By Eric Blauer
A couple weeks ago, I was sitting in my large front window, the curtains were closed and my headphones were on. Unbeknownst to me, I had a neighbor who was struggling with mental illness stalking my house that day. In one of the most weird and wild moments of ministry, they attempted to throw a large paving stone through my living-room window. When I opened my front door to see what on earth was going on, I wasn’t sure what I would face on my porch or front lawn. Would it be someone with a weapon? Would it be a life or death moment? What should I do? Hide inside, call 911 or confront whoever was outside trying to destroy my property and possibly harm one my family members? In today’s world, you never really know what is going on in the mind and heart of someone who threatens you.
Recently in the local news we’ve had a number of articles about guns and the place of firearms in our community.
In one article Rachel Dolezal, the new president of Spokane’s NAACP is seen seated with a pistol in her lap as she retells receiving a package full of threatening material from a racist extremist.
In another article, we read about a protest by gun activists (which will take place today) who are challenging recent legislation that they feel limits their second amendment rights.
The irony of all these colliding experiences and debates left me thinking: “When are guns, Ok?”
I came from a luncheon this week with my fellow pastors and ministry leader friends, where we discussed the dramatic increase of youth violence among Spokane’s youth who are homeless. We heard from a local pastor whose parents were recently attacked by street youth downtown. We talked about the moments where as urban pastors we have been face to face with aggressive, possibly life threatening encounters. We heard first hand stories about youth setting homeless man on fire, kids who act out in violence in churches who grew up witnessing their abusive father make them watch him beat their mother.
The roots and fruits of violence are all over Spokane. This is the world of ministry and the city I live in. I regularly encounter people who disregard the level of violence and racial problems in Spokane. People joke or debate about where Spokane ranks in various national lists and yet, I see it, hear it and engage these issues more than I ever have in ministry.
I didn’t have a gun to grab the other day when my house was under assault. I don’t know how it all would of went down if I would of came out of the house with a firearm. Thank God that whole event ended peacefully, with the police taking the neighbor to the hospital. But, the issue isn’t over for us who work, worship and witness in neighborhoods where this is part of community life. This individual lives one block away from me and the church. I had to tell my lead church security person, who legally carries a firearm, to not allow them access to Sunday morning services unaccompanied.
These are difficult days and there’s not a lot of easy answers.
Who would deny a single mom the right to arm herself in light of racist threats?
Should anyone be allowed to carry firearms into public spaces, government buildings and churches?
I am still wrestling with these questions.
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A recently acquired guilty pleasure is the show “Doomsday Preppers.” In one segment, a self-identified Christian couple, middle aged, stand in their extensively supplied gun room with a pastor. They pray, thanking God and Jesus for their provisions. Even as a Jew, as I watched this surreal scene, I thought: “WWJD? Probably not have a gun room.” I find this interesting especially as there’s much talk of whether ISIS represents a perversion of Islam, and as the Queen of Jordan suggests ISIS isn’t Islamic at all, but President Obama’s comments that Christianity has at times been perverted in violent ways received tons of political blowback.
It amazes me how right wingers have their arm loaded full of idealogical paraphernalia and left wingers have their arms loaded…each is as weird as the other in my opinion. Jews have tanks, Muslims have bombs, Christians have guns…it’s a mess.
Well Jesus did say if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. I don’t think Jesus would have any problem with someone owning guns. He’d have a problem with how some people use them to hurt others.
I think a room full of guns is more American than Christian.
And the Dolezal picture is interesting to me because an African-American woman whose family has been threatened by white supremacists holding a gun means something very different to me than a large group of white men (and some women?) marching around downtown Spokane with guns, including in front of NAACP headquarters. To equate them strikes me as a denial of America’s racist power structure.
Where did you get that info that it was a ‘white supremacist” that wasn’t in the article. Does all racism originate only from white people? Couldn’t a ‘right winger’ be something other than white? Could it be a right winger from say the middle east, like all those ISIS right wingers?
As for marching past the NAACP, I didn’t see that info, where did you read that. If they did that, I’d say that was in extreme poor taste, or outright an act of stupid provocation.
So…certain races get a pass in the progressive court of opinion and condemnation about guns, violence and the issue of self-defense?
I think the package used to threaten Ms. Dolezal contained KKK flyers. The KKK are a white supremacist organization. I learned of the march by the NAACP HQ from someone who witnessed it. It could be a coincidence, but these days I kind of doubt it…
“Get a pass” once again reduces this to black and white thinking. Guns are a complicated issue inasmuch as suddenly removing all guns from American society would probably be met with major protests from a big chunk of our population. But who has and uses guns matters. Police have privilege that goes along with their position. Ms. Dolezal is being threatened due to her race. For her to have a gun is not the same as one of her threateners to have one. Why? Because she is more likely to be threatened than the person doing the threatening, unless that person is also an African American woman who is the president of a city naacp chapter. Which I think we can assume he/she is not. (The package was signed “War Pig, ret.)
Ummmm, no that’s nutty.
Why?
What is nutty?
Nothing nutty, Neal, we just see these issues differently.
Is a concentration camp prisoner with a gun th same as an SS officer with a gun? That’s an extreme example, but my point is that the power dynamic between such individuals affects what it means for them to have and use a gun.
“Does all racism originate only from white people?”
Are you unfamiliar with history?
How do we put down some of the “ideological paraphernalia”?
I think it’s important to acknowledge that people have the right to own a gun. My wish is that they get educated about them and the current laws that accompany them. A person should always accept the posible results from the actions they choose. I’m not a gun person, I will never own one but there are others who feel differently. It’s unfortunate that there are those who don’t use them responsibly and ruin it for others or use them for hate crimes, intimidation or crime in general. But we make the laws. I would vote no on guns in public just as I would vote no on smoking in public. Public places, like churches and other such gathering places should be a place where peace is believable. And the laws should be very specific about the consequences of firearms and we should teach these consequences in schools. Not that gun ownership is evil but that it requires responsibilty. In my opinion.
Good chat, everyone.
Anytime the okay-ness of guns is on the discussion table, I recall an old adage from the theatre. If a play being performed features a gun hanging above the hearth in the first act, it is sure to shoot before the final curtain.
I like that saying because it describes the foreshadowing that set pieces often provide in theatre, and it holds true to what we as humans do with things available to us. We tend to use the tools we’re given.
Eric, I’m so glad you didn’t grab a weapon, and I am further glad you are safe. Well done. When I think about whether guns are okay or not, the topic changes whether we’re talking “for Christians” or for others. Rights are one thing, but rights do not encompass the gospel. I believe the way of Jesus asks us to prepare for non-violence, and even to prepare for suffering as a result of that choice. Self preservation simply isn’t a goal for Jesus, as exemplified in the cross. Guns are not an option for Christians.
Salem Lutheran Church, my home, my car, and any other ground I have say over will be gun free, because I do not wish to foreshadow violence.