Catharsis

This is what the Lord God showed me -

A basket of summer fruit.

He said, "Amos, what do you see?"

I said, "A basket of summer fruit.

Then the Lord said to me, 

"The end has come upon my people Israel;"

"I will never again pass them by."

"The songs of the temple shall become wailings in that that day,"

Says the Lord God;

"The dead bodies shall be many,"

"Cast out in every place."

"Be Silent!"

-Amos 8: 1-3

There are many different kinds of anger.  There is frustration, like when you just can't get something to work the way it should.  There is the kind of anger you feel when you stub your toe, irrational and gut level with no real target except the inanimate object that "got in your way."  There is the anger you feel at injustice and unfairness in the world.  There is anger when someone you love betrays you or lets you down.  Then there is prophetic anger, full of rotten fruit and dead bodies, dry bones and whores of Babylon.

There is only one thing for it: Pantera.  Well, at least that helps me.  I don't suppose it will work for everyone.  For those of you who might not be familiar with the musical genre that can best be described as primal roaring, Pantera is the omega point of HEAVY metal.  Even calling Pantera the same type of music as say, Motley Crue or Poison is sort of misleading.  Normal hair metal bands can get a party going, Pantera will get a fist fight going and/or absolutely terrify everyone in the room who doesn't NEED to hear some freaking Pantera.

For those of you who have never experienced Pantera, I'm not recommending that you start now.  Their music is defined by vocals that sound sort of like a very angry buffalo talking about breaking things and maybe people, and the driving guitar playing of the "Dimebag" Daryl (RIP, because "dimebag" was not just a cool nickname, it was a way of life).  If you're not a fan of heavy metal in the first place, and even if you are, if you're not ready to take that to the next level, do not attempt Pantera.

I put one of my Pantera CDs in the disc changer in my car.  Honestly I don't use it that much since I also have satellite radio, but lately I have been feeling Pantera-ish more than usual, and I decided that having Far Beyond Driven ready at the touch of a button would be a reassuring thing for these troubled times.  So I drove to work today, barely containing the urge to shout along and thrash my head like a maniac (at 43, and since I pretty much talk for a living, I can't afford the sore neck and busted voice box of full participation, also it leads to unsafe driving, I am a grown up after all, even if I am listening to Pantera).

I felt so much better, and I only got through track 4.

Amos is the Pantera of prophets, in that he gives no thought at all for being nice or socially acceptable.  He tells Amaziah straight up, "I don't care about you or your nonsense, I'm not even a prophet or a prophet's son, I'm just here to tell you that you are going to die."

On those occasions when we feel like the mess that we have made of our world is too much for us to bear, it also helps to have someone who is really good at shouting shout with us.  That's where Pantera and Amos come in.  Amos was laying his ruthless invective on the people who "trample the needy, and bring ruin to the poor of the land."  Sound familiar to anyone?  And the ones who were trying to take advantage of the system, maybe even massaging the rules so they could get ahead.  And the ones who pulled and manipulated markets and currency, and the ones who didn't leave enough left over for the poor and the needy.

When you've got that sort of anger, righteous anger, anger at the system and evil that holds the reigns of power.  That's when it's time for some Amos, and some Pantera or Rage Against the Machine. They are not necessarily for everyone, or for every day, but when you need them, you just need them.

The First Question

In the pride of their countenance the wicked say, "God will not seek it out,"

All their thoughts are, "There is no God."

Their ways prosper at all times;

your judgments are on high, out of their sight;

As for their foes, they scoff at them.

They think in their heart, "We shall not be moved;

throughout all generations we shall not meet adversity."

-Psalm 10: 4-6 (NRSV)

The polls and surveys have been telling us for a while that the church is in decline.  We feel it in our bones as well, budgets are lean, resources are tight, new faces are few and far between. The "rise of the nones," the testimonies of people who consider themselves refugees from a church that has wounded and abused them far too often, the grasping of certain arms of the church at political power and wealth, these are dire symptoms indeed. As a person who has hitched their wagon to the institution of the church, I am often challenged by the Psalms.  I am challenged because, as much as I would like to always put myself in the shoes of the righteous who are crying out to God on account of the way that the "wicked" seem to neglect or ignore the reality of God's claim on our lives.  I find myself asking God the questions that the Psalmist asked, "why are you taking so long to do something about this?" "Are you listening at all to our prayers?"

I suppose I am particularly inclined to these sorts of questions by natural disposition towards melancholy and cynicism, and also by the reality of the churches I have served.  This year I am teaching the first honest to goodness confirmation class that hasn't been a team effort between multiple churches.  In our tradition "confirmation" is the process by which, somewhere around 12-14 year old kids come to join the church.  We call it confirmation because they are "confirming" the baptismal vows that their parents made on their behalf when they were baptized as infants (in the case of those who were not baptized as infants they affirm their faith and are baptized as part of this process).  It could, and should be a moment of formation where the faith of a child that has been taught the stories of the Bible undergoes a rite of passage into something more grown-up.

For most of my years of ministry there simply have not been enough young folks to really do this as thoroughly as I would have liked.  In Pennsylvania, where Presbyterians are dense, we had a cooperative confirmation class between 5-7 churches and from that collection of small congregations we usually had about 6 or 7 kids in a given year.  Since moving down to Southern Maryland I don't have that option anymore, so it was confirmation with one or two kids at a time.  It was trying to work around busy schedules, it was trying to be convenient, it was trying to be easy, and I am afraid it really wasn't very much fun for anyone.  It was a microcosm of why the church is losing people from generation to generation, it was a failure of what has traditionally been called catechesis (from the Greek for teaching).  And it was mostly my fault, I felt bad about not being able to give those kids a cohort of fellow confirmands to stand with and join the Body of Christ, I tried to fold them in with adults who were joining the church, just to give them the sense that it wasn't just them sitting through a lecture by the Preacher because their mom wanted them to join the church.

I wanted it to be a community thing, I hoped that they would, at least, feel a little more comfortable and connected to me as the Pastor, and that they would get to know one or two ruling Elders as well, but it was just not possible to really give them much more than just a description of what this thing called church is supposed to be. I did not feel really good about it, but it seemed like a necessity.  Since the last one of those, I have waited two years, I have put off confirmation for my son for a year, I have tried to gather an actual group, and by hook and by crook, we started our class with eight junior/senior high students last night.

The difference was marked. Of the eight kids there are some who are quiet and some who have a lot to say, there are some who are well Sunday Schooled and some who are not, but the differences and diversity of the group means that it's not just me giving a lecture.  It's not that I am a more brilliant teacher with this group, I'm pretty much the same guy.  This is an illustration of a lot of what is going wrong for the church in our world.  We act out of necessity and need rather than taking the time to be patient and meeting people where they are.  Week one has already convinced me that trying to confirm a single youth or a pair of youth just because they happen to be in 7th grade is futile, it is not good pastoral work.  I need to know my flock better, I need to make sure that the kids being confirmed aren't just things to check off on a list, they need to be welcomed into the community of faith, by being part of a community of faith.  For kids that age, it means more than just two or three.

I think that too often we feel pressed and put upon to try and make this thing called church into something it is not.  We try to mash together the models of business, civic organizations, and entertainment.  For kids, it's like we're trying to be school, cub scouts, band, soccer and social clubs all in one and it can get confusing.  God's "judgments are on high" out of our sight. It should not be that way.

The way we are going through confirmation this year is based on questions: Why do we believe in God? Who is Jesus? How does the Spirit work? Why do I need/want to be a part of a church? What does it mean to be Presbyterian?  The questions build on one another and it is my hope to avoid simply regurgitating answers.  I am their teacher, but in some ways I am also learning with them. I feel like, if I can learn with them why they would want to be a part of a church, maybe I will be able to share that learning with some grown-ups who might wonder the same thing. I wonder if maybe what we need, in an age where the demand for certainty has led us to the brink of ruin, isn't to learn to ask questions again.  Maybe, "because we've always done it that way," is not really a very good answer.  Maybe it's not even fair to the rich tradition that it usually claims to defend.

The data and the lived experience of a lot of churches bears out the reality that we should not just continue doing the same things that are failing and/or hurtful over and over again.  We need to get ourselves a new heart and stop standing in the place of the wicked where we think our ways are higher than God's way.

It's Not Really About the Fish

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways,

God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them;

and he did not do it.

But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry.

He prayed to the Lord and said,

"Oh Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country?"

"This is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing."

"And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live."

And the Lord said, "Is it right for you to be angry?"

-Jonah 3: 10 - 4: 4 (NRSV)

I know what you learned in Sunday School, Jonah was a prophet, God sent him to Nineveh and he didn't want to go, so he tried to run away, God sent a storm, the boat Jonah was on almost sank, but they threw him overboard at his own request, but God sent a fish to swallow Jonah, and save him for three days, then vomit him up on a beach and finally Jonah goes to Nineveh and then they listen to God, everybody lives happily ever after.

Here are some things that your Sunday School teachers didn't teach you, in fact they may not have even looked at it this way at all.  The book of Jonah, even though it is stuck in between Obadiah and Micah, who are prophets, is not at all like any of the other books of prophets.  In fact, it is not so much a book of prophetic oracles as it is a rather clever story about a certain prophet named Jonah, who is just about the worst prophet ever.  Despite being disobedient and obstinate and half-hearted about his calling, Jonah is also perhaps the most successful prophet ever, in that his prophecy to the people of Nineveh actually works, the whole city, from the lowest to the highest, even the stupid animals, repent and is saved from God's wrath.

The Big Three (Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel) can't boast of a record like that, the most their prophecies ever produced was a stay of execution.  They had some good ones too, some beautiful oracles and visions.  Jonah was just all grumpy and said, "You are all bad people and God is going to kill you, I'm out."  Somehow that worked on Nineveh, natural enemy of Israel, somehow people listened to Jonah's half-witted proclamation of doom and repented for real.

There is very little historical information to back up anything about Jonah, and his story reads like the sort of Sunday School lesson for which it is commonly used.  Jonah is a colorful character, and so is the fish that swallows him.  Jonah is remarkably stubborn in his resistance to God, even after he becomes fish vomit.  Jonah also may be suicidal, at least he seems rather more ready to die than most healthy, well adjusted people at several points in the story.  Anyhow, the moral of Jonah's story is not really what we usually think it is.  Most of the Sunday School curriculum out there teaches that Jonah is an example of how people can try to resist God, but God will get them to do what he wants even if it takes a giant fish.  They frame it a little more friendly than that and usually add in some platitude about how good God can be to us even when we try to go the wrong way, but the only place that Jonah even comes close to seeing it that way is in the belly of the fish, and even then, you have to stretch his famous prayer to read it as though he is truly happy with God's deliverance, he seems rather like he has just finally resigned himself to go and do what he doesn't want to do.

His response to Nineveh's repentance seems to confirm that notion.  He still just wants to die, and that's not the last time he says so. The actual moral of the story of Jonah probably doesn't make such a great Sunday School lesson.  The actual point of this whole story is that we should care enough about everyone, even our natural enemies, to want them to be saved from destruction.  The moral value comes from God, not from Jonah.  God is the one who relents and turns from his anger, not Jonah.  God is the one who asks the question: "Is it right for you to be angry?"

There's a lot of anger out there in the world, much of it comes flowing out of people who claim to love God, read the Bible and follow Jesus.  I get anger, I learned years ago that it's actually one of my core emotions.  Because of that though I have had to work with my anger, to learn to be healthy about my anger and wrath, to try and use it constructively instead of destructively.  One of the most important things that I have had to learn to do is accept God's mercy for myself and for others, when what I really want is his wrath.  Yes, I mean even for me.  There is a scene in  Cool Hand Luke where Luke stands outside in a thunderstorm daring God to strike him with lightning because then he would know he was for real.  I get that.  Sometimes God can become so abstract in my own mind that a good old bolt of lightning would be a welcome refresher.  I have been through enough pain to learn that God is more real and present (to my own understanding) in the belly of the fish than on the sunny hillside above the city.

God is Love though, not wrath.  God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  The Bible says that an awful lot, even in the pre-Jesus parts.  I wonder why people who claim to love God and the Scripture so much seem to so easily ignore the message when they get called to go to Nineveh?

Burnt Out

By now, you know I'm no fan of President Pumpkinhead.  But I just can't continue feeding the fires of outrage day after day.  I knew this was going to happen.  I felt it coming, there is just too much to keep up with, in my more cynical moments I wonder if that is actually his plan, if these daily kicks to the teeth of our common sensibility are just smokescreens, intentionally provocative so that we become jaded and eventually inured to the effect of stooge-like bombast.
It's not just liberal folks like me either.  Here's Rod Dreher on The American Conservative this morning. Yep, his outrage ain't broke yet, nor should it be.  Puerto Rico is an American territory, Puerto Ricans can come here without a passport or a green card or anything, and we can go there, same deal.  Does Trump not know that? Or does he just not care? Either way it is an embarrassment.
I disagreed with a lot of George W. Bush's actions.  I ascribed sinister motives to Dick Cheyney.  There were times when they made me hopping mad (their incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina being one of those times), but it was more or less in the same way that I disagree with my parents about things.  There was no trouble with recognition of mutual citizenship and commonweal, they didn't ever say that they were just flat going to give up on New Orleans, or that the budget just wouldn't allow them to help.  Now I think I understand, as maybe we do as a nation, what it is like to have an unstable, abusive parent.  It reminds me of a line from a Tori Amos song, Silent All These Years, about a woman in an unhealthy relationship:

Your mother shows up in her nasty dress, it's your turn now to stand where I stand.  Everybody's looking at you, you take hold of my hand.

When I read Dreher's column, whatever other disagreements I might have with him, I wanted to just give him a big hug. There are so many things that we need to work on as a country, but it's like we're all just trying to manage the raging toddler who might just launch the nukes at any moment.  If Trump is deliberately inculcating that sort of insecurity then he is next level sinister.  If he's just doing it by accident he is next level incompetent.  I'm not sure which scenario is worse.
In the long run the hope that is timidly emerging in my mind is that Agent Orange will defoliate our partisan jungle and we will be able to find common ground with reasonable people.  That we will be able to once again work together on compromise solutions and things that are constructive to this nation that we must share.  That hope seems naive at the moment, but I am a believer in Grace, which is the only way this is going to end well.

From bitter searching of the heart, we rise to play a greater part.

-Villanelle for Our Time, Leonard Cohen

Democracy Part II

It's coming from the sorrow in the street,

The holy places where the races meet,

From the homicidal bitchin' that goes down in every kitchen

To determine who will serve and who will eat.

From the wells of disappointment where the women kneel to pray,

From the grace of God in the desert here and the desert far away,

Democracy is coming, to the USA.

-Leonard Cohen, Democracy

Do you know who Jemele Hill is? As one whose chosen background noise is ESPN more often than not, I do.  She is a black woman who has been on the various opinion talk shows where she was frequently the only female voice, and sometimes the only black person.  She can be pretty sharp, in several ways, first and most importantly, she knows her stuff, regardless of her race or gender, she is on merit one of the better commentators in the younger generation at ESPN, and the network has gradually recognized that and given her more precious air time.  She went from being a guest on Around the Horn, to having a half an hour argument show He Said/She Said, with Michael Smith, to hosting the 6:00 edition of Sportscenter, also with Smith.  Her personality, and it's contrast with Smith's mild mannered college boy demeanor set the tone for the first little show that mostly aired in one of the afternoon time slots.  It worked well enough that they decided to give it a bigger stage.

It worked, I think, because Ms. Hill shows something that is rare on news based TV: a strong, opinionated black woman.  Personalities like hers are often relegated to sit-coms where they become more or less lampoon material. Even with the immense popularity and influence of Oprah Winfrey in the industry, it is still all too rare to see someone who does not have to "whitewash" themselves to get ahead.  Her edginess and strong opinions about sports and culture, her willingness to verbally battle the men in a male dominated milieu is inspiring, and something I am glad to have my daughter observe and absorb.

ESPN has mostly gotten high marks for diversity in my book.  Going back to Stuart Scott with his distinctive narration of highlights (BooYah, and "Mama, there that man again") What made Sportscenter great was the way that the anchors got to invest themselves in the stories.  And so it is with great disappointment that I see that ESPN has suspended Jemele for two weeks for speaking out on social media about how Jerry Jones demanding his players stand for the anthem is pretty shady.

I know I might sound like a broken record at this point, but when corporations like ESPN and immensely wealthy people like Jerry Jones come down like this on people like Jemele Hill, it just makes the cries of injustice ring louder.  This anthem protest thing is exposing some of the knee jerk racism of our system like turning the lights on the cockroaches.  It may be confusing and starting to get worn thin in a lot of people's minds, but look at the Roger Goodell's and Jerry Jone's of the world, look at the powers that be at ESPN, they're starting to show their teeth. They're trying to silence the protest of the black folks and their using all the usual sorts of "reasonable" status-quo sorts of arguments, because that's what systems do: "she's violating the social media guidelines," "this is just not the appropriate time or place for that sort of protest,"

You may not care about sports, or watch Sportscenter, but you need to know who Jemele Hill is.  You may not care about football, but you need to know who Colin Kaepernick is.  Because of things like this, the world of sports is becoming a place where we are having very important dialogue about civil rights and freedom of speech.   Yes, that irritates some people who just want to escape into their games, but that is just tough.  Sports has taken the place of religion in a lot of people's lives, and it doesn't always do a very good job of instilling moral values in its devotees, but if it can give us a place to see how the wealth, power and control of the white and wealthy rolls over our rights and silences our voices...

Sail on, sail on,

O mighty ship of state,

To the shores of need,

Past the reefs of greed

Through the squalls of hate,

Sail on, Sail on, Sail on.

Democracy

It's coming to America First,

The cradle of the best and the worst,

It's here they got the range,

and the machinery for change,

And it's here they got the spiritual thirst.

And it's here the family's broken,

And it's here the lonely say,

That the heart has got to open in a fundamental way.

Democracy is coming, to the USA.

-Leonard Cohen, Democracy

Another weekend down, another round of protests by the gladiators and sneering from Caesar.  I can't help but notice we are being played by the artful dodger, distracting us with bread and circuses while we slip further into chaos. The founding father's of this country of ours had some very real wisdom when it came to the virtues and limits of democracy. Ben Franklin could go out into the streets of Philadelphia and see the grungy dock workers and the rabble whose daily routine was essentially focused on working enough to afford to be able to drink themselves into a stupor.  Thomas Jefferson could see the slaves and the poor white laborers whose desperation needed to be stemmed by law and by force of arms.  The men who wrote our Constitution were admirable in many regards, but they were far from diverse, they were all wealthy, landowning white men, and as such they structured this new republic in such a way as it would benefit wealthy, landowning white men.  They interspersed this legal code with enough high minded ideals to make it stand out from the crowd as a remarkable and useful benchmark in the progress of humanity.  These ideals were not simply window dressing either, in their better moments, and when it did not conflict with their self interest, they really believed in things like freedom and equality.

They had had enough of royalty and aristocracy, they felt the sting of being viewed as "common" by the Lords and Ladies of Europe, but they eventually realized (particularly in Franklin's later years) that money was a key to class Nobility.  As Kevin Spacey's character in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil says, "Nouveau riche, yes, but after all, it's the riche that matters." And the history of this country has been moved by the god mammon as much as the God in whom we trust.  In fact, I often wonder if perhaps we don't get the two inextricably confused.  As you might know, from my past musings on this subject, idolatry is a persistent vexation for me when it comes to things like the flag, the national Anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance (the last of which I refuse to recite as an adult).  I stand for the national anthem and honor the flag out of respect for those, including my Grandfather, several Uncles and a great Aunt who all served their country in times of war and peace, but I also hold James Baldwin's thoughts on this matter dear to my heart:

I love America more than any other country in this world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

Our current division is rooted in the darker angels of our nature.  The wealthy landowning classes have always held onto the knowledge that racial divisions and division in general is necessary for their continued advantage.  I notice that most of those who are critical of the NFL kneelers, and of Black Lives Matter, and of protest about racial injustice in general are rich white men: this weekend it was Mike Pence joining the gang, showing up to the Colts game and then walking out because of several players kneeling for the anthem.  Jerry Jones (aka Skeletor) threatened to bench any of his players who knelt for the anthem, which gave me a giddy moment as I envisioned all of his black players calling his bluff, Dak Prescott, Zeke Elliot, Dez Bryant, all kneeling and being held out of the game while Jason Witten and Cole Beasely tried to take the field by themselves.
Not going to happen, I know, but if they could try that the week they play the Iggles, that would be awesome.
Anyway, this anthem protest doesn't seem to be going away and I get the feeling that the ruling class is okay with that, because they have figured out, as they usually do, how to use it to their advantage.  They persistently say it is about honoring the military, and they have enough weight of truth on their side to make it so.  Even though none of the protesters have said it was about the military, or the flag, or our country, and pretty much to a man have said it is about the injustice experience by black folks in this country.  I want you to notice how slick "the Man" can be.  The Trump, Mike Pence and Jerry Jones of the world don't want Joe Football Fan to identify the plight of black folks with his own struggles.  They want Joe Football Fan to think they are on his side.  They want JFF to think that these black men kneeling for the anthem is just a petulant act by a bunch of privileged rich athletes.  If they can direct the anger of the common man at some black millionaires it isn't coming in the direction of the white billionaires.  Clever.
Using the military as a tool in this deflection is super clever, Bond Villain level insidious.  Who are the military?  Mostly the children of middle class and lower, a lot of black kids and hispanic kids and poor white kids who see service to their country not just as an abstract duty, but as a genuine leg up out of the dead end of poverty (which it often is).  It has been observed that perhaps one of the most important pre-cursors to the civil rights movement was the fact that white and black soldiers fought together in WWII, they were brothers in War and so could not as easily segregate back in the regular world.  There is probably something to that, but I'm sure the military is not perfect, nor monolithic.  Thus you have some vets who feel disrespected by the protests and some who say that is precisely why they served, to ensure that people could do such a thing.
The tool of the oppressor is selling the narrative that there is only one way to view such things and thus creating a division that cannot be bridged by logic and understanding.  The constructive things that have been happening around this thing that started as a seemingly trivial action have become a valuable conversation starter.  The conversation can only happen though when people are willing to honestly engage with people about the truth behind their protests or their disagreement with the protests.  Both sides have been articulated well, Sally Jenkins has written a very well balanced opinion on the issue, which I recommend.
What cannot happen is the sort of petulant display that our Vice President put on (at taxpayer expense I might add), or the sort of assault on free speech being proposed by our President, or the threats of Skeletor.  These shut down the conversation, these devolve the dialogue back into a simple black and white (literally) issue so that it can be dismissed and stop rocking the boat.
To the common man who is feeling riled up about this issue, I would ask you to examine your loyalties, and view the Trumps and Pences and Jones of the world with a bit more suspicion than you do right now, they are not on your side.  You have a lot more in common with the black and brown people who are crying out for justice right now than you do with the rich nobles who want you to just shut up and watch football.

This Isn't Going to be Easy

Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me,

And get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit!

Why will you die, O house of Israel?

For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, 

Says the Lord God.

Turn then, and live.

-Ezekiel 18: 31-32

Most of us agree that things are not going well.  Our diagnosis of the disease varies by personal and political disposition, but all around we seem to agree that we have a sickness in our culture.  Whether it is a sickness unto death remains to be seen, but we all know something just ain't right.  There are shootings, there is brutality, there is oppression, there is hatred and division, there are people who can't even settle down and have a proper discussion of the issues at hand because they're just so angry and easily dog-whistled away from engaging one another as human beings.

Liberals and Conservatives have become the Sadducees and Pharisees of modern life, taking up doctrinaire stances on opposing sides of some line that most people really don't care much about, but feel like they probably ought to take a side.  They pick their side usually on the grounds of some hot button issue that riles their blood: abortion, gun control, same sex marriage, civil rights, free speech, free markets.  Something or other gets them into a certain camp and once they've been recruited there is a process of isolation and bubble forming that puts the brainwashing techniques of ISIS and Al Quaeda to shame.  People become fact resistant and truth denying.

After every new instance of a mass shooting we go through this painful, obtuse and fruitless debate about guns.  I am as guilty as anyone, but the truth is that we aren't going to be able to legislate our way out of this.  I own guns. I like to shoot. I have been through the process in what locals and gun show types call the People's Republic of Maryland to be a lawful owner of a handgun. My motives for being a gun owner is not some sort of delusional Rambo fantasy that I will be waging war against a communist invasion or a zombie apocalypse, but because I find shooting to a be a pretty therapeutic hobby for me.  It calls up good relationships with my Grandfathers, from whom I inherited a few of the guns I own.  It allows me to feel a sense of accomplishment as my proficiency grows and as I adhere to the disciplines of safety and accuracy.  There is a bit of a "man" thing, where I feel empowered and competent to handle something so deadly.  None of this is impaired by having to pass  a safety course, go through a background check (in Maryland for a Handgun Qualifying License this involves fingerprinting and a lengthy review period), having to wait a few days for delivery of a gun, or by not being able to buy an AR-15 or a 30 round magazine (both of which are illegal in this blue state).  Honestly I feel like "jumping through the hoops," in order to possess and use a firearm is an important element of exercising a "right," if you want to call it that.

I favor the sort of "gun control" that I live with as a resident of Maryland.  The system, as far as I have experienced it, works well and is not as much of a hassle as getting a driver's license.  I do not subscribe the NRA's scare tactics, nor will I support their madness.  That being said, regulations on the actual guns are not going to solve our mass shooting problem.  A lot is being made of the Las Vegas shooting and the technical aspects of the weapons used.  He had a bunch of guns, including one that was rigged to shoot fast, almost like a fully automatic rifle.  While that may be chilling to some, I would maintain that it matters very little.  A good semiautomatic will fire off bullets as fast as you like, with the secure vantage point Paddock had and the nature of his target he could have killed as horrifically with most uncontroversial hunting rifles you could find. If his fancy toys were unavailable, he would have found some other tool to vent his violence.

That is not an argument against gun control, that is simply a statement of fact. I think this opinion piece from the Washington Post this morning sums up the problem pretty well.  It's not the end of the discussion to be sure, but my feeling is that we on the side of regulations need to account for the fact that the tired old slogan "Guns don't kill people, people kill people," is way more devastating to our case than we would like it to be.  Regulations of this or that type of gun are just not going to stop what we're going through.  Should certain types of guns be banned? Probably.  Is that going to stop the madness? Probably not.

So what does need to happen?

Well for one thing we need to break out of our bubbles, gun owners especially.  We're the ones who have the power and the insight to help address the reality of this problem.  Were the comments about silencers silly with regard to the Las Vegas shooter, sure, any fool knows silencers don't make guns silent, or even particularly quiet, however, why do we want them to be legal?  Do you need one at the range?  No, you need a pair of earplugs or earmuffs to keep the big bang from making you deaf.  The majority of people who do not own and do not care to own guns do not know enough about what legitimate use of firearms is all about to be able to make informed decisions about regulations, so when we stamp our feet and say, "NO!" to every regulation that comes along the pike, we who are effected by the regulations lose our place to shape those regulations in a way that makes sense.  We need to be clear in our own minds about how and why we use guns and embrace laws that seek to delineate how to do so safely. We wouldn't want a person who has never driven a car to make traffic laws, but we all acknowledge that we need traffic laws. We should take up the challenge of figuring out how to fix something that is obviously broken.

On the other side of the argument, the pro-regulation crowd needs to acknowledge that these mass murderers are not typical gun owners, in fact they're not typical human beings, they are broken people who have passed beyond a point where laws are going to make any difference to them. Trying to stop these tragedies by means of gun regulation is probably almost as absurd as the pro-gun crowd makes it seem. You cannot address extreme behavior via regulations.  The best teacher in the world, who has impeccable classroom discipline, is going to encounter a student who insists on defiance and misbehavior sometimes. Unless we figure out how to eliminate psychopaths and sociopaths, we can make all the rules about guns we want, people are still going to get hurt. Effective gun regulations would focus more on the absurd number of accidental deaths, particularly involving children who gain access to a firearm that is not properly secured.  Effective gun regulation would allow for better tracking of ownership and the ability to remove guns from situations where domestic violence or suicidal behavior has occurred.  Good laws would encourage cooperation rather than resistance from the generally good and responsible people I see at the range.

As with so many other issues from the environment to health care, we need a new heart and a new spirit.  The choices we are offered under the current system tend to be knee jerk reactions or complete stonewalling, and that belies a broken system that cannot adequately address the dangers that we face as a nation.. I believe that we are better than this.  Why do we choose to die?

Lament

Let us test and examine our ways, 

And return to the Lord.

-Lamentations 3: 40

Gun control, whatever that means, will not stop this.

Good police work, heroic action by first response personnel, none of it will stop this.

Thoughts and prayers definitely will not stop this.

I woke up this morning to a headline: "20 killed, more than 100 injured in Las Vegas Shooting."

Shortly after that, a new one came through: "50+ killed, 200+ injured in Las Vegas Shooting."

Later we find out that the shooter is dead; that he was 64 years old, a "lone wolf," which I think gives wolves a bad name.  Wolves do not kill wantonly and for no purpose.

Facts will continue to emerge, but they won't really make any difference.  The central story is that a human being became so twisted and filled with despair and hatred that it seemed opening fire on a large and defenseless crowd of people was an option he wanted to pursue.

This is the most deadly mass shooting to date, beating Orlando's total of 49 already, with the ominous + after the 50 indicating that it could get rather worse.  This time the shooter had a plan and apparently a pretty good arsenal.  He got the high ground, and he had a target rich environment, a crowd of concert goers who by most accounts could not immediately even discern the attack, a mass of people who could not flee quickly in any direction, tightly packed into a mass with no collective ability to defend itself.

Horrible realities present themselves: bodies do not stop bullets, every round could kill or maim multiple people.

Mass panic sets in and trampling and crushing happens.

Many people cannot even grasp what is happening.

Given these horrible realities the presence of a certain type of weapon makes very little difference. That crowd was the biggest sitting duck ever, and crowds like it happen every day for a startling variety of reasons. Our security measures account for bad actors in the crowd, bag searches and metal detectors keep a shooter from getting in the midst of the crowd, but what about a shooter who places himself carefully so as to do the most damage?  This could have been even worse.

Our shock and horror is impotent.

Nothing that we talk about in the next few days will change anything. There is no regulation that can be passed, no set of security provisions that can make the world safe from such random, monstrous violence.

We do not know how to confront terror of this sort.  It short circuits our normal sense of right and wrong.  Our normal security precautions are focused on stopping criminals with discernible motives.  We know how to protect our banks from robbers (and sometimes from hackers).  We know how to pursue networks of political terror groups who want to advance their cause.  We can fight organized crime, disorganized crime, drug trafficking, human trafficking, racketeering and insurance fraud, but we will never be able to protect ourselves from a random warped human being whose only goal is death and chaos, and who has lost all care for self preservation.  There is no motive here that will make any sense of this. It is just an explosion of anger and hatred, and there is so much of that around how would you sort out which type is dangerous? I think if there does prove to be a reason it might make us feel a little better; to know there is some sense in this, even if it is twisted sense.  But that is vanity and chasing after the wind.  The facts and the details will not save us, they will only lull us into thinking that we understand the cause of something horrible like this. We must think bigger and better.

This problem is of a sort that cannot be solved by anything that humans can do or say; it is a problem that can only be solved by holding tightly to our very humanity.  This sort of violence doesn't happen in a person who understands and values their connection to the people they are about to murder.  We cannot legislate ourselves out of this, we must recover our sense of community and connection with one another. This sort of violence seems to me to be a modern specialty, a result of our disconnected society.  By disconnection I mean on a human level. It is not the result of an ideology, or greed or even a warped sense of necessity, it is simply motivated by pure alienation of the perpetrator from his victims and from humanity itself.

In this age, where we are connected more and more by electronic devices, it's tempting to feel that we are part of a collective consciousness. However, that connection is largely an illusion.  Did you ever wonder why people seem so much more inclined to act badly and speak harmfully to people on social media?  Because they can safely categorize on-line relationships as disposable band not 100% real.  There is no real person with real feelings behind that twitter handle; empathy fails and humanity is not far behind it.

This is not to blame social media for this shooting, but rather to illustrate how the same disconnection that empowers trolls on Facebook is analogous to the more extreme misanthropy of someone who shoots into a crowd of complete strangers. Call it a precursor, a catalyst, or what you will but it is not unrelated; you must dehumanize your victims in order to plan and execute this sort of horror.  From the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Casino, those people were not real, they were not sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, they were not middle-aged women fawning over Jason Aldean, they were not young concert goers out for a fun time, they were not Country music fans or American citizens, they were not anything but targets.

That level of dehumanizing venom doesn't come from nowhere.  The Vegas Shooter probably got his start on a smaller scale, and most of us have probably at least dipped our toe in that water, convincing ourselves that someone or other is our enemy and not a real human being.

Jesus challenged us not just to love those whom we naturally identify with, but to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.  Applying that ethic precludes us from dehumanizing others, even if we don't like them, even if we consider them our enemy, even if they have sought to do us harm.  We must acknowledge their humanity.  As hard as that may be right now we have a chance to start: his name is Stephen Paddock, and I sincerely doubt he was "pure evil," he was a human who got broken and took out his pain on a lot of innocent people.  Do you want to hate him?  Do you want to consider him a monster?

You can go down that path if you choose.

If you deny his humanity though, you are committing the little crime that can put you on a tragic course. Maybe we could try breaking that demonic cycle.

Maybe?