Irony v. Providence

Ironically, I’m preaching this Sunday at the church where I am a member, and the assigned text is the story of the flood in Genesis 6-9. I probably should say, “Providentially, I am preaching this Sunday . . . and the assigned text is the story of the flood in Genesis 6-9.” Irony can just happen; providence suggests some involvement on the part of God.

I don’t want to give away my sermon in this post, but I also don’t want to avoid the powerfully convicting work of the Spirit that I feel at this particular moment. (John 16:8-10) I don’t remember when I finally fell asleep last night, but it was well beyond my normal bedtime. My reminders list on my smart phone for Thursday morning has numerous entries made during the night as ideas popped in my head.

Winder, Georgia. An hour or so northeast of downtown Atlanta. Over the long history of Point University, lots of students have claimed Winder, Georgia, as home. More than a few graduates have preached for churches in that area. Though I know the urban sprawl of Atlanta is reaching into that part of north Georgia, my memory of that region is something like “pastoral.”

But the news I heard when I finally got in my truck to head home on Wednesday afternoon around 5:00 pm. was anything but “pastoral.”  Two students and two teachers were killed in the high school of their community. Nine people were injured and taken to a variety of medical centers. Nineteen hundred students and their teachers, staff members, and coaches were forever impacted by an act of violence that was the result of the behavior of a fourteen-year-old student of the very school in which he killed two other fourteen-year-olds and two teachers – and injured many other fellow members of that school community.

When I think about what I have planned to say in my sermon Sunday – “God doesn’t tolerate chaos” – alongside the current moment, I am even more disturbed. I am struggling to think about the reality that as a follower of Jesus, I am called to respond to such moments like God would. I know that He doesn’t like chaos. If you don’t think that chaos broke out in massive ways in Winder, Georgia, yesterday, then we may need to meet for breakfast and have a conversation.

So, as a follower of Jesus, first and foremost, how do I respond to these moments?  I am all about thinking about and praying for victims; that’s what kept me awake last night. But I’m equally convinced that “thoughts and prayers” is not the end of my responsibility. Read the story in Genesis 6-9. I don’t find Noah saying, “You are in my thoughts and prayers, and I’m sorry that you are about to drown.”

I hope you will stay with me to the end. I grew up on a farm, and I remember having a .410 shotgun that I used for squirrel hunting. I don’t remember what happened to that gun. I can’t say exactly how young I was, but it was pretty young. For Christmas one year, my parents gave me a 20-gauge, double-barreled shotgun for Christmas. It is, not was, among my most treasured Christmas gifts. I became quite the quail hunter with that shotgun. I killed my first – and only – deer with that gun. My youngest brother has that gun in safekeeping to this day. At some point, my parents gave me a .22 automatic rifle, which I still own and is in the safekeeping of my best friend.

All of that is to simply say I’m not some anti-Second Amendment person who thinks that there is no place for guns in American culture. But I can say, without the slightest doubt, that had my Dad thought I would use that 20-gauge shotgun to kill someone, it would have never made it under the Christmas tree. Thank God for the kind of parents I had.

For me, a part of the issue is that far too many followers of Jesus have made the Second Amendment a bit like the Asherah poles in ancient Israel. Israel kept the altars to God, worship of God, etc., but they accepted the Asherah poles as worthy of a place alongside the worship of God. The problem is that those Asherah poles  were a part of the Canaanite/Baal worship of that day, not the worship of God.

Is the Second Amendment the “Asherah pole” of much of modern evangelical Christianity? Moses anticipated this would be an issue for Israel. I’m convinced that we ignore Moses’ warning at our own risk. Here is what he says in Deuteronomy 6:21, 22: “You shall not plant any tree as a sacred pole beside the altar that you make for the Lord your God; nor shall you set up a stone pillar – things that the Lord your God hates.” If Jesus was telling the truth when He said, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father” (John 14:9), then the violence that is the result of unrestricted options for guns is – without the option for debate – outside the things that God loves. Have we evangelical Christians actually read the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and decided to believe that is the kingdom manifesto we should follow?

If the Noah story in Genesis 6-9 means anything, then it must mean that in the midst of out-of-control chaos, God called a righteous man to build an Ark. At the end of that story, He promises He won’t destroy creation with a flood ever again. He doesn’t say, “I approve of chaos.” Read the narrative of the Old Testament, or the story of Jesus in the gospels, or the story of the early church in the epistles, and the promise of His reappearing in Revelation.

If you know me at all, it won’t surprise you to know that I don’t believe that rules fix things. One of my life-long ideals is: “rules can, at best, monitor behavior; principles can transform humans.” But even I would say that our culture is in need of some “rules” that monitor behavior. I would also be quick to say that only in transformation by the gospel can we actually achieve the kind of transformation that means I will never lie awake at night thinking about the murder of innocent children in a public school.

Too many of us who would claim to follow Jesus are comfortable with the Asherah poles called the Second Amendment.

I don’t have any school-aged children I send to public schools daily to worry about. I do have lots of friends and some family members who teach in public school systems every day. My two daughters teach in college contexts, and the ugly violence of our age sometimes invades that space. I can’t play the odds here. No one in Winder, Georgia, early Wednesday morning imagined they would be rushing to their high school in hopes of discovering that their child was alive. But it happened.

Why would anyone need access to the kind of weapon that this fourteen-year-old student had and used to kill four people, wound nine others, and create the kind of chaos that God hates?

I’ve heard the argument – “give the government an inch, and they take a mile.”  Whatever. But I also know that if the government taking a mile is the difference in my child walking out of a school building alive versus in an ambulance, headed to the morgue, then I will gladly cut down the Asherah pole called the Second Amendment and deal with life as it comes.

Honestly, this doesn’t seem all that complicated to me. But it is troubling to me that so many people who claim to be followers of Jesus are more than willing to erect the Asherah pole of the Second Amendment alongside of faith in Jesus, just so they can own a gun.

May God forgive us.

And remember – Noah lived in a world of chaos. But he was righteous, and God called him to make a difference. Could it be that God is calling you and me to do the same?

(As my bio indicates, I write for Wye Huxford. No one else. That includes Point University, the church where I worship, or any faith-based organization of which I am a part. If you don’t like this, don’t like me. But please don’t assume I’m speaking for anyone other than myself!)

Image by Herbert Aust from Pixabay