Gun Control

Just read this story about a church that’s hosting an “Open Carry Celebration” where they’re inviting everyone to bring their handguns, sing songs about America, and even buy a $1 raffle ticket to win a free hand gun! They say it’s a “celebration for all who support our 1st and 2nd amendment rights” and the advertisement invites you to “come celebrate our rights as Americans”.

Let’s not even discuss the issue of gun control and the right to bear arms. I mean it’s a very important topic but one that seems more suited to someone who has done more research (seems like a good English 102 paper). I personally just prefer for people not to shoot each other. Anyway, the big question is whether or not this is appropriate in the church.

I’ve got two differing thoughts:

  1. My first response was a toned down outrage or frustration that a church would do something so ridiculous. That a church would actually be a part of inviting everyone to bring their guns, to celebrate America, and all that jazz. Seems like churches have a hard enough task funneling peoples worship toward Jesus and building excitement concerning the Holy Spirits work in peoples lives. Do we really want to spend our time drumming up enthusiasm for carrying guns and worshiping our nation? Is that the churches role? Isn’t our role to be the body of Christ? Didn’t the early church have a simple motto “Jesus is Lord” which was in stark opposition to the phrase of the day “Caesar is Lord”. In other words when the Roman empire was trying to get it’s citizens to sing the praises of Caesar the early church turned their phrases upside down and reinterpreted them to give glory to the true savior of the people. While no president has claimed to be God, it is interesting that in honor of our country we sing songs, we have parades, we light fireworks, we even pledge our allegiance (synonyms include faithfulness, devotion, fidelity, honor, obedience, piety, and duty) to our nation. If that doesn’t sound like the actions of worship I don’t know what does. It’s just interesting isn’t it? When hymn books include “God bless America” and “America the beautiful” next to songs like “Holy Holy Holy” and “How Great Thou Art” I start to have some serious questions about where our loyalty lies. So my first thoughts included all this. A bit of disgust. A bit of judgement (though I prefer to call it righteous indignation). A bit of…well you get the point.
  2. My second thoughts were an attempt to see all of this from the point of view of a good ol’ boy from Kentucky (where this church is located). I mean good ol’ boys are the people they’re trying to bring to Jesus. So if a ridiculous gun control day helps to bring people to Jesus then by all means do it. Don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t suggest doing something immoral and wrong in order to introduce people to Jesus, but I’m confident that these people have absolutely no spiritual or moral conflict with gun possession! So within that context I’d just place this event in the same box that I put other goofy attempts at creating “evangelistic events” like churches often do. At least they’re trying I guess right? I mean I’d prefer a different route, but at least they’re doing something! There’s a really awesome church here in Vancouver that advertised their Sunday services with tigers and monkeys on stage. Kind of goofy I thought. But in the end they brought more people to new faith on the lion, tiger, and bear week than any other in their history.

I don’t know where you sit on the issue. I’d love to hear your opinion. You’ve heard some of my gut immediate thoughts, right or wrong as they might be. At the very least let’s all agree that this is a really weird story.

peace.

3 thoughts on “Gun Control

  1. Hmmm…I know where you are going with giving the benefit of the doubt about it being an outreach thing, but that seems a little far fetched. Coming together to sing songs of allegiance to our country and celebrate our rights doesn't really seem to represent the Jesus of the bible or to worship him.

  2. I'm also wondering about the whole outreach thing. Yes, I want to people to know about Jesus, but what Jesus are we inviting them to believe in? This is an ethical question for me. Is it ethical to say "Bring your gun, sing some songs, let's 'worship' together." and eventually tell people they have to put down their swords and pledge allegiance to God alone? Of course, I doubt this church would ever make that move.

    The point is, I struggle with the whole bait and switch method of evangelism. I struggle with asking people to commit their lives to Christ under one pretense (church is about you and your wants) and then telling them after the fact that their commitment to Christ requires more. Here's a ridiculous example to make my point. If I were a racist, I would hope that someone would say to me "Ben, if you want to follow Christ it means you can't be a racist anymore." instead of someone "leading me to Christ" without indicating that it requires a serious shift.

    So…I guess what I'm saying is that I want people to "know Christ," but I want to intentionally reflect on the Christ that I'm showing them.

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