I watched the movie "Machine Gun Preacher" the other night with my family. It's rated R and I would not recommend it for younger kids because of the content and the moral questions it provokes. I spent a good part of the next ruminating, reading, listening and revisiting my own journey of thought and action in relationship to violence, peace and mission in following Jesus into East Central, Spokane.
The movie is about a rough biker dude who 'finds Jesus' and is sent on a new path that eventually includes church planting and mission work in Africa among orphans and the terror of the LRA. In the movie the 'machine gun preacher' ends up using weapons to defend, rescue and retaliate in the work with orphans. The repercussions, both externally and internally in the man and the mission are wrestled with and yet the conclusions are left for you to really process and decide as far as the moral outcome of it all.
In the credits you get a chance to see and hear the real man the movie is based on, Sam Childers. In closing he asks us to put ourselves in the shoes of a bereaved parent whose child has been abducted, and he asks, “If it were your child, and I could get her back… does it matter how I do it?”
In other words, do the ends justify the means, if you achieve a worthy goal?
Afterwards our family talked for about half an hour about the film, the frustrations, contradictions and moral dilemmas it sets up for families, followers of Jesus and churches. My youngest's (12) first response was 'Lets get a gun" a response I understood but didn't want to be the only conclusion of his viewing the film. In the end of all our discussion, we were left with more questions than answers and more ambiguity than clarity, but settled on a directive to do our best to act and react to this world as we would desire it to be, not as it is. We are following Jesus not for a eternal lollipop at the end but because His teachings make this world a better place to be.
This morning I printed off a picture of our dear missionary friends in Southern Sudan that we sent from our church this summer. It's a picture of their two young children sitting with a little African boy with beautiful but haunting eyes. I put it on our fridge with the words "Pray & Give" written on it, a gentle reminder that we as a family in Spokane are connected in some small way to the work of justice and love in the same part of the world.
God willing, I hope to do that without blood on my hands.
Tracy Simmons | Sep 13, 2012 | 8:28am
Thanks for letting us know about this - I hadn’t heard of it before.
Netflix?
Eric Blauer | Sep 13, 2012 | 8:35am
Not yet.
Ernesto Tinajero | Sep 13, 2012 | 9:13am
It sounds like Bonhoeffer’s dilemma. I have no answer for this, and pray that we are not confronted by having to take up swords to fight for the cross.
Sam Fletcher | Sep 13, 2012 | 10:23am
I feel like the proper way to approach this question — or at least, part of the proper way — is to thank God that we in particular don’t live in a society where violence is an everyday threat, and that weapons aren’t a necessary part of our lives. It’s really, really hard for me to question the strategies people have to use to survive in parts of the world where life is so seemingly cheap. For most of history, and in large parts of the world, everyday threats of violence were more common than not. We’re pretty lucky that we’re mostly free of living in a world where a gun is a necessity rather than a psychological comfort.
Eric Blauer | Sep 14, 2012 | 12:10pm
So true Sam. These are tough issues, last night at our community group, one lady was asked about her past prayer request for peace about the anxiety she had over. Home invasion situation. She said, oh I’m fine, I got a .45 now. I didn’t flinch with any judgment…in the past, I’d probably gone a little pacifist innmynhead at least. Not any more, I understand completely.
When someone pulls the “trust God” line I will now ask if they buy any insurance?
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