Years ago when I spent some time Italy, I found that my Italian friends were fascinated with the state of Texas. As I got to know them I learned three things about them that helped me to understand their fascination with all things Texas: 1) They liked to watch old Gunsmoke and Bonanza reruns dubbed in Italian; 2) They liked to watch so-called “spaghetti westerns” (westerns produced in Italian and filmed in Italy, using Italian actors, for Italian audiences); 3) Many of them didn’t know that the Texas of today is no longer the Texas of Gunsmoke and Bonanza; they thought that Texas is pretty much the same today as it was in the days of the wild west.
My concern is that we are going back the days of the wild west. Picture a society where many people carry around guns, or at least have them in their homes; a society where every teacher in every classroom has a gun, where every hospital and nursing home has a gun hidden somewhere near the welcome desk, every department store has a gun somewhere near the customer service counter, every church, synagogue and mosque has a gun somewhere near the front entrance. An exaggeration, perhaps. Will society ever be as gun-laded again as it was in the days of the wild west? Probably not, but with continued resistance to gun control laws even in the wake of the recent Florida shootings, the trajectory of society is in that direction. Yes, it is true, the epidemic of school shootings is a mental health issue. That’s why we need stricter gun control laws. If we were living in a society where mental illness did not exist, then perhaps we could get away with our existing gun laws, but we do not live in such a society. If we had stricter gun laws, then mentally ill people who are bent on the destruction of human life would have to resort to other means to accomplish their works of destruction. Those other means would probably do a lot less damage than guns, but guns are available, so that’s what they use. Yes, we should be trying to solve the problem at the root, and we need to work toward a society where people are healthier, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, but until we reach a point in our society when there is significantly less mental illness than there is now, stricter gun laws will be necessary. Yes, it is true, the epidemic of school shootings is a heart issue. That’s why we need better gun control laws. We can and should and do pray for revival, and we long for the day when people’s hearts are right with God, with each other, and within themselves. We long for the day when people’s hearts are changed on such a massive scale that all of society is impacted for the better, but that day is not yet here. As long as people have empty eyes and cold hearts, void of God’s love, void of love for each other, and void of self-respect, stricter gun control laws will be needed. Of course we want to solve the problem at the root, and so we make every effort to live and speak and teach and preach and demonstrate the Gospel of Jesus Christ that transforms people’s hearts, and of course we pray and pray and pray, because we know that prayer is what changes the hearts of people in a culture that has lost its soul, but until the hearts of people are changed, and until this happens on such a large scale that we have nothing short of the kind of revival that our spiritual ancestors experienced during the First and Second Great Awakenings on the east coast and the Azusa Street Revival on the west coast, stricter gun control laws will be needed. Why do have to choose between prayer and stricter gun control? It’s not an either/or proposition. We need prayer AND we need stricter gun control laws. We need the preaching of the Gospel AND we need stricter gun control laws. We need a demonstration of the beauty and power and truth of the Gospel through the way that we live out our Christian convictions in our society, and one of the ways that we can do this is by passing stricter laws regarding gun control. Yes, it is true, when Jesus returns to set up his kingdom on the earth “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah 2:4). That’s why we need better gun control laws. That day is not yet here. Believing that such a day will come to the earth at some point in the future doesn’t absolve us from the responsibility of doing something about the problem now. There is a difference between looking forward to the future and hiding in the future. The scriptural promises of a coming kingdom were given to give us hope, not to help us to escape our responsibilities. Yes, we want to solve the problem at the root. Yes, we want people in our society to have such a high regard for God, for themselves and for humankind that they would never dream of picking up a gun and killing people, but until that day comes, we will need stricter gun control laws. Let’s compare the abortion issue to the gun control issue. We long for the day when people will have such a high regard for God, for themselves, and for each other that they will realize that a culture of recreational sex and throw-away babies is wrong. We long for the day when people have such a high regard for human life, for humans made in the image of God, that abortion becomes seen for the horror that it is, but we do not yet live in that kind of society. Until that day comes, we will need to advocate for laws restricting abortion. Does this mean that we are not trying to solve the problem at the root? No. It means that we have a sober and realistic understanding that until people’s hearts are changed, until our culture changes, until we have revival, or until our Lord returns to set up his kingdom on earth, we will need laws to restrict abortion. But when we come to gun control, inexplicably, the rules change. When we try to pass stricter gun control laws, we are accused of not addressing the root cause of the problem. Think about that for a moment. When it comes to abortion, it’s OK to pass laws in order to save the lives of unborn babies, but when it comes to gun control, we are told that trying to change society by changing the laws won’t work because gun violence is a heart issue or a mental health issue that can’t be legislated. Why take one stance on abortion but the opposite stance on gun control? Why the inconsistency? Why the discrepancy? Why the double standard? Our teenagers see right through the double standard. They don’t want that kind of Christianity, and I don’t blame them. I don’t mean to stir up division, Christian against Christian. That’s not what this is about. Neither is this about taking sides between the Conservatives and the Liberals or between the Republicans and the Democrats. That’s not my intention. My concern here is that if we do not speak up when we see fellow Christians, our own brothers and sisters in the faith, supporting positions that we think Jesus would oppose, we will be accused of complicity. How do we view the German Christians who did not speak up against Hitler's regime? We assume they must have agreed with it. Otherwise they would have spoken up against it. How will future generations view this generation of American Christians if we do not speak up when we feel that the Gospel is being misrepresented? The issues here are credibility and legacy. The world needs to know that Christians are opposed to gun violence. Future generations of American Christians need to know that this generation of American Christians cared enough about the teenagers in our high schools that we tried to pass laws to limit gun violence and easy possession of firearms. I'm all for keeping political debate out of the church for the sake of preserving unity and I know that we have an enemy who wants to divide us and turn us one against the other, and we do not want to play into his schemes. I also know that the next generation is watching us, and if we do not speak up they will interpret our silence as complicity. That's why I think that silence is not the best option. We need to speak carefully-- not in a way that engenders anger and hatred and division-- but we do need to speak and we do need to act, or our teenagers will never know where we stand. It’s difficult to be a Christian in an era when so many Christians are taking the wrong side on so many issues. On issue after issue, never before has there been such a gaping disconnect between American Evangelicalism and New Testament Christianity. We are surrendering the blessing of God because we would rather have political power, as Jacob sold his birthright for a pot of red stew. We are hopelessly embroiled in a tug-of-war between the Left and the Right where winning a political battle becomes more important than standing up for immigrants, or combatting racism and white supremacy, or saving the lives of the teenagers in our high schools. Talk about “straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel” (Matthew 23:24). This is not Christianity. This is not the Gospel. This is not the mind of Christ. This will not attract our teenagers or our friends and neighbors to the Gospel. This will push them away in droves. I know that salvation is the result of the sovereign grace of God operating over sinful hearts, but I also know that credibility is a factor. Only God can open up the hearts of people to the Gospel, but by the way we live and teach and vote and by the stand we take on issues, we send out a message regarding the credibility of the Gospel. Our teenagers will never consider the fact that the Gospel might be true if we fail to live out the Gospel in a way that is credible. By uncritically siding with the existing administration on so many issues, we are sending out a message to our teenagers that the Gospel is not credible. Why should they believe our Gospel when we don’t care enough to stand up for the things that matter, like setting stricter limits on the purchase of guns in order to protect the lives of our teenagers? Billy Graham, whose legacy we remember this week, warned us about this. Take a look at this quote from Billy Graham in Parade Magazine from 1981: “I don't want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it”.— Billy Graham, Parade Magazine (1 February 1981). Billy Graham saw the truth that many of us today fail to see. It’s time to break up the unholy alliance between Christianity and either side of the political spectrum (as far as I am concerned, an uncritical alliance with either the right or the left would be equally disastrous), and one of the ways that we can do this is by getting some stricter laws in place that will help to keep guns out of the hands of those who would be the most likely to misuse them. Our teenagers are begging us for stricter gun control laws. Do we dare ignore their cries? If we do, then we make ourselves responsible for the blood of their murdered classmates. If we have it within our power to do something about the problem, and if we fail to act, we make ourselves responsible for the blood of those slain teenagers. Yes, we do need to do what we can to stop our babies from being aborted, but we also need to do what we can to stop our teenagers from being murdered. Why the zeal for passing laws to limit abortion but rationalizations and excuses when it’s time to talk about passing laws that will help keep guns out of the hands of those who would use them to murder our teenagers? I speak as one Christian to another: We are called to be “ambassadors for Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:20). We are called to be “living letters” that declare the Gospel (2 Corinthians 3:2-3). We are called to “adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things” (Titus 2:10). As ambassadors and as living letters who are called to adorn the doctrine of God in all that we say and do, whatever we do reflects upon our Lord. When we Christians take the wrong side on these issues because we look at the issues through the lens of our political preferences rather than asking God to cultivate within us the mind of Christ, we make the Gospel unattractive to those who need to hear it, we misrepresent the Gospel itself, we misrepresent our Lord, and we push our teenagers away from the Lord.
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