Can we please stop offering blood sacrifices???
More shootings. Does it even matter where anymore? I fear that they have become so common now that they don’t even grab our attention. I fear that we have become so accustomed to hearing about shootings that the only way we would rise to any level of caring is if we were personally affected. That’s extremely sad.
That is not a sign of societal health either. It’s a sign that society has turned far inward on itself – which is Luther’s definition of sin.
All of the violence and death only makes sense to me if I relate it to religious belief. Not in the sense that religions cause wars either. I never really bought that argument. Wars caused by religion are actually wars caused by people who seek power and use religion and twist it to justify the power grab and death and destruction.
Rather, I’m talking about the worship of idols. All the victims of these gun deaths are blood sacrifices to false deities. Name the idols whatever you will – guns, violence, death, etc. As a society we have decided that sacrificing people in the name of these idols is more important than the people’s lives. Only a god has more value and worth than a living being.
As a society we have no intent on stopping the sacrifices either. This isn’t even controversial either. There is no attempt, not even a debate really, to do anything that would reduce the number of deaths related to gun violence. None. Zero. Which means that our society is willingly offering blood sacrifice to these idols on their altars.
Worship of these deities is obviously far more important than the lives of any of the people we willingly sacrifice.
Unfortunately there are many Christians who expend great energy in defending the status quo of human sacrifice. I don’t understand how what is happening can be defended as having anything to do with Jesus. I don’t understand how defending the status quo of people dying without any effort to stop the killing has anything to do with Jesus’ way of peace or seeing the image of God in others.
While we, as a society, like to claim we are a Christian nation, our actions and lack of action show this to be a lie.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. It never does. Jesus doesn’t call us to accept the status quo – to be unimaginative. Rather, we are called to holy imagination – to seeing the vision that Jesus has for the world. A world in which people don’t die because of gun violence. It’s possible. It doesn’t even take all that much imagination or creativity really. It mostly takes an unwillingness to accept that gun violence takes place every day and is normal. It takes an unwillingness to accept the death toll. It takes an unwillingness to sacrifice people at the altar of an idol for the sake of some object and the false association that is placed on it – that it somehow represents our freedom. Guns are not our freedom. They aren’t our saviors either. Guns are an object that are supposed to serve us, not the object of our worship and sacrifice.
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Thank you for these powerful words. Makes me wonder, despite my self assurances to the contrary, how complicit I remain in this false idol worship and upholding of the deplorable status quo.
I question this about myself often. Here’s the thing about these idols, remember, like all systems, we are a part of them and can’t control them. We are captive to them and cannot free ourselves. We can only act because God gives us what we need to act in response to what God has already done. In the case of gun violence, I think that response from us is to raise the issue and ask if something better could exist – and if so, what and how do we get there. I think fighting about guns is the wrong approach. Lost in the debate is any vision of what society can be. We’ve made guns into a sacred and holy thing in this country and we suffer as a result of that.
I think you have a valid point concerning people that are killing other people with guns. I fail to see how this logic applies to the millions of people & guns that have never committed one, single, act of violence against anyone. Blanket statements like the one you are making would suggest that a person like myself believes in blood sacrifices because I have guns? Not only do I feel that it’s unfair & certainly not accurate, but judge mental on your part as well.
Jason, thanks for reading my blog post and for your comments. I mean that sincerely. I’d like to clarify a few things. I’m talking on a societal level, rather than an individual level in my post. Those are two different things, but related. I wasn’t addressing the individual actions because I think that ends up being the primary focus of the gun debate and I think that it is ultimately unhelpful. It’s a big reason for me of why we haven’t made any progress on this topic. To often it ends up going into unhelpful directions where people don’t like to be equated with those who commit crimes. I get that. That makes sense – who would? And yet, it ends up becoming the excuse for why nothing changes. If all that matters is individual actions, then we’ll never make a significant change that is needed as a society. There is more than just individual actions. My focus is on the societal system that exists that holds us all in bondage – regardless of whether we own a gun or not. We are all impacted. We all contribute to it. And we cannot escape it. This is the conversation that isn’t happening, because we have people who are talking past each other. That’s the level that I was addressing. That’s why I used the terminology of an idol and blood sacrifice. It’s not the individual sin that I’m talking about. It’s the societal system. In a sense this is no different than other idols that we, as a society, sacrifice so much to – money, sex, work, etc. Does that make sense?
That explanation does make more sense to me. I apologize for the inference in my statement- I am going through a major life change right now & am trying to weed through political rhetoric as I stand in the middle trying to make an informed decision. I’m starting to think that on some topics, I will never reach a concrete decision & must accept it as such. I have a natural need to take things to its worst case scenario- such as hearing the term, “gun-control”. For some reason when I hear it, I jump to the conclusion & picture some type of law enforcement coming to my home & confiscating my legally purchased, never committed a crime with guns, through some type of martial law declaration. I realize that some could point to me & claim idolatry for my guns, I have certainly adjusted my thinking from such a claim – trying to look at it from that perspective & making adjustments if I think the Lord deemed necessary. My selfishness wants to point 2 fingers back & claim judgment from those who make such a claim but also see the hypocrisy in such a point.
#happilyconfused
Jason, Thank you for your reply and your honesty and vulnerability. I greatly appreciate that. I think some of the challenge that I face is that our society is so dualistic in it’s mode of operation – that there are only two options available (an all or nothing type of thing). I don’t buy into that way of thinking. I think it is detrimental and misses so much creativity and is very limiting. Which is why we have large problems. Large problems need creative thinking that goes beyond two concrete options. It requires different ways of thinking, asking questions, and sitting in uncertainty. Why couldn’t there be the option to own guns and yet do something that reduces the number of people who are killed. I think there can be such a way. I don’t know what that is, but if I assumed that the status quo, with all of its death, were the only option, then what a depressing world that is. That is not life. That’s not faith. That’s death. And we aren’t called to that. We are called to imaginative faith. We are made in the image and likeness of God – who is a creator, and an imaginative one at that. And has instilled in us the ability to create – in this case create societies that are better than what we experience. Societies that are life giving, not life taking. This is what I mean when I say that the debate is worthless when it is only about individual actions and about guns. What do we envision for our society? If someone is more valuable than that, then it is our idol that we protect – regardless of whether we are talking about guns, money, work, relationships, etc.