Guns are a staple in North American culture. And whether you appreciate or dislike them, they are common in our media and everyday life. I, myself, grew up in a household with a rifle, which never seemed like a big deal to me. My entire life, I always just saw violence as violence, as something independent of guns. I wasn't unfamiliar with the phrase, "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." I grew up understanding the 2nd Amendment, and that my family's rifle was for hunting and for protecting our home, but I never really thought about what else guns do.
As I immerse myself in my time of college growth and discovery, I am starting to realize counterpoints to what I used to perceive as facts. Never before in my life have I realized quite like I do now, that everything in this word is just so gray. It seems to me that as humans, we've taken our beautiful freedom of will and made a complicated mess. Such is the way of the world.
I recently watched a film called "The Armor of Light," which documents one clergyman's search to reconcile being pro-life with being a Christian gun owner. The clergyman of the film raised the question of if humans are putting the Constitution above the law of God. He made me wonder if we are trying to empower ourselves with these weapons that allow us to play judge, juror and executioner. I began to speculate if we invest in these guns so strongly because we're afraid. To loosely quote the clergyman, Rob Schenck's dumbfounded conclusion about his fellow Evangelicals, we need "God, the Gospel and a gun." Say that statement out loud. See if it curdles in your mouth, like it does in mine. I can't help but wonder that as Christians, if we trust God, should we not be trusting him with all aspects of our lives, and trust that all things work according to his plan? Or can God not help us unless we help ourselves?
Clearly, these are murky issues. But for me, so much of it comes down to our common humanity. I'm sure we're all familiar with the NRA's favorite phrase, "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy a with gun." Where I might have once seen this as a truthful statement, I can now only see it as destructive. Too much is left to situation and perception. What separates a "good guy" from a bad one? Our own self-label? Our transgressions? And just like what the movie "Batman Vs. Superman" wants its viewers to consider, what constitutes as good, and how long does moral stay true and pure? If we are using guns as protection for human life, which lives are more highly valued? It strikes me that Americans are planning ahead of time to enact justice that may not be necessary. So, maybe we are actually planning on vengeance.
I've heard it said before that as Christians, the only weapon we have is love. Though, it seems like nowadays, hatred and fear are the holster for the weapon. And as we know from 1 John 4:18, fear cannot exist where there is love. And where there is love, there is work towards a system where we refrain from shooting our fellow beings, not because we fear the other has a gun, but because we love, and we understand that vengeance is not ours.
I believe we were granted the freedom to choose our will, but just like in the fabled kingdom of Camelot, what have we done with our choice but create doomed and bigoted institutions? Perhaps the issue isn't in the amount of training it takes to get a gun, but in the moral dilemma we find ourselves in when we have one. It's in our deeply flawed human nature to be rash, and self-righteous and fatally angry. And maybe a world where love triumphs is only Heaven, or utopia, and -- like the great ideas of the Roundtable -- is bound to fail because we are all just too human.
I'm not offering a solution to this complicated issue, or even a compromise, but merely something to think about. As people of faith and a nation of power, what should our weapon be?
