The Spiritual Malaise

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.

Their Names and Faces

Today I found a news story that listed the names and showed the pictures of the 17 killed in the Parkland school shooting. I have watched the TV news and read some newspaper reports of the tragedy; however, seeing the faces, reading a paragraph about each of these teenagers and teachers, and now typing their names, makes this more than a horrific news story. I know it is such a cliché to say, “These were real people.” But I am gripped that 14 were teenagers, high school kids with lives, friends and families: Alyssa, Nicholas, Martin,  Jaime, Luke, Gina, Cara, Joaquin, Alaina, Meadow, Helena, Alexander, Carmen and Peter. And teachers: Scott, Aaron and Christopher.

As a minister, I have presided over funeral services for teenagers who died too soon. Just speaking as a pastor, few things are as difficult as entering the pain of those families or in searching for the right words in the midst of their shock and grief, not to mention the right and healing words at the funeral. In those circumstances I remember the Apostle Paul’s words to the Romans: “the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” Romans 8: 26

Some losses are too deep for words. Only sighs can be uttered. I imagine those sighs today from the families of those teenagers and teachers…..and for the pastors and rabbis who are walking beside them. Today I pray for them and hold them in my heart. Those kids deserved better. These families deserve better. I pray that congregations and God’s people will surround them with love and support. Funeral services began over the weekend and will continue this week. Those services are part of the important rituals that bind us, give closure and offer healing and hope. My guess is that those families will find further healing and hope when they believe that their loved ones did not die in vain…that something good can come out of this.  Along with my prayer for these heartbroken families, I pray that God will lead us to find a way to stop this madness….and that I will be listening.  

The Parkland Shootings Changed My Lenten Journey

A pilgrimage is a journey made to some sacred place as an act of spiritual devotion. This Lent, our sacred destination is the Empty Tomb on Easter. But I like to believe that the journey IS the destination.

Last Wednesday (Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day) changed my thinking about Lent. On Wednesday we again experienced a horrific mass shooting in our country. This time it was in Parkland, Fla.: 14 high schoolers and three teachers dead. The gunman, a 19-year-old former student, took an AR-15, a semiautomatic weapon, and gunned down his classmates.

Horrible, tragic, and senseless. It is every parent’s nightmare. It is every grandparent’s nightmare. And now, of course, kids across this country are anxious and fearful that next week or one day in the not-so-distant future their school will be the target.

Who can blame them after Columbine, Virginia Tech, Newtown, and 10 other school shootings in this century where at least five students have been shot and killed? I am just talking about school shootings, not Orlando, Charleston, Las Vegas, or the Texas church shooting last fall where 26 worshipers were killed. 

Since Wednesday, several people have expressed to me not only their sadness but also their mounting frustration that we in this country cannot or will not do the necessary things to stop this madness. They want to know what they can do. So do I.

I have lots of questions about why we can buy semiautomatic weapons in this country, or where mental health comes into the discussion or where the line is drawn between our individual rights and what is best and right for our country’s health and well-being.

So during Lent, my pilgrimage will include praying about gun violence in our country. I will pray for these latest families who have lost their beloved children and for the families of the three teachers who lost their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons.

I will pray for the people who are trying to make a difference, who are seeking solutions that will find a way around people, institutions and organizations who, for whatever reason, are not helping us solve this heinous, destructive problem.

I will pray that good people can find a way and that a way will become obvious to those of us who believe this must stop.

My pilgrimage will include learning. During Lent I will be reading position papers, studies, and statements from churches and theologians on guns and gun violence; and I will seek biblical studies that focus on this issue. Because for me, as a Christian, and as a pastor, your pastor, I don’t really care about opinions or about the politics. What I care about is what it means to be a Christian in this debate and what my faith, our faith, would lead us to think and do. What would Jesus do?

I don’t know where this will lead or where I might come out. But the words of Martin Luther King are my great reminder: “For evil to succeed, all it needs is for good people to do nothing.”

I invite you to join me.