Beating Guns
Page 17
What is clear, though, is that there are some deep forces at work. As the writer of Ephesians says, we are up against principalities and powers, and spiritual forces. There is a physical side of the principalities and powers that works in our governmental systems and structures. Policies and politicians can oppress people and create obstacles to the kingdom of God and human flourishing. Things like not having access to needed medication or veterans services are the results of those.
And there is also a spiritual force at work, something that takes many different shapes. In the Gospels, there is a story about a man named Legion. The story happens in “the region of the Gerasenes,” which consisted of ten cities (known as the Decapolis) near the Sea of Galilee, under Roman occupation and plagued by violence. It was a hub for much of the Roman military, and Gerasenes was known as a place where many Roman veterans with benefits were given land to dwell in, a veteran’s settlement of sorts. As Jesus passed through the area, he met a man who could not be subdued because he was “possessed” by an evil spirit, a word loaded with meaning, especially to Galileans whose land was occupied by armed soldiers (Mark 5:1–20). They were controlled by an evil outside force. So was the man. Violence held them in its possession.
The evil spirit had made the man unclean by forcing him to live among the graves, which was a violation of the Hebrew holiness laws (Isa. 65:4) and just a rough place to live in general. He could not get the death out of his mind or body. The demon occupation led him to hurt himself, beating himself with hands possessed by violence. His own life, and perhaps the lives of others, was in danger. Demon possessed or violence possessed—there wasn’t much distinction. Maybe not for us either.
Jesus asked the man his name, and he replied, “Legion,” the same word for a division of Roman soldiers. Scholars note that a legion consisted of around two thousand troops, and there would have been several legions around the Decapolis.2 It’s interesting that in the story, after Jesus tells the demons to leave the man, they beg to stay in the area. Nearby was a band of pigs, band being the same word used for a group of military cadets.3 They too were unclean. The demons asked to be sent among the pigs. (Jews did not touch pigs.) Jesus summoned the Legion to enter the pigs. And the pigs, specifically numbered at two thousand, “charged” into the sea to their deaths. And the man lived!
None of the listeners could have missed the subversive symbolism in the story, remembering Pharaoh’s army that charged into the sea, where they were swallowed up and drowned (Exod. 14). Jesus healed people who had been made sick by a violent world. The story ends with the people asking Jesus to leave—after all, his message is controversial, and they lost a lot of pigs. Everyone was pretty upset, except for the man formerly known as Legion. He was free.
Principalities and Powers
When you challenge guns, some people want to kill you with their guns. Many of the leaders in the movement to reduce gun violence receive death threats regularly. We’ve seen some mean stuff. At one point, our entire website at Red Letter Christians (the organization Shane leads) was hacked and redirected to a gun site. But it helps to remember that the forces we are up against are not just “flesh and blood”; spiritual forces are at work.
We learned this at the vigils we did at the local gun shop, the Shooter Shop. As we prepared for one of our vigils, we got word that some progun people had announced a counterprotest. They posted some pretty nasty stuff online, including calling us names. No big deal. But then we read one post where they told people to bring their guns because they might need them. They went on to say, carry your guns; don’t leave them in the car—it’s a “sketchy” neighborhood and someone could steal them.
We moved forward with our vigil—prayerfully, centered in nonviolence, in Jesus, in love, even for those who might oppose us. We took a pledge of nonviolence and had a briefing about the likelihood of the counterprotest. And they did show up. There were not many of them, but they were loud, intimidating, and angry. They had as many American flags as they had people, and they waved them proudly. They hurled names and insults. They called me (Shane) a pedophile (perhaps for bringing kids from my block to the vigil) and told me to cut my hair. They had a point on that last one; it had been about ten years since I’d cut it. But on we went.
Vigil at the Shooter Shop [Jamie Moffett]
As folks shared their firsthand experiences of being shot by stray bullets and losing their kids and parents to guns, the counterprotesters began shouting over them. As one fellow in a wheelchair shared, they yelled over him, interrupting him: “He’s probably illegal.” “Get a job.” And worse.
It really did begin to feel evil.
There was a point where we decided not to try to overpower them. Maybe it was one of those “third way” moments—neither fight nor flight, we just kept our vigil going, rising above the polarizing binaries of “us” and “them” and carving out a new way to relate. It was hard as they yelled and spat insults at us. Sometimes the “third way of Jesus” looks good on paper, and then you have folks waving guns and flags in your face.
We had a permit, a sound system, and a stage, but we didn’t want to try to outyell them. We really did want to disarm their hatred. We tried to talk with them. We asked them to join us. We insisted that we were not there against them—we were there to save lives, including the lives of people they love.
We paused as they chanted, “USA! USA!” And then, in a move that felt led by the Spirit, our group of pastors and activists and victims of violence began to quietly say the Lord’s Prayer together. As our voices cried out in a gentle unity, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven . . .” the counterprotesters began to sing “God Bless America” at the top of their voices. Needless to say, it was eerie.4
When I got home, we debriefed the whole event with some of the teenagers. They had all kinds of wise things to say, takeaways from the day. One of them said he caught a glimpse of what Martin Luther King Jr. and others felt as people spat on them and insulted them, and of why nonviolence was the only answer to violence. Another young man mentioned how important it was to ground ourselves in prayer before we went so that we were spiritually prepared to face such hatred. And all of them mentioned how it felt like we were not fighting people but something much deeper—we were fighting a spiritual battle, not against just flesh and blood.
Several weeks later, the owner of the Shooter Shop ended up in the hospital, and we reminded ourselves that he is made in the image of God too. He is not our enemy. We sent him a gift and let him know he was in our prayers.
Not long ago, the Shooter Shop closed down. It has now been converted into affordable housing for formerly homeless veterans. One more little example of changing swords to plows.
thirteen
Christians with Guns
Do we really want peace? Then let’s ban all weapons so we don’t have to live in fear of war.
—Pope Francis
“BIBLE QUIZZING” used to be a big deal for lots of us Bible nerds, especially in the Bible Belt. It was a competition, with teams and rules and referees, to see who knew the Bible the best. And you had to know verses word for word, without pausing. But listen to this story that shows just how badly we miss the point, even when we know the Bible cover to cover.
I (Shane) was researching a story about a man who allegedly lost a Bible-quoting contest and killed the man who beat him—tragically shooting his opponent in the face. The story appears to be true.1 But even more disturbing is that in my research I discovered many other news stories of people who had killed someone because of an argument over the Bible. Most noteworthy is the story of a twenty-year-old college student killed after a heated argument about what the Bible has to say about forgiveness. He was shot twice in the head by a longtime friend.2
These stories embody so much of what has gone crazy in this country of God and guns. It doesn’t matter how much of the Bible you have memorized; if your instinct is to kill someone who knows more than you, you mis
sed the point.
You can see the bizarre, eerie interplay between Christian faith and guns from the earliest days of guns in America. Charles Adams, great-grandson of the second president, said, “We have a Mission; it is the distinct call of the Almighty. [The clergymen] want to go out, and have this Great Nation [export] the blessings of Liberty and the Gospel to other Inferior Races, who wait for us as for their Messiah—only we must remember to take with us lots of shotguns.”3
The earliest gun marketers were called “missionaries.” Colt had a revolver called the Peacemaker, undoubtedly winking at Jesus’s blessing of the “peacemakers” who will be called the “children of God.” And as mentioned, Colt’s wife, Elizabeth, used her gun fortune to build a church, which had guns carved into the entrance—a church branded with guns instead of a cross.
Some guns have Bible verses etched into them. A Florida gun manufacturer designed an assault rifle called the Crusader, engraved with the words of Psalm 144:1: “Blessed be the LORD my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.” The safety selector that controls the trigger has three settings: “Peace,” “War,” and “God Wills It.” Yours for only $1,580.4
How is there a market for a Psalm 144 gun? Because too many Christians, including popular TV preachers and bestselling authors, love their guns. This is especially apparent when you look at the stats on gun ownership and note that white evangelicals own tons of guns. A Pew Research Center survey showed that 41 percent of white evangelicals—almost half—own a gun. Compare that to the 30 percent of the general population who own a gun. The demographic with the highest rate of gun ownership is white, evangelical Christians. The followers of the Prince of Peace are packing heat. Praise the Lord, pass the ammunition.
(And other Christians are not much better: 29 percent of black Protestants, 33 percent of white mainline Protestants, and 24 percent of Catholics own guns.)5
A mixed message [Shane Claiborne]
After the San Bernardino shooting, where fourteen people were killed and twenty-two others injured, Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, one of the largest Christian colleges in America, told his student body that “if more good people had concealed carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in.” He stuck his hand in his back pocket, indicating that he had a gun, and said, “If the people in that community center had had what I got in my back pocket right now . . .” A video of the event shows the student body responding with applause.
It gets worse. Falwell invited Liberty students to attend a free course offered on campus to acquire concealed carry permits and concluded by saying, “Let’s teach [Muslims] a lesson before they show up here.”6
I (Shane) am an evangelical Christian. In fact, I have spoken at Liberty University, to this same student body. I have been hopeful that Liberty is moving beyond the culture wars of the 1980s, and my hunch is that many of the students and faculty are doing just that, reclaiming a Christianity that looks more like Jesus again.
I know Jerry Falwell Jr. represents some of the most distorted and confusing versions of Christianity out there, but there are many Falwell-light expressions of God-and-gun theology.
The Jesus I worship did not carry a gun. He carried a cross. Jesus did not tell us to kill our enemies; he told us to love them.
Christians often refer to Jesus as the Lamb of God. Lambs don’t hurt anybody.
Early Christians understood that Jesus’s words to Peter (“Put your sword back in its place,” Matt. 26:52) were meant to disarm every Christian. No longer could any Christian legitimately justify violence toward anyone—even enemies. There is not a single Christian in the first three hundred years of the faith who justifies violence or makes a case for self-defense.7 Instead, history records the opposite. Early Christians insisted that for Christ we can die, but we cannot kill. We can die on behalf of others, but we cannot kill for them. Jesus had abolished the sword once and for all.
So what can Christians do? We can lay down our lives. We can put our bodies in the way of violence. It was Jesus who said, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). We can die in the name of Christ, but we dare not kill in the name of Christ. As the saying goes, grace has the power to dull even the sharpest sword.
It’s hard to imagine Jesus enrolling in the concealed carry class at Liberty University or anywhere else. And it is even harder to imagine Jesus approving of the words of Falwell as he openly threatened Muslims.
The venue where Falwell gave these comments makes them even more troubling. Liberty isn’t just a struggling little fundamentalist Bible college. Liberty is one of the largest Christian universities in the United States. Liberty has over one hundred thousand students.
Memorial to the Lost
INLAND REGIONAL CENTER, SAN BERNARDINO, CALIFORNIA (DECEMBER 2, 2015)
On December 2, 2015, a man and a woman opened fire on a holiday party for the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health. Three semiautomatic rifles (an M&P15, a .223 caliber DPMS model A-15, and a Model 64F .22 caliber) and two semiautomatic 9mm handguns were used to murder fourteen people on that day. Here are their names:
Robert Adams, 40 Shannon Johnson, 45
Isaac Amanios, 60 Larry Daniel Kaufman, 42
Bennetta Betbadal, 46 Damian Meins, 58
Harry Bowman, 46 Tin Nguyen, 31
Sierra Clayborn, 27 Nicholas Thalasinos, 52
Juan Espinoza, 50 Yvette Velasco, 27
Aurora Godoy, 26 Michael Raymond Wetzel, 37
One year later, almost to the day, Falwell announced that Liberty University would be opening a state-of-the-art shooting range on campus featuring pistol, rifle, and shotgun facilities. It’s a $3 million project on five hundred acres of land, backed by the NRA. At thirteen thousand square feet indoors and thousands more outside, it is one of the most expansive and expensive shooting ranges in the country—and it’s on the campus of one of the largest “Christian” universities in America. And there is a free course for those students who want a concealed carry permit. More than 1,600 people have taken it. “We have a very pro-Second Amendment student body,” Falwell said.8 Liberty opened the shooting range in 2018—and had the grand opening the week of Easter. Nothing says “Christ is risen” like a gun range.
Jerry Falwell Jr. publicly represents a version of “Christianity” that looks more like the gospel of the NRA than the gospel of Jesus. The gun and the cross offer us two very different versions of what power looks like. One is willing to kill. And one is willing to die.
If we want to know what perfect love looks like, we look at Jesus on the cross, who loved his enemies so much that he was willing to die for them—for us.
Whom Shall You Serve?
We are troubled by militant Christianity. Just as we grieve for Muslims around the world as they have their faith distorted by ISIS, we are grieved by Christian extremists who pervert the faith.
There’s a verse in Galatians that talks about folks who come proclaiming a “gospel” different from the gospel of Jesus. “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ” (Gal. 1:6–7).
We cannot sit idly by when a fellow Christian makes open threats to Muslims, or anyone else, especially when he does so in the name of the Prince of Peace.
Christians are meant to remind the world of Jesus—not just with our words but by the way we live. We are not to conform to the patterns of this world but to live in ways that confound the patterns of this world.
The idea that the church is to be the body of Christ is not just a pipe dream or empty rhetoric. It’s not something to read about in theology books and leave for scholars to pontificate about. We are to become the literal body of Jesus in the world—to make God’s love manifest, visible, real.
I (Shane) was speaking on this topic once, and a questioner raised his hand to ask what I would do if an intruder were threatening my family. I answered him honestly: “I don’t know what I would do, but I hope I would manifest the fruit of the Spirit.” That should be a response on which all Christians agree.
Christians are to be little Christs—people who put flesh on Jesus in the world today. It’s what we remember as we participate in the Eucharist, or Holy Communion—we are eating and drinking the body and blood of Jesus, praying that it will transform us. We are pledging our allegiance to a victim of violence who rose above violence and refused to become violent.
As we do it, we say we are doing it in “remembrance”—we are re-membering Jesus. The body of Christ made up of many members is becoming one. There’s the saying “You are what you eat.” That’s what Communion is about—being transformed into Christ’s body, so that Jesus lives in us and through us. We become the body of Jesus. We are willing to pour out our lives for the world. We are even willing to shed our own blood to “take up our cross.”
There’s a beautiful image in Scripture that we are to “clothe” ourselves with Christ (Col. 3:12–17). The basis for living out the ethics of Jesus in this world is not that it works but that this is the way God is. We are not promised that everything is going to turn out perfect. Look at the cross. Look at how the story ends for the apostles. It is ugly. If there is anything we can learn from our history, as William Barclay says, it’s that we are to be “completely fearless, absurdly happy and in constant trouble.”9 We mock death with our fearless love—or at least we should.
In an age of violence and terror, it’s important not just to live well but to die well. We are not called simply to live like Christ; we are called to die like Christ. And he died loving. The heroes of our faith (folks like John the Baptist, the apostles, Stephen, Ignatius, Maximilian Kolbe, Polycarp, Dirk Willems, Rufus and Zosimus, Perpetua and Felicitas, all the way down to contemporary folks like Óscar Romero, Dorothy Stang, and the Nag Hammadi Coptic Christians of 2010) are not war heroes but martyrs. They did not die with guns in their hands. They died carrying a cross, faithful to the nonviolent Christ.