{"id":3839,"date":"2013-01-02T04:11:37","date_gmt":"2013-01-02T04:11:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithforward\/?p=3839"},"modified":"2013-01-02T04:14:38","modified_gmt":"2013-01-02T04:14:38","slug":"what-would-jesus-say-to-the-nra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/faithforward\/2013\/01\/what-would-jesus-say-to-the-nra\/","title":{"rendered":"What Would Jesus Say to the NRA?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

What does the birth of the baby Jesus 2000 years ago have to offer the violent, troubled world we live in? Or what would Jesus say to the NRA?<\/p>\n

I want to suggest \u2014 A lot. A whole lot.<\/p>\n

Jesus entered the world from a posture of absolute vulnerability \u2014 as an unarmed, innocent child during a time of tremendous violence. The Bible speaks of a terrible massacre as Jesus was born, an unspeakable act of violence as King Herod slaughters children throughout the land hoping to kill Jesus (which the church remembers annually as the massacre of the Holy Innocents).<\/p>\n

Perhaps the original Christmas was marked more with agony and grief like that in Connecticut than with the glitz and glamour of the shopping malls and Christmas parades. For just as Mary and Joseph celebrated their newborn baby, there were plenty of other moms and dads in utter agony because their kids had just been killed.<\/p>\n

From his birth in the manger as a homeless refugee until his brutal execution on the Roman cross, Jesus was very familiar with violence. Emmanuel means \u201cGod with us.\u201d Jesus\u2019s coming to earth is all about a God who leaves the comfort of heaven to join the suffering on earth. The fact that Christians throughout the world regularly identify with a victim of violence \u2013 and a nonviolent, grace-filled, forgiving victim \u2014 is perhaps one of the most fundamentally life-altering and world-changing assumptions of the Christian faith. Or it should be.<\/p>\n

So what does that have to do with the NRA? Underneath the rhetoric of the gun-control debate this Christmas is a nagging question: are more guns the solution to our gun problem?<\/p>\n

Everything in Jesus\u2019s world, just as in ours, contends that we must use violence to protect the innocent from violence \u2013 which is the very thing Jesus came to help us un-learn<\/span> through his nonviolent life and death on the cross. Surely, we think \u2014 if God were to come to earth, he should at least come with a bodyguard\u2026 if not an entire entourage of armed soldiers and secret service folk. But Jesus comes unarmed. Surely, we think \u2013 if God were about to be killed he would bust out a can of butt-kicking wrath, but Jesus looks into the eyes of those about to kill him and says, \u201cFather forgive them.\u201d\u00a0 The Bible goes so far to say that the wisdom of God makes no sense to the logic of this world, in fact it may even seem like \u201cfoolishness\u201d\u00a0 (or at least utopian idealism).<\/p>\n

When soldiers come to arrest and execute Jesus, one of his closest friends defensively picks up a sword to protect him. Jesus\u2019s response is stunning \u2013 he scolds his own disciple and heals the wounded persecutor. It was a tough, and very counter-intuitive lesson: \u201cThe one who picks up the sword dies by the sword\u2026 there is another way.\u201d<\/p>\n

That lesson that Jesus taught his disciple is as relevant to us, and the NRA, as it was the early movement of Christians in the first century. Violence will not rid the world of violence. You do not use swords to get rid of swords or guns to get rid of guns. There is another way.<\/p>\n

Many Christians have begun to speak of Jesus as an interruption to the \u201cmyth of redemptive violence,\u201d the assumption that we can use violence to get rid of violence or that we can destroy a life to save a life. The myth of redemptive violence has many ugly faces. It teaches us that we can kill those who kill to show that killing is wrong. It teaches us to live by the law of \u201can eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth\u201d a law that Jesus firmly spun on its head, saying, \u201cYou\u2019ve heard it said \u2018an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth\u2026 but I tell you\u2026\u201d \u00a0There is another way. Killing to show that killing is wrong is like trying to teach holiness by fornication. The cure is as bad as the disease.<\/p>\n

At one point Jesus even weeps over the violent world he lived in, lamenting that \u201cthey did not know the things that would lead to peace.\u201d The fact that Jesus carried a cross rather than a sword has something relevant and redemptive to offer our violent-possessed world. After all, the Bible has a lot to say about loving enemies, and \u201cThou shalt not kill,\u201d but doesn\u2019t even mention the right to bear arms.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s imagine. What would Jesus say to our nation, where these are things are true:<\/p>\n