The Rev. Dr. Frank Kirkpatrick sermon
Posted on
March 16, 2014
Trinity Church, Hartford
Second Sunday in Lent
Genesis 12:1-4a; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17
The Rev. Dr. Frank G. Kirkpatrick
“The Spiritual Dimension of Gun Violence”
In a violence prone society awash with guns I, as a teacher, have to ask the following question: when is it okay for me to shoot a student?
You might well be appalled by the audacity of this question. But in an armed society in which self-defense, and the ownership and use of guns, are legal rights to which I am entitled, shouldn’t I have the right to arm myself against a potentially homicidal student who thinks I have done him or her wrong, such as giving a lower grade than they think they deserve? And since we all have the right to be armed, wouldn’t it be prudent for me to bring a gun to class and to my office in case I’m challenged by a student who intends to do me grievous harm with a gun he or she might be packing?
I’m prompted to raise these questions because of a provocative op-ed piece in the New York Times a few weeks ago by Greg Hampikian, a college professor in Idaho who asked this precise question: “When May I Shoot a Student?” Hampikian teaches in a state that permits students and faculty to carry licensed guns to class. As he says, he used to carry a pen to class and when disgruntled students came to class armed only with pencils, he did not feel outgunned. But now he has asked the chief counsel of the Idaho State Legislature for instruction in the rules of classroom engagement. When an angry student reaches into his backpack how does a teacher know he is going for a paper or a pencil rather than a lethal weapon? Is my fear that he might be reaching for a gun a sufficiently strong ‘stand your ground’ situation that I should have a right to shoot first out of fear that my life is in danger? If hearing loud, so-called, thug music led a man in Florida to kill yet another young black man out of fear, then surely I’m entitled to shoot a student who has already signaled by his angry facial expression as he approaches me that he intends to do me harm.
In Connecticut our gun laws are a bit stronger than those in Idaho, a state which seems to replicating the old West mentality in which virtually everyone went around armed. But while we don’t have a stand your ground law here it is not hard to imagine a legal defense in the case of a shooting based on one’s fear that he suspected someone else of intending to harm him by a gun or a knife.
In fact, in a society in which the possession of a gun is a legal right, some have suggested the only way to curb gun violence is to require everyone to be armed. The presumption is that if we are all armed to the teeth no one will threaten anyone else for fear of being shot down first.
Some of you may note that this is the second time I’ve preached on gun violence since the school massacre at Sandy Hook over a year ago. But two sermons on gun violence in more than a year don’t begin to compare to the number of actual incidents of gun violence during that same time period. Nearly 90% of the population owns guns, gun murders average over 25 per day, aggravated assault with a gun was around 138,000 in 2011, and suicides by gun were nearly 20,000 in 2010. Gun violence has not gone away. And my reason for preaching on it again this Sunday is that for many churches today is the last day of “Gun Violence Prevention Sabbath Weekend”.
There are two simple points I’d like to make on this issue as a Christian, as well as a citizen. First, our legal right to own guns ought not to be the only principle on which to establish a sane policy on their possession and use. And second, beyond the question of legal rights we have to address the spiritual dimension in ourselves in a culture which worships the false god of the Second Amendment. While we must as citizens seek to craft sane and workable laws for the protection of our people against gun violence, as Christians we must also draw upon the spiritual, moral, and psychological resources of our faith for dealing with a culture of violence and fear.
Our faith tells us that the law is not the basis of our identity as children of God. Paul says in this morning’s epistle to the Romans that our salvation does not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. And the Psalm reminds us that it is the Lord who will keep us safe because he watches over us day and night and will preserve us from all evil. The gospel reminds us that God was willing to give his only son over to death, through a brutal form of capital punishment, rather than use violence in self-defense against those who would put him to death.
Sane laws regarding guns are important and should be pursued through legislation and the judicial process. But good laws can only go so far in reaching the foundations of a violent society. No law is a perfect solution to complex social issues, no matter how much law is necessary in a society riven by factional and competing interests to keep them from being resolved violently. This is not to suggest that we should not continue the fight for sane gun laws but it is clear that they alone will not completely save us from ourselves. In the end reliance upon the gun is a deeply psychological and spiritual condition which reveals something of who we are deep down within. And the fight for legal sanity on guns has to face the political reality that Americans are not going to abandon what they regard as their sacred 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms (no matter how badly that right has been misinterpreted by the courts). But we already know through faith that true salvation does not come, as Paul says, through the law but through trust in God.
Therefore, what if, in addition to working for saner gun laws, we also began to appeal to the moral and spiritual consciences of our fellow citizens as well as of ourselves? Religious convictions are rooted in our consciences, the spiritual dimension of what it means to be human. We can speak to those convictions without being falsely accused of intruding upon the contested arena of politics. (I say this despite the fact that politics is a perfectly justified arena in which to implement our fundamental moral principles with respect to such profoundly moral issues as a living wage, health-care for all, ending poverty, saving the environment, ending sexual and racial discrimination, among other issues of fundamental social justice). But for the moment let us set aside politics and ask, as Christians: do we need to exercise our second amendment right to own guns? Do we even, more radically, need to exercise without qualification our right to self-defense by means of guns or other forms of violence?
Assuming the 2nd amendment will not be repealed in our lifetime let’s ask ourselves: just because I have a right to something, why should I exercise that right? Why do we need to own and use guns? There are only three basic answers: to kill animals in order to eat; to enjoy the sport of target shooting; and to protect my life and the lives of my family. The first two reasons are easily dealt with through regulation: very few people need to kill animals to eat – there are multiple alternative ways of securing food. Target shooting could also be done safely outside the home and in both cases the guns could be stored in a secure facility from which they could be withdrawn only with the proper identification. And this leaves us with self-defense.
Now I’m not going to suggest that Christians give up the possibility of protecting their lives and families by the threat to use violence on the suspected attacker. This is a vexed and controversial issue among Christians. But there are some Christians who have decided, in conscience, that it is better for their spiritual selves if they allow themselves to die rather than take another person’s life. This was certainly the case for Jesus who could have called upon divine power to kill those who were nailing him to the cross. But Jesus knew, and we can know it as well, that if we live chiefly in fear of losing our lives, if that is the worst fear we can imagine, then we become locked into the ever spiraling psychology of fear in which we convince ourselves that we have to use every means at our disposal to avoid the thing we fear the most, our death. We become trapped into the belief that everyone else is a potential enemy and that we need to guard against them by taking their lives before they take ours. But how far is this from the Christian understanding that we are all each other’s brothers and sisters?
Jesus came to reconcile us to each other because we were made one at creation. But we violated that oneness and fell into division and animosity in which the weapon of violence became the common tool we could use or threaten to use against each other. But if we have been reconciled to each other and to God by the saving act of Jesus Christ who gave his life for us why do we still rely upon the weapons of death? The psalm reminds us that it not we who will protect ourselves, but God. It is God, not the gun, who watches us over us and who will not fall asleep while we slumber without fear. It is the Lord, not the gun, who shall preserve us from all evil; it is God, not the weapons of death, who shall keep us safe from the kind of harm that will threaten the body and kill the soul.
Good laws may limit our access to guns but in the end it is only we, through our moral consciences and spiritual resources, who can rise above the need to exercise our legal right to a gun and to say, instead, I will trust my life and the lives of those I love to God. We can say this because God has demonstrated through Jesus that when the worst has been done to us, when we have paid the last full measure of devotion, our lives will go on, transformed through the resurrection that awaits us, and they will go in a heavenly state in which no gun is owned, no gun is drawn, no gun is needed to make our lives whole and healthy and without fear.
Keep if you must the right to own guns and to defend your life by their means, but, when possible and with the spirit of God working within you, pray to find the courage to rise above those rights and learn to live by divine grace and trust, not by the human law based on fear. That courage may be hard to come by but it is there for the taking if we are willing to give our lives over to God and not to the gun.