Euangelion
Dr. Anthony Bradley is a religious scholar at the conservative King’s College, and over at Fathom he offers a great plea to use Christian wisdom rather than an American version of individual rights to think about gun culture in America.
The article is called For the Love of Students, and Bradley concludes:
An individualistic and narcissistic culture is a culture obsessed with “my rights.” My “right” to an abortion. My “right” to purchase any firearm I want. My “right” to do whatever I want with my body—as long as I don’t believe what I am doing causes harm to my body or the body others, and so on. Christians are just as guilty.
In many nationalistic Christian “God and Country” circles, the US constitution has become a confession of Christian faith that leads to all sorts of misguided beliefs about what rights are, where they come from, and why voluntarily limiting the exercise of some rights might be warranted for the greater good of their neighbors. Christians, then, don’t say, “America first.” That’s called idolatry.
No one wants a society where teenagers need to hold protests for safer schools or where Christians, giving up certain freedoms for the good of their teenager neighbors, is considered a loss. Christians are in the position to lead in creating the kind of society without those things if only we will choose to value wisdom more than rights.
America’s teenagers are asking for help and nothing would be more tragic than Christians focusing on defending the rights of a secular state instead of emphasizing the self-sacrificing principle of neighbor love oriented by wisdom.
Do read it!
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