SHOOTING DAY, part one

As a person who is FOR sensible gun laws and AGAINST gun violence, I am often asked whether or not I have ever shot a gun, or whether or not I own one. Well, I haven’t and I don’t- at least, not yet. My total experience to date regarding the handling of guns is that once upon a time I dated a guy who was in training to be a police officer. I used to carry his gun in my purse when we went out. That’s the extent of my gun handling, and it is something I wouldn't do today.

I’ve been around gun violence most of my life. Most recently, there were several murders by gunshot in my neighborhood. And who can tell on New Year’s Eve, what are fireworks and what is gunfire? We stayed in, as far to the interior of the house as possible.

Just under 30 years ago, my father was killed by a gun. It was a shotgun, wielded by one of two gang members who knocked on his door in the middle of the night. I still haven’t recovered, either from that or from the ambient violence of life in my childhood neighborhood surrounded by gangs. Every year on the anniversary of his death, whether I remember that it is the day or not, my body remembers. Every March 3, I always feel horrible, and have a very short temper. When I remember, I can make plans to take care of myself. If I forget, which is about half the time, my family has to deal with a cranky, aggrieved person. That’s just how it goes.

Needless to say, I am not a fan of guns. Nonetheless, I am curious to see what it is like to shoot one. So, this Friday, off I will go for lunch and shooting with a couple of really amazing women. I’ve asked my dear friend, who is a gentle soul, a poet, and a gun owner, to take me shooting for the very first time. She’s asked another friend of hers, who on Facebook at least is hilarious, to come and instruct me. So, there will be three madcap gals a-shootin’ (safely, of course)  at a range in somewhere in the northern parts of Los Angeles. Perhaps we’ll strike a ‘Charlie’s Angels’ pose. In any event, it will be a safe space to learn and explore.

Let us see if this shooting day helps me in some way to better understand the answer to my question: “Why guns at all?”

A Plea for Humanity

“You have heard that it was said, You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who harass you so that you will be acting as children of your Father who is in heaven. He makes the sun rise on both the evil and the good and sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love only those who love you, what reward do you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same?  Matthew 5:43-46  (CEB)

One of the most difficult spiritual disciplines is that of loving one’s enemies and praying for those who harass you. On the face of it, it shouldn’t be so hard. Jesus himself told us to do it, and even demonstrated enormous grace as he prayed for those who were in the act of torturing and killing him. “Father, forgive them,” he prayed, “For they know not what they do.”

Why did Jesus ask us to love those who hate us? And what does this love look like? We must begin looking at one another’s humanity. Some of us will recall the plaintive cold-war verse from Sting, in his song titled “Russians”: “We share the same biology regardless of ideology.”  Perhaps when we see what’s at stake for our ‘enemy’, we can better understand why they are taking the stance they take. Instead, we elevate our own perspectives and denigrate the ‘other’.

The language we are using is alarming. I ceased a facebook friendship with someone who, while swearing he wasn’t acting racist, continued to refer to our president as ‘The Hussein’ and continually decried Barack Obama with racist-tinged ridicule. Likewise, I am always shocked to see people spell ‘Republican’ as ‘Repugs’, as if nothing good could ever come from anyone who is part of that party. Now, people may say, if one is a public figure, one is fair game. Perhaps, but we must watch carefully not to step over a line where the object of our disagreement becomes a target of derision.

The price of our increasingly divisive culture is alienation. We find ourselves becoming alienated from one another, and in the balance, we are becoming alienated from our own humanity. We begin the process through ridicule and a sense of superiority, as opposed to simply disagreeing. The subject ceases to be that about which we are debating, and becomes an ad hominem attack on one another’s actual worth as a human being.

Once we allow others to become less than human in our eyes, we give ourselves permission to treat them as less than human. This very phenomenon allowed ‘good, church going’ men and women to own as chattel, to beat, and to torture human beings that they held as slaves. We still live in that legacy today, as our racist systems carry forward despite ‘good intentions’ to end them.  It allows us as U.S. Americans to condone torture of prisoners of war, despite the fact that, as a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, we have said we never would resort to such a thing.

We can only torture people whose humanity we deny. Otherwise, we see ourselves in their faces, cringe at their pain, become horrified at what suffering has been visited upon them. If, in our rage and fear, we want to see someone harmed, then we have strayed far from the path Christ has set for us. We have become something different, something monstrous. In denying the humanity of others, we also lay down our own humanity.

Let us begin by reining in our own fears. We must become spiritually mature and able to examine ourselves as deeply and mercilessly as we examine our ‘enemies’. And, though the examination be merciless, the resolution must be the opposite. We must be full of grace and mercy for ourselves and one another, for it is in imitation of the grace and mercy Christ has for us. And it is what allows for reconciliation and peace, gives hope for the future, and truly shows the world what it means to be Christian.