Dear Church: Get rid of your guns!

In America, there are an estimated 357 million or more guns.

As Americans, we love guns as much as we love cars and apple pie.

"You'll have to pry my gun from my cold dead hands..." is an actual motto that comes off the lips of many.

This love for guns in our culture has permeated even the church.

This popular image above of a girl clinging to her gun and her Bible has become something of our witness as a church in America.  We should be disturbed by this. 

But many of us are not, and many of us even celebrate it, because we've got our thinking out of whack with Scripture, and we believe that the Second Amendment is something we should cherish and celebrate. To us, its ethos has come to rival just about anything Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not against the Second Amendment per say. I'm not interested in lobbying politicians to take away the rights our constitution gives us in America. I have serious doubts such would make things better, just as prohibition failed to make things better.

But what I am against 100% is our love for guns. 

Our love for guns is as terrible, if not more so, than our love for money.  And the Scriptures warn us against both. 

But as Americans, it seems we can never have enough guns or money, and we've created a bastardized form of Christianity in which we encourage the body of Christ to love and chase after both.

Guns, like money, are far from simply neutral tools. They are symbols that have the ability to transform our hearts if we are not careful to guard them.  Both can infect us with an unhealthy sense of pride, power, and security.  Both have the power to destroy lives and shatter community.

Some people don't believe we have a gun problem, and that it's simply a heart problem.  And in some sense, they are right. If you took away guns, people would simply resort to other means of killing people.  Cain murdered Able long before a gun was invented.

Such is indisputable.  But such is also naïve.

For the prophets, when they spoke about future things, they didn't merely talk about a time in the future when one day, people would simply have warm and fuzzy hearts that did nothing but bleed love and joy.

The prophets didn't envision a world in which we loved Jesus and also had a nice gun rack in our truck.

The prophets spoke of a day in which people's hearts would be so transformed, that they would also transform their weapons. 

The prophet Isaiah once said:

'Now it will come about that

In the last days

The mountain of the house of the Lord

Will be established as the chief of the mountains,

And will be raised above the hills;

And all the nations will stream to it.

And many peoples will come and say,

"Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord ,

To the house of the God of Jacob;

That He may teach us concerning His ways

And that we may walk in His paths."

For the law will go forth from Zion

And the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

And He will judge between the nations,

And will render decisions for many peoples;

And they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.

Nation will not lift up sword against nation,

And never again will they learn war. '

 ~ Isaiah 2:2-4 (NASB)

Isaiah spoke of the future, "in the last days" in which God's people would hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.  They aren't a people who simply blamed mass shootings at schools on heart problems and were content to send up "thoughts and prayers."  They are a people of action who saw the dangers of owning a weapon, and believed they would be better off living without them, to the point where they transformed them into tools fit for nothing more than  working in a garden. They are a people who are not interested in defending themselves or waging war anymore.

Isaiah foresaw a prophetic community and a people who are keenly aware that hearts and weapons have a strange way of becoming tethered together in a way that transforms both. 

Weapons can shape our hearts, and in turn, our hearts shape our weapons.

A prophetic people blame not only the heart, but they blame the weapons that accompany that heart as well.  For when weapon and heart transform each other, it's not just a heart problem that we have, it's also a gun problem.

And if our hearts are rightly where God would have us be, as a prophetic community, we must disavow ourselves of a love for weapons, and instead, see them as instruments that need to be turned into tools used to nurture plants.

If we see guns as instruments for which we have the right to own in order to defend ourselves and our loved ones against evil forces and against tyrannical governments, then our understanding has become dull. 

We need to change that thinking, and see our guns as instruments that need to be transformed just as much as our hearts need to be transformed.

Unfortunately, few of us are there yet.  Many of us have a sick and unhealthy love for guns.  We'd sooner die and let our children die than to be found without a gun.

And to me such shows the truth that those who cherish owning guns often say...

Our hearts really are desperately wicked.

Yes... they most certainly are.  And that is what makes owning a gun so dangerous.

In Jesus name, get rid of your guns good people. 

No Guns in Church!

Smith and Wesson may soon be joining your local church.

Locally in Charlotte, NC, the local NBC news affiliate has covered a story in which the pastor of New Outreach Christian Center, has announced their decision carry a firearm in church as a result of the deadly church shooting that recently happened in Charleston, SC.

Pastor Brenda Stevenson said from the pulpit:

"We need protection... I want them to know 'Have no fear. God is here,' but we got two more members. Smith, and Wesson."

As a patriotic American who supports the Second Amendment right to bear arms, there is a part of me that wants to say "Amen!"  But, I am troubled by such a feeling, as I know it conflicts with the Holy Spirit, who tells me that pastor Brenda Stevenson and what she is thinking is wrong.

It's wrong because it's fundamentally out of step with the teachings of Jesus.  Such a thought might be fully American, but it is not exactly Christian.

Jesus taught us not to be afraid, for He is with us.  Jesus taught us that those who live by the sword will die by the sword.   Jesus taught us that instead of taking up our right to bear arms, we need to take up our cross.  Jesus taught us that though we die, we will yet live again.

As a people who believe that Jesus Christ was crucified, buried, and rose again, I simply don't see how in good conscience we can even think about arming ourselves for the purpose of self-defense.

The idea of being shot to death is a terrifying one.  It actually happens, and we see it play out in the news every day.  But as a people who believe that death doesn't have the final answer, and that though we die, Jesus Christ will come again and raise us back to life one day, we should accept the real possibility that somebody might actually violently kill us one day.  And, instead of seeking to preserve our lives, we need to be a people who are always ready to give our lives.  Even if that means falling prey to a world full of madmen.

The late Art Katz used to frequently say, "You are far too American" in his preaching. And in instances such as these, I cannot help but think time and time again how right he was.

We would rather be American than Christian.  And the idea of packing heat in a church service betrays everything I know about being a Christian and shows where our heart and our thinking really is.  It is fundamentally wrong, and grounded in the thinking that rules this world.

But sadly, many of us can't see it, because our values more align with the stars and stripes than it does the cross of Jesus Christ.  And in the process, we lose the opportunity to be a powerful prophetic voice to our generation, and be like those saints who gave their lives in the church shooting in Charleston, SC.

Let us refuse to take up arms.  Let us be willing to give our lives as a people who believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, knowing that as He lives, so too shall we one day.