{"id":101259,"date":"2017-10-04T00:51:22","date_gmt":"2017-10-04T07:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=101259"},"modified":"2017-10-03T20:20:17","modified_gmt":"2017-10-04T03:20:17","slug":"real-problem-creeping-godlessness-argument","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2017\/10\/real-problem-creeping-godlessness-argument.html","title":{"rendered":"“The real problem is creeping godlessness” argument"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The problem with this argument, much like the lie told by Satan to Jesus in which he quotes Scripture, is that it is a truth told in order to lie<\/em>, because Satan knows that fish do not bite bare hooks. If you are going to lie you always mix it with truth to make the hook taste good.\u00a0 So yes, God did <\/em>indeed say, \u201cHe will give his angels charge of you,\u201d and \u201cOn their hands they will bear you up,\/lest you strike your foot against a stone.\u201d (Mt 4:6) But he did not do so in order to give us a license to try experiments on him by leaping off the Temple parapet. He is not our Cosmic Lab Rabbit.<\/p>\n

In the same way, Jesus did indeed say that the heart is the origin of sin (cf. Mark 7:20-23), including the sin of mass murder. What he did not<\/em> say, and what gnostic heretics *did* say, was that therefore what we do with our bodies does not matter as long as we address ourselves to the spirit within. That\u2019s because Jesus, the Word Made Flesh, understood that body, soul, and spirit are a unity and what we do with our bodies matters.<\/p>\n

This is true, not only when we speak of sex (the normal realm in which this point is made in Catholic public discourse) but also when we speak of our national problem with gun slaughter.<\/p>\n

Times without number, we hear some variation on this preachment from Christians laboring to gnosticize the problem of violence and keep it out of the realm of, you know, doing <\/em>something about it:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe keep asking ourselves why, but we never seem to get the answer. All we hear is more guns, less guns, as if this is primarily a political problem. The issue is moral, with the political only serving a small part. The problem lies within you and me and the darkness in our own hearts. We have a deep heart problem and a loss of truth and morality problem. Please, keep making it about more or less guns. It makes us feel better about ourselves and gives us a sense of moral superiority. Meanwhile more lives will be lost, if not at the hands of a psychopath with a gun, it will be a psychopath with a bomb, a truck, or an airplane.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Someday, the people who say this (who also tend to be the people who say, \u201cMurkans are still a godly people who have not become godless secular weenies like the Europeans\u201d) will have to reconcile the claim that increasing \u201cAmerican godlessness in the heart is the real issue\u201d with the fact\u00a0that our country and not godless secular Europe is the only one where this regularly happens<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t hand me the \u201cEurope has gun massacres too!\u201d line. Nothing like our gun slaughter rate is seen anywhere but here.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

Australia, by law and policy and government, not \u201cthoughts and prayers\u201d took *action*\u2013physical, concrete, incarnate, word-made-flesh action after Port Arthus\u2013and the result was that their gun death rate dropped dramatically and they have had no mass shootings since Port Arthur<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The claim that our slaughter rate is due primarily to the growth of godlessness in America is, in fact, a claim that there is something uniquely sinful about the godless American heart that is not shared by the rest of the first world.<\/p>\n

My reply: Baloney. What is unique about Americans is not our sinfulness but our easy, insane access to massive firepower, which is due, not to our growing irreligion, but to the fact that our Gun Culture, enabled and enforced by our government and our *laws* and *political institutions* makes sure, first and last, that the arms industry\u2019s pockets are well lined and that those riches fund our politicians, no matter how many innocent people die due to the easy access to firepower by murderous and suicidal people. This is not some mystical issue of irreligion.\u00a0 This is a problem rooted in our refusal to enact sane public policy.<\/p>\n

Indeed, it is conservative Christians who are the most passionate defenders of the slaughter and of the insane public policy. And one of their key lies is this one,\u00a0told to prop up this obscene system by those making this argument.<\/p>\n

This is not to say \u201cthoughts and prayers\u201d are bad per se.\u00a0 Authentic Christianity insists that prayer and thought is the root of good actions.\u00a0 Jesus tells us, \u201cBut seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.\u201d (Mt 6:33). Pope Francis says, \u201cYou pray for the poor and then you feed them.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Jesus warns repeatedly of a gooey false piety that uses \u201cthoughts and prayers\u201d as a way of fending off obedience.\u00a0 The son who obeys\u2013even if he said \u201cNo\u201d to his Father\u2013is the one who obeyed his Father.\u00a0 The son who is all talk and no action disobeyed his Father.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot every one who says to me, \u2018Lord, Lord,\u2019 shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, \u2018Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?\u2019 And then will I declare to them, \u2018I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers.\u2019\u201d\u00a0(Mt 7:21\u201323).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Telling a wounded kid shivvering on the concrete as he bleeds out in Vegas \u201cThoughts and prayers!\u00a0 Be warm and well fed.\u00a0 This is a heart problem, a soul problem\u201d while doing nothing to stop the shooter is obscene.\u00a0 What our Do Nothing Gun Culture doggedly refuses to face is that it is just as obscene to refuse to lift a finger to try to stop the next<\/em> shooter\u2013because he is absolutely certain to come if we do nothing.\u00a0 And when he does and we did nothing or, worse yet, told lies to make sure that he was even better armed to slaughter hundreds more, what answer shall we make to our Lord when he asks why we labored so hard to arm him?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The problem with this argument, much like the lie told by Satan to Jesus in which he quotes Scripture, is that it is a truth told in order to lie, because Satan knows that fish do not bite bare hooks. 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