Newtown and WHAT WOULD JESUS PACK?

There is a fierce debate about what response is appropriate.  Many are knee jerk responses, emotively based.  Yet is that emotion wrong?  Isn’t outrage appropriate?  What must not be done is nothing, nothing too trite and nothing that is politically charged.  The Gun lobby is already hard at work, and caused a huge uptick in guns sales, including a strange defense and demand for military assault weapons…. cause we all need a machine gun.

Some say facts are liberal.  Okay.  Is liberal in itself bad?  Are facts to be ignored?  Are my rights more important than collective rights?  This blog is for Christians, whom I hope to encourage to emulate Christ.  I’m having a hard time in any way being comfortable with the gun lobby position which most evangelical Christians are bitingly endorsing…  All I hear is my rights, if more people had guns…  These gun massacres from Columbine to Aurora, to Scotland, to Connecticut have all been done with legal guns.  I’m struggling with the arguments that only criminals would have guns… in the ten years we actually had an assault weapon ban on certain weapons and magazines of a certain size, we had a 4)5 decrease in murder, but we lifted that ban for “my rights” thanks to the millions spent by the gun lobby (thanks, NRA) and we immediately saw the murder rate spike again.

I did a bit of research.  Here are a few murder rate statistics:

Murder Rate:
US: 4.2/1,000,000 *mostly by guns
UK 1.2
Canada 1.6
Australia 1.0
New Zealand .9
Germany .8
France 1.1
Austria .6
Norway .6

Why are we arguing this?  So, the defense of guns, and the gun running rush at stores this week… what they say is that “my rights” outweigh the safety of our society these kids are a worthy propitiation to guarantee I can have a gun… nice.  Tell that to the families of each of these massacres, to the parents of the three people murdered in New Orleans this very weekend past…and then may we all go together and offer our sacrifice to Molech.

The fire internal to this god was stoked until the iron god glowed.  The father would take the new born baby from its mom, approach the intense heat of the idol and lay their precious child into the metal waiting arms of this god.  The indescribable scream of pain and death by the baby was drowned out by intense drum beating from the priests.  The burned charred body would be removed by tongs to be further incinerated and another parent would murder his child, over and over and over.

How in the hell, did Christians get so married to our cultural religion that we we embrace the society’s value system over the Biblical value system?  We defense life from abortion but endorse guns?  We fight euthanasia but defend strangers packing?  We think some noble “savior” role for good people carrying guns.  Anyone having been in the chaos of combat knows how damned easy friendly fire occurs… when the “good guys” wear the same uniform, carry the same gear, are well trained, know where each other is supposed to be… and it still happens.  Can you imagine soccer mom, engineer dad in the movie theater with weapons in Aurora?  How many would have shot each other and hit others due to the chaotic situation and confusion as to who the real bad guy was?
The facts do not support the logical “gimme more guns” option.  The God we follow died, sacrificed, loved, and became nothing that we might live…  we are sent ones, as lambs amongst wolves…  we are to carry our cross, emulate the Christ (Phil 2.5-11) and I just cannot reason the gun toting crowd.  If soccer mom accidentally shot my son(s), I wouldn’t need a weapon and the same rage at the assailant would also be unleashed on her.   You see, dead is dead.  Civilians carrying guns will only get more people killed…  Not to mention most people don’t have it in them to even shoot!

I’m ashamed to read Facebook and read the commentary by CHRISTIANS (Christ like ones, right?) who so vehemently stand on the side of violence.

“Christians are not distinguished from the rest of mankind by country, or by speech, or by dress.  For they do not dwell in cities of their own, or use a different language or practice a peculiar life . . . but while they dwell in Greek or barbarian cities according to each man’s lost has been cast, and follow the customs of the land in clothing and food, and other matters of daily life, yet the condition of citizenship which they exhibit wonderful, and admittedly strange . . . every foreign land is to them a fatherland, and every fatherland a foreign land.  They marry like the rest of the world, and breed children, but they do not cast their offspring adrift . . . They exist in the flesh, but they live not after the flesh.  They spend their existence upon earth, but their citizenship is in heaven.  They obey the established laws, and in their own lives they surpass the laws . . . In a word, what the soul is in the body, Christians are in the world.”

How did we go from there (which saw the Roman Empire coverted!) to today (where we’re losing our place in our society before our eyes at a rate greater than  10% per decade)?  We’re not those people described above.

We have different gods today…. Woe to us.