Presbyterians
have been concerned about gun violence for a long time. For 30 years, our church,
The Presbyterian Church (USA), has been studying the issue, making statements,
publishing studies and reports while asking congregations to pray about it, to
study and act. When I read some of the older reports and church statements from
decades ago, I can sense their concern that unless we, God’s people, used our
influence to change cultural and political thinking, that we could find
ourselves in a societal crisis.
Which
is exactly where we find ourselves after Parkland, Las Vegas, the Texas church
shooting, Orlando, Newtown, Virginia Tech, Columbine, and a dozen other
incidents of mass shootings.
I
keep asking, “When is enough enough?”
One
of the papers I am now reading is called Gun
Violence, Gospel Values. It is a study and report written by a church appointed
study group on gun violence. Its membership included church elders and pastors,
a chaplain from Virginia Tech, a university ethics professor, a pastor who was formerly
a police officer, a missionary, a national parks administrator, an elder in
international sales, a seminary professor and others. The report was approved and
adopted by the General Assembly of the PC(USA) in 2010.
I
have pondered how guns and gun violence is a spiritual issue. One section of
the report names it as “spiritual malaise.”
The
report says that regarding gun violence in America, “the cost has been spiritual: we have come to accept what is unacceptable
to the Creator. We, like Rachel, should be inconsolable, yet we find ourselves
numbed and passively tolerating higher levels of violence in our communities….
Where is our grief at the loss of life and the loss of conscience? How have we
gotten to this point of passive acceptance of gun violence?”
I feel that malaise….that we Christians have come
to accept what is unacceptable to God, that we are increasingly numb and that
we have gotten to a point of passive acceptance.
For me, I was sure that after Virginia Tech, things
would change; then after congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot in the head, that
things would change; then after the children’s slaughter at Newtown, that surely
things would change.
Nothing changed.
I
am praying that God’s Spirit will work in me to give me hope…sustainable hope
so that I can overcome spiritual malaise, overcome accepting the unacceptable, and
overcome passive acceptance.
