A great deal of conversation has been had around people’s use of “thoughts and prayers” as a response to tragedies like the horrific school shootings that have staggered our country over the past few years. As a person of faith, I don’t think there is anything wrong with sincere thoughts and prayers in response to such a tragedy. But, the question then becomes, what makes a prayer sincere? Perhaps the sincerity of a prayer should primarily be judged by the willingness of the one praying to respond with action. Since prayer combines both petitions to God and the state of listening to God, one must be willing to act on God’s response.
It troubles me that there seems to be no evidence that the “thoughts and prayers” sent to the victims of gun violence have much sincerity. Thoughts and prayers are often accompanied by discussions of what could lower the extreme numbers of gun-caused deaths, but we have shown no action as a society to actually enact those laws or regulations. Rather, the result has been an elevation of the gun to be a thing that is closer to being worshiped itself.
I think there is further doubt cast on the sincerity of these calls for prayer since they have often been paired with the view that somehow the removal of Christian prayers from school, the current “evil” of modern society, or our acceptance of homosexuality or other cultures has caused us to lose God’s protection. All this as if God is a petty bully that plays games with lives of children and the mentally ill when he is not mentioned enough, or someone makes a perceived misstep. The problem is that data shows that the availability of guns, the type of guns available, the lack of social services, the stigmatization of mental health, and the toxic culture of masculinity are responsible for the rise in gun deaths.
It is also undeniable that this movement toward gun worship also has racial undertones. Recently a priest friend who is black pointed out to me that white people who open carry are responded to very differently by police than people of color who carry. In most places, a person of color carrying a weapon would not get the benefit of being assumed to be the “good guy with the gun.” Philando Castile was shot to death in his car while legally carrying a firearm, with his daughter in the back seat. He was shot by the officer while following a command that the officer had given him. The rhetoric of Second Amendment rights is often tied to anti-immigrant sentiments or gang violence in black or brown communities. The NRA often tries to whip up fear by creating an “other” who we need to be protected from. And it has always been easiest to remove an individual’s personhood based on their race or their religion.
Many in our government have settled on a new solution: Bring a new God into schools. The God-given gun, who demands the sacrifice of so many for his ability to be worshiped. On the day of this writing, there are news reports that in the past 24 hours a teacher and a resource officer have both accidentally discharged a weapon. In one case a student was struck by bullet fragments. More guns in schools will mean more gun deaths in schools. But stopping shooting was never the goal of the God of the Gun. The Gun God only exists to perpetuate itself, to create people’s need for guns out of people’s need for guns. To say this is our solution is not to pray or hope for honest change. It is to perpetuate a cycle of violence for the sake of elevating the gun to a divine, God-given status.
Jesus was a pacifist. If there is a right to carry a weapon specifically designed to kill other humans, that right is surely not given by Christ. We believe Jesus came into this world to prove that love is more powerful than any other force in all of creation. We believe that the Spirit is with us to show us that grace and forgiveness are more powerful than a bullet. For a Christian, our God-given right is to follow the God of love and creation and reflect the love and peace of God into the lives of others. Does that mean give up every gun? I don’t know. But I do know that making the gun into our God unravels our relationship with Christ.
Both the United Methodist Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have called for stricter gun control, changes to our cultural issues that promote gun violence, prayer and reflection, and political action. It is past time that our thoughts and prayers become sincere and lead to our action. At some point, failing to recognize the damage and suffering caused by our beliefs and inaction makes us complicit in the violence. I believe we have reached that point on the issue of gun control. To fail to act is wrong. For some of us that will mean giving up some of our weapons or helping others to give up theirs. For all of us, it will mean committing ourselves to time-consuming political action and care for those who have suffered a violence that we have permitted to go on. And yes, many of us will not like either of those things, but nobody said that we would not have to give things up to be a sincere follower of Jesus. Rather, we always knew that if we sincerely prayed to God and then listened, we might be asked to give up everything.
In Christ,
Andrew Mails