Talking To Your Christian Friends About Their Guns

Gun violence in our country has reached epidemic proportions with no end in sight. While on the one hand we have seen one mass shooting after another -- including mass shootings of little children like at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the response has not been to work to have less guns and less violence, but to encourage people to have more guns. As the NRA advertises, "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." So we have people with guns at schools, at movie theaters, at Bible studies.

Think about that for a minute. We do not have people who are trained at all in how to deal with hostile and dangerous situations. We have a person who is afraid, who has had that fear repeatedly fostered by groups like the NRA, Fox News, and others, and who is now walking the halls of your kindergarten packing heat. We also have laws like "stand your ground" that say that if that person feels "threatened" they can kill.

Take an untrained person, motivated by fear, and give them a gun. That is a recipe for disaster. The driving force here is fear. That's why people are so adamant about gun rights, and discussions can get so emotionally heated. They want to protect their own safety and the safety of those they love, and when someone suggests we take away their means of protection, they feel vulnerable and threatened, and react with anger. It's a response to a perceived threat that is ironically called being "triggered" and means that our body literally physiological shuts down the social part of our brain (the cerebral cortex) and engages the fear-center (the amygdala).

So the question becomes, how can we help people to look at the issue of guns and violence without shutting down the rational and social parts of their brains and simply becoming angry and reactive? I've heard some pastors take the hard line of saying that Jesus forbids the use of violence, and so the answer to "How will I stay safe?" becomes "You won't. You will die like the martyrs did. Jesus commands it. Take up your cross." While that is indeed an argument that one can make with the New Testament on their side, you can see why this would make a person feel threatened and trigger a reactive amygdala fear response.

Let's not kid ourselves, the core message of the gospel is not pro-gun, and in fact Jesus' message of the kingdom of God is a systematic refutation of that way of thinking. This is one of the take-away points from the 2015 documentary Armor of Light, which follows one conservative evangelical pastor's attempt to speak to his fellow evangelicals about the conflict between guns and the gospel. You can watch it on Amazon for just a buck. It's a great conversation starter, and it's a conversation we desperately need to have.

What I would like to do is give some theological context to that conversation, demonstrating that a belief in guns cannot co-exist with belief in Christ. They represent two opposing and incompatible visions of life, and we need to be clear on that. What I hope further to show is that the way of Jesus is indeed good news. It is not pie in the sky idealism, but a realistic way, addressing the fears we have, and our deepest desires for abundant life. It's a gospel message that many white evangelicals in this country have never heard.

Jesus' message of the kingdom of God represents an alternate societal vision, in contrast to the societal vision embraced by the religious culture at the time of Jesus, and found in the parts of the Old Testament, which promoted  tribalism and responded to those on the outside with condemnation and acts of violence committed in the name of God. When Christians claim the Bible supports their endorsement and use of violence, they draw on those parts of the Old Testament that Jesus specifically confronts and rejects. So let's take a closer look at Jesus' message of the kingdom and how it speaks to the issue of guns, and more broadly to the larger issue of self-preservation and fear.

The big picture of Jesus' message of "die to yourself" is one of overcoming fear. The biggest fear we have is the fear of death. Fear is often behind why we do hurtful things. We are afraid we won't have enough for ourselves, so we are unsocial. We are afraid of being hurt, so we carry a gun. The gospel tells us that we need to care for others, that we need to learn to think socially, and that when we do, that our needs will also be taken care of. "Don't worry about food or shelter" Jesus says, "but seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be given to you as well."

This is not about denying the self or denying your family or tribe or race. It's about widening the circle of who you consider to be "in" to include everyone. It says that it's not just about my family, but also about your family. It's not just about my race, but about yours, too. Jesus points us to caring especially for those who are neglected in society, the poor, the unclean, the condemned. He calls out racial prejudice with the story of the Good Samaritan. He calls out religious superiority with the story of the good centurion.

Today in America our "Samaritan" would be a Muslim, or more broadly anyone with brown skin who is seen as threatening and labeled as a terrorist if they are Muslim, or as a criminal if they are black. In other words, the people we feel threatened by, the ones who we feel we need to use a gun against, the ones we want to lock up in jail or keep out with a wall are the very ones Jesus says we need to love. The are the ones whose lives we value "the least" as Jesus says.

In other words, the reason Jesus would say "black lives matter" is because he recognized that society (including religious society like his and ours) disregards the value of the lives of those they see as "other" and "least." If we want to break out of that, caring for all lives, the way we get there is by caring especially for those who are treated as "the least" valuable by us.

Behind that otherizing is fear. We are afraid of the person who looks scary to us. That's where the idea of enemy love comes in. An "enemy" here is someone that you perceive as a threat. This is not something only conservatives do. Liberals do it, too. Liberals like me see conservatives with guns as threatening and scary, just as conservatives see liberals like me as scary. The typical reaction is to label the other, calling them a terrorist or a criminal (if you are conservative) or labeling them as racist or homophobic (if you are a liberal). Either way we see ourselves as the "good guys" and them as the "bad guys" who need to be stopped.

When you see someone in that category of "enemy" you feel justified in silencing them, harming them in order to protect yourself. You need to dehumanize the other to kill them. So they are labeled as a "terrorist" or a "criminal" and then it's okay. The gospel is about recognizing the humanity and value in everyone, not because we are innocent or "good guys" but rather the gospel is that even though we are sinners, God showed his love for us. The gospel is about seeing that the sinner -- which includes you -- is valued and loved by God.

It's relatively easy to care for those we see as meek, poor, helpless, begging for mercy, repentant. But what about those who we see as a threat? Do we know how to love someone like that? Do we know how to reconcile? Do we know how to make peace when there is real conflict? Or do we instead build walls, fire people, and even fire a gun? "Do not return evil with evil" both Peter and Paul write. The Hebrew there (which is the context they would be thinking in) is "do not repay anyone harm for harm." That seems to be the only way we know how to respond though. We either passively do nothing, or we return violence with violence, evil for evil. It's the American way. But it is decidedly not the way of Jesus.

What is missing completely from this is any application of love of enemies. It is at the same time the most ground-breaking and revolutionary of all of the teachings of Jesus, and also the least taught -- let alone practiced -- by Christians (whether they are liberal or conservative). Perhaps that's because we think that love of enemies means "be a victim," and pronouncements by pastors like the one above to "be like the martyrs" tend to perpetuate this misunderstanding. Similarly, lots of Christian pacifists take the stance that Jesus simply gives us a prohibition against the use of violence. I don't disagree, however I must insist that this cannot be all. Just as a Christian vision of sexual ethics cannot only be about not having sex, a Christian vision of love of enemies also cannot be only about not committing acts of violence. Love of enemies is not just a prohibition, a command saying what you cannot do. More importantly love of enemies presents an alternative means to resolving conflict without violence. In other words, it is not about doing nothing, but about doing something different.

Love of enemies is about recognizing the value and humanity of the one who you have dehumanized by seeing them as an enemy, and asking what you can do to end that hostility and work towards reconciliation. Whether it's the polarizing and hateful rhetoric of political discourse, or the fear-based stockpiling of guns, reconciliation is something we Americans seem to be utterly incapable of.

Love of enemies is connected to the widening of the in-circles discussed above. We widen the circle to care not just about my family, but also yours, and all families. We widen the circle to care about all races, all lives. We widen the circle to care about not only those in our nation, but all people.  That is something that Jesus teaches over and over in the Gospels, and it is the exact opposite of the idea of building a wall around us, and encouraging Christians to bring guns to church with them so they can kill bad guys. Again, there is really nothing "Christian" about being pro-gun if Christian has anything to do with the teaching of Jesus and his vision of adopting God's values "on earth as it is in heaven."

So why is it that it is so hard for people -- especially white American evangelicals -- to trust the way of Jesus more than they trust their guns? A big part of it is diet, that is, what we feed on. While pastors remained silent on the issue of guns, groups like the NRA and Fox News stepped into the gap, inundating people with a 24-hour message stirring up fear and anger. This "other-gospel" of fear and anger has come to be associated with white evangelical Christianity, but it is about as Christian as a strip club. The fact that those same white evangelicals endorse a presidential candidate who encourages acts of violence from his supporters, and who owns strip clubs, is not lost on me. White evangelicals have abandoned the way of Jesus, and substituted it with the way of violence, driven by fear. That may be hard to hear, but it is the truth. I say this as a white American evangelical myself. I say it out of love, calling on my fellow evangelical brothers and sisters to repent of their unbelief, and return to Jesus.

In the end it is a matter of faith versus fear. Fear keeps people away from the way of Jesus. Fear of losing the good things in our life, fear of death. We need to understand that Jesus is not about taking away good things from us. He came, he says, to give us life, abundant life. He continually is telling people not to worry, not to fear. But what he does want us to do is to learn to think socially, to learn to love, to learn to widen the circles we make to include those on the outside. He wants us to become messengers of reconciliation. That is what preaching the gospel, the good news of the kingdom, is all about.

The part where widening that circle becomes hard is where we perceive those outside the circle to be an enemy, a threat. The point is not to ignore danger as if it did not exist. The point is learning how we can reconcile with someone, how we can overcome hostility. The way we do that is not through escalation, buying more guns, or building bigger walls. The way we do that is by learning how to be ambassadors of reconciliation, how to be peacemakers. Currently the direction we are moving in is the opposite, shutting out the refugee in need, the racial divide ever growing, becoming more and more reactive, fearful, hostile, and violent. We need to learn the way of peace, the way of reconciliation.  Doing that is not some optional side thing, it is at the very heart of the gospel, at the very heart of what the kingdom of God is about.

The fact is, white conservative evangelical's association of God and guns going together has virtually nothing to do with Christianity. It has to do with something that runs deeper. It has to do with the fear of death, with our human survival instinct, which is an incredibly powerful drive. The gospel speaks to that fear. We need to learn how to preach that gospel message. We need to learn how to place our trust in the way of Jesus, and not in a gun.