Are We Helpless?

In a brilliant, yet sadly poignant mock-news report, the Onion captured the unspoken reality of gun-violence in America:

"At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past five years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

Read the full story here>

The truth is that no one in the media wants to talk about gun violence, or what causes gun violence, in America.

After Sandy Hook we were told that it "was not the time to talk about gun control" and after every other shooting after that, it was also never the right time to talk about it.

We don't want to look at the truth.

We don't want to ask why Canada, and England, and Australia - all English-speaking, predominantly white nations like the USA - don't suffer from the same amount of gun violence as we do.

We want the issue to be about mental illness, or prescription drug abuse, or better law enforcement training - all important issues, mind you. But not the actual cause of our problems.

Canada has just as many guns as we do, but not even half the number of gun-related deaths. Why is that?

Does anyone really care to investigate? Does anyone in the media really want to know?

Our media is now fully under the thumb of our government and our corporate overlords. This is why ABC News reports that Obama will be bringing our troops in Afghanistan home without ever mentioning how many thousands of American soldiers have died since that war began.

Can you imagine a newspaper leaving out the number of soldiers who died in WW2? Or in Viet Nam? Or even in the Gulf War? But in 2014 our mainstream media can do an entire story about the end of an American war and never once mention how many soldiers lost their lives in the conflict.

After some searching I discovered that there have been more than 2,178 US military casualties, and over 20,000 Afghan civilian casualties.

Let those numbers sink in.

More than 2,000 American Soldiers, dead.

More than 20,000 Afghan citizens, dead.

And what did we gain from that? How did it benefit the world? What did it do to help make the world a better place for anyone?

As long as American Christians continue to buy into the lie of Nationalism, the church will remain silent while thousands die in vain.

"If we kill enough people, the world will be a better place," is the lie of redemptive violence.

It's time we, the followers of Jesus, raise our voices in unison against lies like this one.

It's time we, the followers of the Prince of Peace, lay down the sword and pick up the cross.

Our message is this, "If enough of us lay down and die for others, the world will know what love really looks like."

And before you chime in and attempt to suggest that our soldiers lay down their lives for our freedoms, let me remind you that what our soldiers are trained to do is to kill others for our freedoms, not to lay down their freedoms and die for their enemies.

Christians are called to lay down and die. It's time we took that seriously.

-kg