{"id":102253,"date":"2018-02-15T12:34:57","date_gmt":"2018-02-15T19:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=102253"},"modified":"2018-02-15T12:34:57","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T19:34:57","slug":"good-news-belong-teaching-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/02\/good-news-belong-teaching-church.html","title":{"rendered":"The good news is that we belong to a Teaching Church"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

And that Church has already put it\u2019s very considerable brain to the question of gun violence and already has made proposals on some concrete ways of addressing it.<\/a><\/p>\n

We can act now, if we are willing.\u00a0 It really is that simple.\u00a0 It comes down to a binary choice.\u00a0 If, when a slaughter occurs, your first, last, and only response is \u201cDon\u2019t touch my gun!\u201d without so much as a thought for the victims, you are the problem and you need to repent.\u00a0 If your response is \u201cDear God, surely there must *something* we can try to change this constant reality in American (and only American) life\u201d you are part of the solution, even if you have no idea what concrete steps to attempt yet.\u00a0 It\u2019s about the will first and foremost.\u00a0 So we can really choose to try pursuing the ideas the USCCB proposes (just for starters).\u00a0 And if they don\u2019t all work, we can pro-actively Google lots of other proposals and pro-actively attempt to get them implemented in your community.<\/a>\u00a0 You can, in a word, try<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Or we can keep listening to and repeating the lies of butchers who profit from arms and who could not care less about the 35,000 people they help to slaughter with their lies each year.<\/p>\n

If a pol is guilty of formal cooperation with evil for voting to maintain our abortion regime and do nothing to lessen the violence, so is the pol who accepts millions from the NRA and, in payment for their graft, votes to maintain our current gun regime, thereby guaranteeing another 35,000 dead by year\u2019s end.<\/p>\n

A consistent life ethic sees that and fights on both fronts as a Christian should, for the preservation of human life.<\/p>\n

A Christianist uses the unborn as human shields and says things like (as a reader said to me yesterday): \u201cI feel safer in the hands of the NRA than in the hands of Planned Parenthood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s reality:\u00a0 Both parties support Planned Parenthood.\u00a0 The Party of Trump re-funded them *five times<\/a>* last year and will re-fund them again to the tune of half a billion this year (as even Breitbart admits<\/a>).\u00a0 So do not play the stupid game of \u201cOh yeah!\u00a0 Well, Dems support Planned Parenthood, which is way worse than the NRA.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using the unborn as human shields to defend the GOP\u2019s active, decades-old effort to make sure absolutely no change happens to reduce our insane gun slaughter rate is one of the most popular\u2013and absolutely the most disgusting\u2013tactic of Christianists.\u00a0 Its sole goal is not to save a single unborn child, but to save blood-soaked Republicans from the same moral scrutiny that Dem pols who support abortion laws rightly receive.<\/p>\n

The other favorite tactic is simple passive-aggression.\u00a0 Just keep talking and tell any lie to delay action.\u00a0 Guns don\u2019t kill people.\u00a0 Mass shooters would just use rock if they didn\u2019t have guns.\u00a0 All action of the smallest kind is prelude to confiscation and concentration camps.\u00a0 This shooting was a false flag operation by the Obama Shadow Government.\u00a0 It\u2019s too soon!\u00a0 Any verbiage will do so long as it keeps sane people busy talking to the liars and not acting to change our gun regime.<\/p>\n

And, of course, there is the passive-aggressive tactic of simply intoning the mantra: \u201cGive up.\u00a0 Don\u2019t try.\u00a0 Won\u2019t work.\u00a0 All action is futile.\u00a0 Sin is in the heart, not the technology.\u00a0 You have to address that, not try to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, maniacs, morons, the mentally ill, domestic abusers, white supremacists, terrorists, and convicted stalkers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reply to that is, \u201cNuclear weapons are just morally neutral technology too.\u00a0 So let\u2019s make them easily accessible to ISIS and then just focus our efforts on praying very hard that God change their hearts.\u00a0 Lemme know how that works for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same people who say it is absolutely futile to try to limit access to gun technology since real evil is in the heart are the ones who absolutely believe that limiting access to abortion technology will magic abortion out of existence and who are willing to countenance virtually any evil in pursuit of that goal\u2013including unlimited gun slaughter and the GOP that fights to keep it an eternal reality of American life.<\/p>\n

I say we try listening to the USCCB for starters.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And that Church has already put it\u2019s very considerable brain to the question of gun violence and already has made proposals on some concrete ways of addressing it. We can act now, if we are willing.\u00a0 It really is that simple.\u00a0 It comes down to a binary choice.\u00a0 If, when a slaughter occurs, your first, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[715,594],"class_list":["post-102253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-consistent-life-ethics","tag-gun-violence-is-a-prolife-issue-too"],"yoast_head":"\nThe good news is that we belong to a Teaching Church<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"And that Church has already put it's very considerable brain to the question of gun violence and already has made proposals on some concrete ways of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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