4 Topics

Blogs are blowing up with posts this morning, I am sure, so why not add my own foolishness…

I call it foolishness because one person’s convictions are foolish to another and so on.  I’ve read a lot over the weekend but by-in-large they stick to 4 topics all with same starting point…the tragic and heartbreaking school shooting.  Here are the topics:

More gun control

Less gun control

Mental illness

God “kicked out” of schools

The first two can be put together because they are two sides of same coin.  You can say “guns don’t kill people, people do” or “are we going to ban cars/spoons too?” and “if you can’t fix the human, fix the gun.”  All of it is garbage, really.  What is not garbage is this:  guns are part of our American culture (like it or not).  So you either work with what you have or you fail.  To this end, I would like to share a story I heard on TED.  Skip to 4:47 to hear the part that really spoke to me.

How does this connect to guns and gun culture?  Here’s my connection:  you have to work with what you have.  In the U.S. we have a gun culture.  Instead of changing the culture…work with what you have.  Here we have guns.  Here we have lots of men and women with training and many more without.  Both sides of this issue need to work together, good ideas will be collaborative.  Laws aren’t great at shaping culture…it works best the other way around.

I don’t know the answers, though.  Would gun control work? I hope rather than believe it will.  What I believe will happen, is that many law-abiding, trained men and women will be helpless to protect others from those who still have guns.  That’s taking a knife to a gun fight.

I also link the other two, mental illness and God in school, but probably not in the way you think.

No one ever can kick God out of a school, know why?  God’s not there.  God is not in bricks and mortar, wood, or metal… God was never in cafeterias, classrooms, or playgrounds God has always been, and always will be in the hearts of believers.  No one goes to school without their hearts, so believers never go anywhere without God.   We should all have our rights protected.  A Christian should have the right to practice their beliefs as they want, and every non-Christian and non-believer should have the right to practice their beliefs AND not be hounded by Christians who tell them they are wrong and bad.  Non-Christians and non-believers share a long history of discrimination at the hands of Christians and Christian-run governments; it is high time for a balance.  Think of this like a scale...in our American history all the power and privilege has always been on the Christian (more precisely Protestant) side of the scale.   Isn’t it right to give some power and privilege to others?  To place power and privilege on the other side will have to make the power and privilege on the Christian side less weighty.  See…it’s a balance.

To those that have said this tragedy happened because God was kicked out of schools…I say shame on you.  That somehow these innocents were punished by God….shame on you.  Any person who commits terrible, terrible things is not the opposite of God or evil, these people are ill.  I don’t believe in evil…it is a crutch...a way to avoid the real problem:  Terrible illnesses that hijack people, and make them prey to the worst parts of human nature.  We are a culture that lacks knowledge and resources when it comes to mental illness.  How much easier it is to sleep at night when we say, “They were evil.” rather than the helplessness of “what could we have done?”

I want people to start listening to others, sharing ideas, and recognize that no one person, or party, or group, or faith has all the answers (although they think they do)…and have the humility and confidence to admit when you are wrong.