are fearful of any attempts to limit who may buy or own guns, because their conservatism has overridden their Christianity.
So here's my point.
If you are a Christian and you believe in owning and using guns, then you don't understand what Christianity is about. If you can even conceive of shooting and killing another human being, then you are a bad Christian.
I am not a Christian. I used to be, and I understood that the most important part of Christianity was how you treat other people. I understood this from "Turn the other cheek" and "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and "Thou shalt not kill." I often said that if it came down to someone threatening me with death, if my only defense was to kill them, then I would give up my life. Because that's supposed to be what Christians believe. Christians are supposed to put others first and never ever respond with violence.
Don't believe me?
"Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." (Mt. 5:39)
The servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves." (2 Timothy 2:24-25)
Peace is the Gospel . This is the doctrine of Christ. "Whosoever transgresses and abides not in the Doctrine of Christ hath not God." (2John 2:1)
"As you would that men would do to you, do ye also to them likewise." (Luke 6:31)
"Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword, shall perish with the sword." (Matthew 26:52)
Now I know that plenty of Christians have justified in their minds that Jesus favors self-defense and arming yourself against a violent world. This is bullcrap. Violence goes against everything Jesus supposedly taught. And if you really believe Christian doctrine, if you really believe that you will have eternal life and that life on Earth is temporary, then you would have no trouble giving up your life rather than take someone else's, regardless of the circumstances.
If you are a Christian but say that you are pro-gun, then you are holding two fundamentally incompatible positions.
But then again, I'm just an immoral atheist who believes we should make it harder for people to kill each other.
No comments:
Post a Comment