Well, the Pope is at it again. He’s out there talkin’ smack against the bad guys and sounding like Jesus in the process (at least rhetorically)—which is really pissing off the Pharisees… aka the Conservatives. This time, the Vicar of Christ took on guns—specifically, the gun manufactures.
Oh that wascawy Pope… he’s a scamp.
One of the greatest ironies of American Christianity is how anti-Jesus Christianity is. Jesus was Jewish peasant with messianic aspirations. Christ was a Hellenized (white), anti-Semitic, Gentilic Messiah (my own made-up word)... a concoction of St. Paul of the Megalomaniacs. Christ would probably be just fine with guns, but it’s highly probable that Jesus-the-Rabbi wouldn’t.
How can we be sure?
First, there’s the easy answer: “DUH! Have you READ the gospels?” The harder answer, though, is a bit more complex.
One of Jesus’ most common teachings centered on faith. “If you have the faith of a mustard seed…”“Ye of little faith, why are you so afraid…”“He was amazed at their lack of faith…” His beliefs on faith could probably be distilled to this one statement:
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”There are pages and pages of ideas we could extrapolate from this statement, tens of thousands of words we could write, but it acts as a staunch rebuttal to the “self-protection” meme so often quoted by Christians as their reason for owning guns. One has to wonder, would Jesus be comfortable with our lack of faith in God, and our misplaced faith in a weapon?
Matthew 6:25-27
How about the “good-man-with-a-gun” argument? “All it takes to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Is this compatible with the Jesus of Luke 6:27-36?
"But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.”The irony of “people of faith” is that they completely lack faith. They live in fear that someone is “coming for them” in one way or another. Someone is going to come for their guns, steal their ammunition, or force them into FEMA camps. They live in fear that immigrants are taking their jobs, and that gay people are ruining their marriages. This is not faith, this is fear. If it’s true that “Perfect love casts out all fear,” these people are a long way from love.
“And he said unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?”To align yourself to Jesus is to embrace the faith of God, and I’ve yet to hear a defense of guns that comes from this faith. Instead, it comes from that one emotion Jesus criticized the most: doubt (which Jesus often equated with fear).