Well, I've been home now for almost a full week. It has been great to see family and friends, even my brother made the trip home from Switzerland for Christmas this year so that's pretty cool. I hadn't seen him for over 2 years. so in a way it was like getting to know someone all over again. Most of my family that I've seen so far I hadn't seen in at least a year so it's been similar in the sense of getting to know them again as well. As I joked with my brother, it seems we missed the memo about needing to get paired with a significant other or get married and start making babies.
The recent shootings in Sandy Hook have come up in conversation a few times, with very different perspectives as was the case in Sarasota as well before I came up north. It seems that a lot of people think the answer is found in more people carrying guns, just making sure the right people are the ones with the guns to answer the bad people carrying guns. For me, I'm not so sure about that type of logic. As my friends in Czech Republic pointed out, isn't that how the arms race started? They have weapons so we need more weapons than they do and eventually you have a buildup of weapons great enough to destroy the earth however many times over. Dr. Seuss wrote a great book entitled The Butter Battle I believe that was a great description of war in general and in particular I believe he may have been talking about the arms race with the Soviet Union although I'm not sure on that one.
Sandy Hook really took everyone off guard and caused a lot of terror in the hearts of people. It hit home with me obviously since I teach kindergarten. It's impossible to understand something so heinous, but almost as baffling to me is many people's reaction to it. Many people think that teachers ought to be allowed and even mandated to carry concealed weapons. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me at least since I have students who are constantly hugging me every day and that would probably cause a whole lot more problems than solve anything really.
Not to mention the fact that most people in that situation are not trained, either mentally or skillfully, on how to handle the moment in such a way as to shoot the gunman with a direct hit while adrenaline is pumping through your blood and your hands are super shaky. Have you ever felt a surge of adrenaline? There are certain things I've done where I get just a taste of adrenaline, like skydiving or bungee jumping. Your heart is pumping, your mind is racing, your whole body is shaky and amped up for a while afterwards. How am I, or anyone untrained for that type of thing, supposed to be calm enough to kill someone in the given situation? Provide everyone with training, right? That certainly sounds easy enough. Even if you did though, another problem would persist. As my brother rightly pointed out, teachers are not immune from moments of insanity. Would you really want one of them holding a gun when a student is pushing their buttons the day after they found out their spouse has been cheating on them for the past year? Sounds like a terrible thing to even mention, but it must be mentioned if we seriously consider going down this road.
I read a quote by James Dobson, saying this was God's judgement for us allowing abortions and gay marriage. This breaks my heart and angers me at the same time. Ironically, the same day in China saw a man terrorize school children with a knife by cutting off ears or fingers but not killing anyone. Dobson and others must realize that we are not, nor have we ever been, a Christian nation. Take a basic look at our history and I don't see a lot of Christian behavior being practiced even if it was the major religion. Was it Christian to steal land from Native Americans? Was it Christian to hold slaves? People used the Bible to defend slavery, which causes the question as to what are we using the Bible to defend today that is obviously not right?
Freedom isn't free, to be sure, but what type of freedom and what type of price have we paid for it? I believe the freedom the Christ talks about in the Bible has little to do with being able to worship out in the open as Paul talked about freedom from a jail cell many times. How many times did Christ advocate ruling by the sword? Was He not the One who told Peter to put away his sword, that those who live by the sword die by the sword? How is making sure everyone is armed not living by the sword? He was talking about swords and not guns obviously, but I'm pretty sure He wouldn't change it to say we should live by the gun if He were walking around earth today.
We need to think about our definition of freedom and what price we are willing to pay for it. Over the past several years, I've read about and loved the idea of non-violent resistance. Pacifism is the opposite of military engagement, but non-violent resistance is a third way of doing things. Walter Wink has a very insightful book about Jesus and the third way that I would highly recommend, but I'll try and explain a little bit of it here. When Christ taught his followers to go a second mile, it wasn't simply a command to do what you're told. Roman soldiers had to follow the law, and the law at the time stated they were allowed to have a Jewish person carry their pack, but not farther than a mile. When Jesus taught them to go a second mile, He's teaching them to resist and turn the tables of power. Imagine a Roman soldier trotting after a Jewish peasant begging them to put their pack down! How foolish he must've looked! This was the brilliance of Jesus' teaching, that there was and I would argue there still is a third way.
Americans love their so-called freedom, all the while being enslaved to many things like entertainment, consumerism and celebrityism. True freedom is found in Christ alone, whether you live in a democratic society or a communist one. We are to no longer be enslaved by the things that once enslaved us while we were still sinners. Yes, we may still sin, but that is no longer how God views us on account of Christ.
Many of my friends in Florida are gun loving people and say that a safe society is an armed one. I'm not really so sure of that though. How many people die of gun violence every day in the states? Do you really think that if just enough people were armed that gun violence would suddenly go down? I wonder what the statistics are of people in other countries with stricter gun laws. Do they have more gun deaths since the only people with guns are the bad guys and the policemen? Something to think about anyways.
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