Tag: violence

A Prayer for Today

by Rev. Lynne Hinton

God, the Great Creator, You may know the plans for us but we do not. We try to focus on what you have done throughout history. How you have brought us strength and courage for the difficult times, how you have been present to us, faithful throughout all our wars and battles, a mother hen, a shepherd, a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire at night; but being completely honest, Holy One, it is hard to think of a future with anything but sorrow. The fights between enemies seem long and never-ending. The struggles feel complicated and rife with old pain. The weapons are deadlier, the costs higher, the consequences more dire.

We cry out for peace. We beg for the harm to cease. We pray. We light candles. We preach. We prophesy. We reach out. We weep. And we look ahead to the days before us, the tanks along the border, the rockets filling the skies, the anger growing, the death count rising, the blame shifting; and we imagine the worst. We fear what we will now ultimately and finally do to each other.

On this day we pray for those most affected by the violence. We pray for the children hiding in fear, the grieving mothers, the old ones begging to die, the young vowing revenge. We pray for the leaders of all nations to be wise and guided by courage and humility. We pray for those trying to breach the gap between those who hate each other. We pray that people of all faiths and those without, for people across the world, different and yet the same, for all of your children to see this as an opportunity to come together and say, “Let us begin again. Let us stop the killing, the destruction. Let us find a way to peace. Let us believe in a future with hope.”

Merciful God, help us to stop the violence building in our hearts, to see goodness in each other even when it seems impossible. Help us to put down our weapons and words of hatefulness and anger and pick up bread to share with the ones before us. Help us to open our clenched fists and receive your blessings that await us when we surrender. Help us to release the despair and have our hearts filled with hope. For today. For tomorrow. For a future we all desire. We look to you, The One Great Source of Love.

Amen.

The Use of Violence

by Hailey Lyons

I am not the only one who watched the storming of the Capitol in utter horror. And I am certainly not the only one who watched it without surprise. We knew this was coming, we knew for decades that this was going to happen.

What was unexpected to the neoliberals was what I and other marginalized peoples have been warning about for decades. As we departed from Evangelicalism and conservative ideologies, as we grew up in open opposition to the powers that oppress us, and as we ran to mainline and progressive havens, we warned about the dangers to come. But we were not heard. Instead, we could neither truly escape the past nor shrug off the painful present, leaving us in rage and silence.

The terrorists that stormed the Capitol did so with signs like ‘Jesus Saves’ and American flags, Confederate flags, and ‘Proud American Christian’ flags. Their jubilance was palpable as they attacked the press and stood on the Capitol for steps an hours-long photo-op. They invaded offices of members of Congress, planted bombs, and posed in the chambers themselves. Their purpose was clear: to defy the will of the people and vaunt the power of white supremacy and Christian nationalism.

And yet, all I see from the media and from ecumenical responses are denouncements of violence. The media and our political institutions use symbolic language to talk about America’s status as a place of peace and hope. Church leaders talk about Jesus’ nonviolence as if it were enshrouded in sacred history and understood as truth by all. They shame their institutions and denominations.

To say that Jesus was nonviolent is to ignore the Scriptures. The man who spoke out in synagogues and on mountainsides in the face of Roman colonial and Pharisaical rule did so with the knowledge that his teachings and practices were a violent rejection of them. The man who braided a whip and struck people and livestock, overturning tables in the temple of the Lord was not nonviolent. The man who preached that we were to turn our cheek once slapped to allow only a dishonorable strike be the next one was not nonviolent. The man who announced that his was the way of truth and life; the man whose death spawned an entire religion that would for centuries violently oppose powers and principalities was not nonviolent. Even in its appropriation as state religion, Christianity has ever been a religion of violence. To say otherwise cherry picks church history in the same manner we malign Evangelicals for.

America is not a place of peace and nonviolence. Our arms and munitions fund wars all around the world and have done so for an exceedingly long time. Our laws and governments privilege violence against the marginalized to keep us marginalized. Our culture is rooted in violent destruction of those who oppose us. We are not a shining beacon of democracy; we are an imperial power inherited from colonial Europe.

No broad civil rights movement has ever been achieved in America without violence. From the Civil War to recognize black bodies as human; to women’s suffrage and the street carnage; to the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s that saw still more black and brown bodies murdered and brutalized; to the Stonewall Riots that demanded LGBT bodies be seen and not murdered or brutalized; to the Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA marches in recent years. Martin Luther King Jr. knowingly incited violence during his marches, and toward the end of his life he was on the crux of announcing far bolder and violent measures to take racial equality by force. As police moved in to arrest and brutalize and murder LGBT people at Stonewall, they stood up and fought back directly. Had they not, I wouldn’t have the right to be where I am today.

In my coming out and coming to understand my peoples’ history and culture, I am horrified at the violent methods by which transgender bodies have been systematically oppressed, brutalized, and murdered. I live with the terror of knowing that not passing in public subjects me to the possibility of verbal abuse, a beating, or being killed. Simply by choosing to be myself I am an act of violence, of violent rejection of the multifold violence done to me.

Religious and political institutions ignore the fact that violence is not and has never been solely an expression of physical force. Violence takes many forms, and most often it is epistemic and psychological. While we distract from the real issue at hand and titillate on the use of violence, we must understand that the epistemic and psychological forms of violence are the most common tools of those in power. For us on the margins, it is not just physical violence that we face when we march in the streets, but the epistemic and psychological violence by institutions seeking to rip legitimacy away from us. Marching in and of itself is an act of violence, violently rejecting the oppressive powers that would see us isolated and alone in order to be more quietly brutalized and murdered.

When we read Scripture, we find Christ is most often present where power and violence clash with the marginalized. Christ is a force of violence, but where the state privileges power, Christ privileges people. Two ideologies – power and people – clashing against each other necessitate violence, or otherwise there would be no opposition. When American neoliberal culture and Evangelicalism perpetuate the idea that violence is evil, they take away the opportunity for opposition to them, and instead rule unchecked. This is nothing less than hypocrisy and perpetuates still more violence and oppression. Neoliberals and Evangelicals alike are horrified by it and yet don’t hesitate to use it when it benefits them. We should condemn why the terrorists were at the Capitol rather than critiquing the methodology when we were just cheering Black Lives Matter on and acknowledging the only language that gets the attention of those in power is violence. It is nothing short of hypocrisy and grandstanding.

It’s not just our burden, but our requirement as Christians to check this oppressive power with the people. Whether marching in the streets, teaching a different curriculum, or favoring the marginalized over those in power, these are all acts of violence. They are also immense acts of love and compassion and empathy, binding us together in solidarity against power and violence. If we do not acknowledge those facts and cower in the shadows when the word violence is used like a slur, then we will never achieve equality and we will never be truly heard on the margins.

Let us remember where the true war is being fought. Let us adjust course and fight the fight as Jesus and the Prophets did, knowing that things can be better. Knowing that one day our children and grandchildren will know a world in which violence is no longer necessary because there is nothing but the people. Until then, we fight.

Guns and God: A Progressive Christian View

by Tony Minear

I own a hand gun. It is a 22 Ruger revolver single action with a 6-inch barrel. I received it from my dad on my 18th birthday. I even bought a genuine leather western-style holster in Tijuana to go with it. The next two summers I played cowboy while working at a church summer camp. I haven’t shot that gun for over twenty years. I go back and forth between selling it or some day giving it to one of my grandchildren. However, the possibility of one of my grandchildren or any individual doing harm to themselves or someone else, intentional or unintentional, frightens me. Occasionally, I contemplate literally carrying out the Hebrew scripture, “Hammer your swords into plowshares and your spears into pruning hooks.” I could have my pistol melted down to a pile of metal. Maybe even molded into a miniature plow. Not sure how the grandchild would like receiving a plow as an heirloom.

With the recent church shooting in Vegas and now Texas, the topic of gun control is once more front and center in our conversations. What can Progressive Christianity bring to the table in this arena? I offer an entrée, food for thought, for your culinary pleasure. What one believes about God can inform one’s stance on gun control.

Would Jesus under any circumstance condone a human being taking the life of another? No. Would one human being inflicting violence upon another ever be present in the realm of God’s will, which Jesus envisioned, either now or in a future “heaven?” No.

My understanding of Jesus’ view of the Kingdom of God, or God’s will for humanity, is centered around God’s love and value of life. Yet some stories in the Bible seem to contradict this. God is said to have ordered the genocide of groups of non-Hebrews. Justification? They are evil. Yet God admits to using a wicked people (The Hebrews), who are slightly less evil, as executioners. This doesn’t compute. Perhaps our willingness, and at times, desire, to use violence influences how we interpret God’s will and imagine God. For me this does compute. If God is inclined to acts of violence, no wonder we are too.

Wasn’t it God who established and decreed that the results of sin are death? Wasn’t it God who desired daily sacrifices for enjoyment and appeasement? Isn’t it God who continues to use the threat of death as a means to shape our beliefs and control our behavior? If God constructed a system of justice based upon death and violence, is it any wonder that some Christians and nations are comfortable turning to violence to resolve their problems or punish evildoers? Is it any wonder that some Christians carry a gun and are willing to use it to protect themselves or their family? Is it any wonder that efforts to legislate laws to limit certain guns in our communities, to decrease the chances of such weapons ending up in the hands of unstable individuals, or to take steps promoting gun safety in homes, are opposed by some Christians?

What if this picture and understanding of God as violent and using violence is incorrect? What if what the historical Jesus taught about God and God’s kingdom being encapsulated in one word, “love,” is right? I choose to believe it is. For this reason, I read all of scripture through the filter of love. It is my bias. It is the presupposition I bring to my study of the Bible. It is the reason why I choose not to have ammunition for my gun in the house. It is the reason I continue to ponder the validity of a pacifist life for myself and what that might look like. It is the reason why I’m googling metal artists who can take a gun and turn it into a plow.

Love Manifesto

by Karen MacDonald

In the midst of a disheartening, divisive election season, the last few days have brought even more disgust and deep dismay.

A Stanford University student who raped a young woman for “only” 20 minutes last year was given a 6-month jail sentence, and he could be released after 3 months for good behavior.  Good behavior?!

On Friday in Orlando, FL, a young woman singer was shot by a man who came to her concert for that purpose, and she died shortly after.

In the early hours of this morning in Orlando, a young man walked into a LGBT nightclub with a handgun and an AR-15 assault rifle and massacred at least 50 patrons, injuring at least 50 more.

What the —– is going on?

As a woman, a defense mechanism, literally, is to recognize that I and my sisters are always potential targets of male power.  As a lesbian woman, I know full well that I and my queer sisters and brothers, for all the legal progress being made, are still despised by many.  It would be easy to put up a wall or to lash out or to pre-judge everyone harshly.  It would be easy—and it would be deadly, to my spirit and to our communal life, to life itself.

Among many diverse spiritual sages over the centuries, Jesus taught another way.  “Love your enemies.”  “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled.”  “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”  “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”  Our spiritual sages keep pointing us to what our spirits already know deep down—love is the only way.  That takes faith and courage and community.  

And it probably takes anger.  And weeping.  Both of those emotions are evidence that the way things are isn’t the way we want it to be.  We don’t want hatred and fear and violence.  So we weep when it seems like those things are holding sway, because our hearts are breaking.  So we get angry at the suffering we humans continue to perpetrate, because we can be and do so much better.

And then we channel the energy that rises in weeping and anger to act for wholeness, for peace; we act in love.  That will mean resisting powers-that-be, in politics, in economics, even in religious institutions, heck, maybe even in our families.  Just make sure that our acting, our speaking, our resisting is done in a spirit of open-heartedness, rather than vengeance or defensiveness.  

What’s going on?  Let’s make sure love is going on….and on….and on…….

Living Under the Threat of Violence

by Rev. Dr. William M. Lyons, 
Designated Conference Minister, Southwest Conference UCC

Preached February 21, 2016 at Church of the Beatitudes, Phoenix, Arizona

Birds go to the most incredible extremes to ensure the lives of their chicks.

A Mistle Thrush had built her nest in the end of a rain gutter. “The nest was tucked away from the weather in the shade of the roof,” said amateur wildlife photographer Dennis Bright. With the rain, “It was only a matter of seconds before the [gutter] flooded, and water cascaded over the sides.”

Desperate to protect her young, the mother Mistle Thrush puffed herself up to twice her size and sat in the drainpipe to stop the tide of rain water swamping the nest. She was so occupied with her task that her mate was left to feed her and their young.

“She had to come up with a solution so she puffed herself up so she was twice the size of her mate and used her body as a cork to stop the water,” said Bright.”It was absolutely amazing.”

Hester Phillips, from the RSPB, said she had never seen such a situation. “We’ve heard of them nesting in some unusual sites before, namely on the top of traffic lights, but we’ve certainly not come across anything like this before.

“Birds can be amazingly hardy creatures,” said Phillips, “their endurance is incredible – especially when protecting their young.”

Jesus described himself as a hen gathering her brood under her wings. Jesus – source of belonging, bringer of love, creator of creator of community.

But his allusion to the blood-bathed image of a fox among the chickens is his description of a violent world’s response to his mission. Thus the friendly Pharisees’ warning for Jesus to flee in the face of Herod’s royal rage.

But Jesus would have none of it.

[Jesus seems to] shrugs his shoulders [and intensify his gaze] when he says, “You go tell that fox from me that I’m going right on doing what I’m doing, casting out demons and healing the sick, and I’ll still be doing the same tomorrow, and the next until I finish my work, by which time we’ll be in Jerusalem.”

No fleeing. No hiding. No being intimidated. No pursuit of his own privilege thus pretending it’s not happening.

Jesus’ vision and mission remains resolute in the threat of escalating violence. Casting out demons: the vision of a world freed from the powers of oppression and exploitation. Healing the sick: restoring to wholeness ones whose bodies were broken, whose souls were scarred, whose place in their community was confiscated. “Jesus is going to do what he’s come to do, and he’s not going to be bullied [or scarred] out of it, no matter how big and [how] real the threat.”

With all the flare of LaWanda Page’s portrayal of Aunt Esther on TV’s sitcom Sanford & Son, Jesus says to the henchmen of hate:

“Besides, it’s not proper for a prophet to come to a bad end outside Jerusalem.

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killer of prophets,
abuser of the messengers of God!
How often I’ve longed to gather your children,
gather your children like a hen,
Her brood safe under her wings—
but you refused and turned away!
And now it’s too late: You won’t see me again
until the day you say,
‘Blessed is she
who comes in
the name of God.’ ”

As the Keresan Pueblo story goes, Qi-yo Ke-pe was the most powerful medicine person in the world. She lived far to the west. When the daughter of the chief in the village of Kush Kut-ret fell ill, none of the medicine men could heal her. So the chief sent his bravest warrior to bring Qi-yo Ke-pe to his daughter’s bedside. When she arrived she asked for water and bathed the girl. The medicine men laughed. “If all our songs and incantations didn’t work, ordinary water could not possibly have any effect,” they said. But after four days of this bathing ritual, the girl was restored to health and beauty as if she had never been ill. The grateful chief commissioned his bravest warrior to escort the powerful Qi-yo Ke-pe back to her home, but the jealous medicine men followed them at a distance. After the brave warrior had departed her company, the medicine men came to Qi-yo Ke-pe’s home. She invited them in and offered them a meal and rest. They refused. “We have come to kill you,” they said to Qi-yo Ke-pe. “In four days we will return. Then you and your family will die.” Four days later the medicine men returned and were as good as their word. From then on there was grief. Many times when people fell ill there was no one on earth to heal them. Qi-yo Ke-pe was gone. The medicine men had killed her.

Luke is clear that Jesus knew he, too, would fall victim to the violence. Not by Herod’s hand, but Jesus would indeed die. For not everyone is able to understand and accept Jesus’ offer of liberation and healing. And with his killing came consequences of his killers’ own choosing.

Still, Jesus expresses a commitment to his vision and mission with all of the conviction and groundedness of the Poet who penned Psalm 27:

Your light leads me to safety, LORD;
I’ve got nothing to fear.
You shelter me like a fortress, LORD;
I’m afraid of no one!

Vicious thugs can close in like sharks,
ready to eat me alive;
but savage violence is no match for you;
they’ll fall flat on their faces.

They could give my name to a death squad
and I’d still be at peace;
their armies could lay siege to my house,
but I’d still feel safe with you.

Only one thing I ask of you, LORD,
the one thing that really matters:
let me live out the whole of my life
right here in your presence;
let me lose myself in your beauty,
and abandon myself to prayer.

Let me hide here in safety with you,
when trouble gets too much;
You are as secure as a bomb shelter,
a protected place to rest and recover.

You have lifted me beyond the reach
of those who wanted to tear me down,
so I am here to express my thanks,
to offer you whatever I can give;
to sing your praises till I raise the roof,
to put on a concert in your honour.

Don’t ever stop being generous, LORD;
hear me and answer me when I call for help!

My heart tells me to search for you.
Please don’t stay hidden from me.
My desire is to know you, face to face.

Don’t slam the door on me in anger;
Help me again and I’ll go on serving you.
Don’t give up on me now,
don’t turn your back on me;
You alone can save me, God!

Even if my own parents kicked me out,
you’d still be there for me, LORD.

Give me clear directions, LORD;
keep me on the right track
so I don’t stumble into the path of my enemies.

Don’t let them get their claws into me.
With every breath they fill the air
with false allegations and violent threats.

I know I can rely on you, LORD,
I’ll see your goodness win out
and live to tell about it.

I wait patiently for you, LORD;
I’ll hang in there and keep my chin up;
I’ll sit tight, and trust in you!

Beloved, the world is still a violent place. Before preaching this sermon I woke to the news that a gunman had committed a string of random murders in Kalamazoo, Michigan leaving 7 dead including an 8-year old and a 14-year old.

One need not live in ISIS controlled territories to experience religious violence. One need only to have been on the campus of Independence High School last Monday. After the tragic murder/suicide of 15 year-olds May Kieu and Dorothy Dutiel, Christian extremists spewed homophobic hate over megaphones at grieving students returning to classes. One need only to be a woman reading the Bible and realizing that “there are only 93 women who speak in the Bible, 49 of whom are named. These women speak a total of 14,056 words collectively — roughly 1.1 percent of the Bible. Mary, the mother of Jesus, speaks 191 words; Mary Magdalene gets 61; Sarah, 141 (Freeman, Bible Women: All Their Words and Why They Matter).7

“Communities of love and belonging are beautiful yet rare; necessary, yet elusive; desired, yet seem always met with stipulations. You know what I mean, right? Communities of love and belonging are those places and spaces of gathered folks that give you life, that nourish your soul, that remind you of who you truly are. Because there is no love and belonging when there is no regard and respect. There is no love and belonging when you are overlooked and dismissed. There is no love and belonging when you are told you don’t measure up, don’t meet expectations, or that you are not enough.”

How do we as Christians live in such a violent world?

We live as Jesus in the world! You and I, us together, we are the Body of Christ, the living Jesus in the world.

There are ones around us who point to the Church’s shrinking influence, who cite our words and our actions as too political, who call for us to run away, to hide under cover of private religion or in the safety of siloed spirituality and thus escape the wrath of powerful and powerfully offended ones. Let us have none of that! We are Jesus in the world!!

This world – this violent world – needs a Jesus – a living body of Christ on the earth – who risks our very lives to gather under God’s outstretched wings vulnerable ones, poor ones, rejected ones, and lonely ones, hungry and thirsty ones, threatened ones, blamed ones, guilty ones, and ones with no other place to belong.

Will you be that Jesus? The Jesus – the Body of Christ in the world – unwaveringly committed to liberating oppressed and exploited ones by risking the tasks of healing broken ones. And doing so from such a place of deep peace built on the bedrock of justice that you cannot help but share a song with her brood as they gather in safety and community:

Under His Wing

Under your wings I am safely abiding;
Though the night deepens and violence is wild,
Still I can trust you,
I know you will keep me;
You have redeemed me,
and I am your child.

Under your wings, under your wings,
Who from your love can sever?
Under your wings my soul shall abide,
Safely abide forever.

Ancient Bible Reading and Today

by Kenneth McIntosh

Faithful to our ‘God is still speaking’ faith, we read with the Bible in one hand and our smartphone in the other. This week, news on the phone practically screams with agony; multiple shootings, a presidential candidate blaming an entire religion, and—a poignant twist—a Dutch video in which people read from the Bible, claiming it’s the Quran, and listeners hearing the violent verses are fooled. In the midst of such troubling times, I’ve been working hard to complete The Celtic Study Bible: Gospels. Curiously, that work does intersect with the headlines.  If believers in the modern and postmodern eras had followed ancient principles of Bible reading, we might be better off in 2015. The following is excerpt from the (unpublished) Celtic Study Bible.

Eucherius (380-449) of Gaul wrote a book titled Formula for a Spiritual Understanding which influenced Celtic Christianity. Eucherius invites readers “to see through the surface (historical) level of Scripture to its ‘higher’ spiritual meaning.” The Apostle Paul can be cited to support this view “for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor.3:6). Such a metaphorical reading of Scripture is indeed pervasive in the Bible.

For some Early Christians there was a pressing reason to adopt this method of interpretation—they were trying to save the Old Testament. Marcion (85-160) a Christian living in what is today Turkey, noted that the Old Testament God did things which seem unworthy of the God revealed in Christ. Could God who demanded genocide of unbelievers (1 Samuel 15) be the same as God who loves the world (John 3:16) and is love (John 4:8)? Could the same Divine Spirit command “Do not leave alive anything that breathes” (Deuteronomy 20:16) and then speak through Jesus’ lips saying “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44)? Marcion had a simple answer—do away with the Old Testament.

Origen (184-254) a Christian scholar living in Alexandria Egypt agreed with Marcion that some Old Testament portrayals of God are unworthy of God. But Origen defended the Old Testament by interpreting the genocide passages symbolically. Origen wrote: “If the horrible wars related in the Old Testament were not to be interpreted in a spiritual sense, the apostles would never have transmitted the Jewish books for reading in the church to followers of Christ.”  A century later, Augustine likewise used symbolic interpretation to deal with troubling Old Testament passages. How could God say to smash the heads of Babylonian infants (Psalm 137:9)? Augustine explains “the ‘infants’ of Babylon were not literal children but rather the vices of the Babylonians.”

In our time, Marcus Borg was an important recent scholar in the field of Jesus and the New Testament, and a defender of symbolic Bible interpretation. Borg called metaphor the more-than-literal meaning of language. John Dominic Crossan, another major figure in contemporary Jesus scholarship, likewise says, “My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.”1

The Bible is critiqued today for the same reason that it was questioned in the second century—the malingering shadow of its violent passages. At a time when the world is reeling from religious terrorism, it is tempting to dismiss all religious Scriptures that portray God as demanding the slaughter of innocents.

Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University, questions whether the Quran endorses violence more than the Bible? He answers in the negative: “If the founding text shapes the whole religion, then Judaism and Christianity deserve the utmost condemnation as religions of savagery.” He goes on, however, to note, “Of course, they are no such thing; nor is Islam.”2 As Jenkins points out, Abrahamic religions each have Scriptures that can be used to promote violence or peace, and if they are to result in peace then the teachers of religion must learn to talk about violent passages constructively.

Jenkins reminds us that in the accounts of Old Testament Genocide “we have a constructed narrative in which particular authors and editors have taken a story and framed it in ways that made sense to them. It is a story with a point or theme, and one that is aimed at a particular audience.”3

Investigating the conquest of Canaan, archaeologists find evidence that differs from the Bible tales. “Archaeologist William Dever concludes that … evidence ‘supports almost nothing of the biblical account of a large scale concerted Israelite military invasion of Canaan.’”4 So why would the Bible writers exaggerate tales of how they exterminated their enemies, down to the noncombatants? The Bible was mostly written after the Babylonian exile and Jews were wondering: how can we make sure history does not repeat for us? To ensure Israel’s future purity, the Bible writers portrayed a golden age of Israel, before they fell into God’s disfavor. This golden age was marked by absolute loyalty to God’s commandments. The wars in Canaan were portrayed as the utter extermination of everything that did not faithfully worship God, as an illustration of the way that faithful Israel should expunge everything ungodly from their midst.

The Bible stories of genocide were composed to point to a larger truth—the need to utterly eradicate idolatry—rather than a straightforward recounting of history. Thus, the best current scholarship supports the instincts of the ancient interpreters; the Bible stories of genocide were intended to be understood for their spiritual meaning rather than taken as literal history.

So there are compelling reasons—both the symbolic nature of many Bible passages, and the continuing need to properly interpret violent passages—that commend the ‘more-than-literal’ reading of Scripture. An ancient form of Bible reading could help us create a less-violent future.

 

1 James F. McGrath, John Dominic Crossan on Literalism, Patheos, June 14, 2014,
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/2014/06/john-dominic-crossan-on-literalism.html

2 Philip Jenkins, Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can’t ignore the Bible’s Violent Verses (New York, Harper Collins, 2011), 13.

3 Jenkins.,210.

4 Jenkins.,57.

image credit: Ken McIntosh

 

Why Not Be Dreamers?

by Kenneth McIntosh

The latest shooting—at a community college in Oregon—may have done what countless others have failed to do: re-ignite our flame of righteous indignation. Remember the movie Network where Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) gets Americans to shout out their windows “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” ? We should have reached that point when Sandy Hook occurred…and every bloodbath since then. Parents should be in tears that their elementary age children are now used to classroom drills preparing for carnage in their schools. Maybe, just maybe, our nation has reached a tipping point where “there’s nothing we can do” is unacceptable.

But even if we are now heartbroken and enraged, that still begs the question…how best should this issue be engaged? Conservatives claim that more mental health care is needed (but are unwilling to fund that) while liberals advocate gun permit restrictions. Both of those would be useful, and I’d happily vote for both, but I’m skeptical about seeing significant reduction in the slaughter. As long as there are as many lethal weapons as there are people in this country, people willing to kill are likely to have access to the requisite tools for murder. Furthermore, people who lack empathy and are highly aggressive are unlikely to enter the system for mental health care. The problem with killers isn’t being bipolar or having ADHD; the problem is a lack of normal human attachment, and most psychopaths are unnoticed until too late.

Which brings us –surprisingly—to a solution. In a recent article for CNN Doctor Sanjay Gupta writes “The epidemic of gun violence is treatable.” He notes an infectious disease doctor, named Gary Slutkin, who has analyzed homicidal violence by treating it as a spreading illness—and finding a solution in what he calls “interrupters.” Gupta explains, “Interrupters are trained health professionals who act as mediators and go to the epicenter of violent behavior.” As Doctor Slutkin says, “”You’re interrupting the transmission. You’re getting to the places where events are most likely to happen, with the right people who can get there,” said Slutkin. “We’ve demonstrated you can drop violence in neighborhoods, to the point where it would be a very rare event.” To put it in medical terms, these interrupters are a powerful antibiotic, effective in treating a tough infection. In this case, though, the infection is gun violence.”

Reading this article, Jesus’s words flashed into my mind: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” I liked Gupta’s and Slutkin’s ideas, but “interrupters” doesn’t sound very inspiring. “Peacemakers” describes exactly what trained interrupters do—they bring shalom into places of potential violence. It’s unfortunate that “pacifist” and “nonviolence” have so often been used to characterize Christian peace witness. Jesus’s word “peacemakers” is active rather than passive. Peacemakers make a pre-emptive strike for shalom. And it’s not what we’re against (non- violence) it’s about the positive reality we are creating.

We know the Oregon shooter posted his intentions the night before the killing on a social media site—what if there were interrupters on that site, able to intervene? What if schools at all levels hired interrupters to meet and counsel with students who seem withdrawn, lacking in friends? What if (rather than pack heat, as some are recommending) teachers were all trained in skills of increasing empathy between students?

And shouldn’t Jesus’s followers be in the forefront of such a movement? The one we claim to follow has called us to active pursuit of reconciliation. This is what Christians should be known for—this should be our forté!

And as I write this there are words popping into my head from another wisdom teacher. Yes, you may say that I’m a dreamer… but I’m not the only one. What about you? If this dream makes sense to you, why not share it on social media or talk about it with one other person. Who knows? It could become a movement.