Guns, Violence and A Course in Miracles

There’s an important debate taking place on patheos.com (and in society at large) right now about violence, guns and religion. How do we respond to the mass shootings that have become almost commonplace? How do we balance the constitutional right to bear arms with a spiritual commitment to peace? Can guns truly protect us? Or can we trust in something besides weapons to calm our fears?

In the interest of gathering as many perspectives as possible about this, I’m adding my voice to the conversation on behalf of A Course in Miracles.

I’ve been a student of the Course for the past 30 years, and I’ve taught classes in it for the past 12. This transformational text was designed to “reboot” our thinking long before that word was used in our everyday conversation.

If you’ve studied the work of Wayne Dyer, Marianne Williamson, Deepak Chopra or any of the many other New Thought leaders over the years, you’re familiar with some of the main principles of the Course.

The foundational teaching is that there are two things in this world: love and fear, and of those two, only love is real. Unlike the roses and romantic overtures we typically associate with love, this Love is synonymous with God, Spirit, Truth, and Light.

As I started thinking about a Miracles perspective on gun control, I turned inward to listen to what my spiritual guidance had to say. Here’s what I heard:

Guns are not the answer. Anger is not the answer. Love is the answer. As you write this, you can feel the reaction of people who will say that it makes no sense, or that it’s a nice ideal but not practical when someone is beating down your door to rob you or hurt your family.

Yet we know that this is what Jesus truly was talking about when he told the disciples to go forth and bear fruit. No anger is justified. No acts of violence have merit. They are understandable when we see them in light of fear, yes, but they are not justified from a spiritual perspective when the goal is to share the kingdom of God.

Let’s talk about what the kingdom of God means. It means a state in which you remember who you are as a child of God—not after your body dies, but now. And as part of that remembering, you are willing to put aside your body’s and ego’s fears to focus on God and the voice of divine love within you.

This is not just an ideal. This is a truth that will change your life as long as you don’t allow yourself to be pulled aside constantly and derailed by the voices of those who would hurt one another and are acting completely from fear. You are all acting from fear; it is part of the human condition. However, defending yourself with guns does not contribute to a just and safer world. It simply perpetuates a reliance on fear-based tools as a substitute for true safety.

This is the importance of the Miracles message. You don’t need to use physical objects to keep your physical body safe. That’s not what your life experience is for. This is about traveling through the physical world as a messenger of light, being free of objects and beliefs that are untrue and invalid. This is about bringing sanity to the sane. And believing that a gun will protect you from anything real is insane. It perpetuates the insanity rather than alleviating it.

Please keep in mind that the “insanity” my guidance refers to is a universal state of confusion. When we define ourselves by our names, our bodies, our jobs, our countries and our religions, we forget that we’re part of a greater whole. In that “insane” state of mind, it’s easy to see others as the enemy because, even if we don’t recognize it, on some level we feel lost and alone.

Now, it’s probably important to note that, in all the 1,249 pages that make up the text, workbook and manual of the Course, the word “guns” appears once, and the word “weapons” 14 times. The Course doesn’t set out to tell us what’s right or wrong, how to vote or what to carry.

It’s designed wholly to help us shift our minds and thought patterns from fear to love by showing us that this physical world of violence and attack is a creation of our own ego mind, which believes that we’re separate from God and one another.

But when we remember the truth—that we’re all part of the same whole as children of God—and ask for help from Spirit, those fear-based thoughts can be healed. We remember that our safety lies in light, not in darkness.

In the next few days, I’m going to post five blogs about this, based on five relevant passages from the Course:

1. “Only your mind can produce fear.”

2. “It is not danger that comes when defenses are laid down. It is safety. It is peace. It is joy. And it is God.”

3. “All anger is nothing more than an attempt to make someone feel guilty.”

4. “It has been hopeless to attempt to find the hope of peace upon a battleground.”

5. “You who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness.”

While the gun debate is spurring me to action, please know that these upcoming posts are about so much more than that, because the Course is about the universal questions in all of us: Why do we feel we’re not enough? Why do we hurt ourselves and others? How we can remember the essence of love within ourselves? And how we can fulfill our purpose in bringing more light to the world?

These are the larger questions underneath our concerns about guns, violence, and the other issues you may sometimes feel powerless to address. You are powerful—far more than you know—and not because you do or don’t carry a gun.

In the next few days, we’ll explore what that means. Please join me.

Blessings,

Deb