My thesis is always the same, and it is very simply stated,
though it has two parts: first, contemporary America is full of fear. And
second, fear is not a Christian habit of mind. As children we learn to say,
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no
evil, for Thou art with me.”
Maybe they remember to claim to be Christian, but forget about God who's behind the scenes.
Those who forget God, the single assurance of our safety
however that word may be defined, can be recognized in the fact that they make
irrational responses to irrational fears.
They certainly are irrational.
Granting the perils of the world, it is potentially a very
costly indulgence to fear indiscriminately, and to try to stimulate fear in
others, just for the excitement of it, or because to do so channels anxiety or
loneliness or prejudice or resentment into an emotion that can seem to those
who indulge it like shrewdness or courage or patriotism. But no one seems to
have an unkind word to say about fear these days, un-Christian as it surely is.
She points out that we may be right in fearing the Russians.
I have read that Americans are now buying Kalashnikovs in
numbers sufficient to help subsidize Russian rearmament, to help their
manufacturers achieve economies of scale. In the old days these famous weapons
were made with the thought that they would be used in a land war between great
powers, that is, that they would kill Americans. Now, since they are being
brought into this country, the odds are great that they will indeed kill
Americans. But only those scary ones who want to destroy all we hold dear. Or,
more likely, assorted adolescents in a classroom or a movie theater.
Crafty devils! Oh yeah, second amendment; blah, blah, blah.
I know that hunting is sacrosanct in this country. This is
beside the point, since hunting rifles are not the problem. And the
conversation around this issue never stays long with hunting. It goes instead
to the Second Amendment. Any literalist reading would notice the founders’
words “well-regulated” on one hand, and on the other the alarm that arises
among the pro-gun people at the slightest mention of anything that resembles
regulation, and their constant efforts to erode what little regulation there
is.
I love this thought that follows. I do my best to understand parables I come across from the Bible.
I take very seriously Jesus’s teachings, in this case
his saying that those who live by the sword will also die by the sword.
Something called Christianity has become entangled in exactly the strain of
nationalism that is militaristic, ready to spend away the lives of our young,
and that can only understand dissent from its views as a threat or a defection,
a heresy in the most alienating and stigmatizing sense of the word. We are not
the first country where this has happened. The fact that it was the usual thing
in Europe, and had been for many centuries, was one great reason for attempting
to separate church and state here.
Jesus’s aphorism may be taken to mean simply that those who
deal in violence are especially liable to suffer violence. True enough. But
death is no simple thing when Jesus speaks of it. His thoughts are not our
thoughts, the limits of our perceptions are not limits he shares. We must
imagine him seeing the whole of our existence, our being beyond mortality,
beyond time. There is that other death he can foresee, the one that really
matters. When Christians abandon Christian standards of behavior in the defense
of Christianity, when Americans abandon American standards of conduct in the
name of America, they inflict harm that would not be in the power of any enemy.
As Christians they risk the kind of harm to themselves to which the Bible applies
adjectives like “everlasting.”
So, is it the soul that will perish "by the sword?" Is it worth taking a chance on in order to protect your physical body? That seems like it would be pertinent question for true believers.
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