I Will Take You as My Own People, and I Shall be Your God

--Exodus 6:7

I feel like I just wrote about this in the wake of the Aurora shootings.  Now, a gunman has killed six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.  Three other people who were wounded remain in critical condition at a local hospital.

And I want to scream at God the words of the prophet Habakkuk, "O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?  Or cry to you, "Violence!" and you will not save?" (1:2)

I confess that I know next to nothing about the Sikh religion, but I can say that they number among the peaceful--indeed, pacifist--tradition of Eastern religions, and they were subject to immense amounts of unfair prejudice after September 11 because people ignorantly mistook them for Muslims (of course, the post-9/11 prejudice against Muslims was likewise unfair...it is a shameful testament to us that the Islamic community has had to emphasize so often that the vast, vast majority of them are peace-loving).

Whether we are Christian or not, we belong to the same God.  It is the promise of Yahweh to the Israelites in Exodus 6 writ large.  If we are all created of God, then we all must belong to that same God.

So I have to admit, I wonder how  we would have reacted if something like this had happened at a Christian church.  And I must likewise admit that I do not have an answer.

My larger point, though, is this--if we all belong to the same God, taking a person's life is a crime not just against them, but against God as well, for we are taking into our hands what should be solely in His--not just the creation but the cessation of life as well.  We are forcibly taking from God His children, just as though a person's son or daughter were killed.

Which brings me back to Habakkuk.  There are moments when I cannot fathom why God would permit the murder of His children.  I feel as though parent (and I do view God in some part through that lens) should do everything to protect their children.

So when God's children cry to the Lord for help, why does God not listen?  When we cry to God "Violence," why does God not save us from ourselves?

I cannot believe that violence is a part of God's plan--the first act of violence was not by God but by us: it was Cain killing Abel in Genesis 4, and indeed, God tries to talk Cain out of it.

And violence, if not a part of God's plan, has certainly been a part of our's for time immemorial.  Shamefully, that heritage includes the involvement of the church.

To be honest, we do not do more to try to recognize that violent history, and to stamp out its recurrences on a collective, national, and international level staggers me.  These deaths cannot be treated as collateral damage to how easy it is to obtain such destructive weaponry.  My gut instinct is that on an ethical, theological, and Biblical level, the preservation of life should come before the preservation of access to weapons.

I'm not trying to politicize anything.  But I do want a dialogue to start.  A life-affirming, love-producing, peace-proclaiming dialogue that could result in something special.

After all...blessed are the peacemakers.

Please pray for the families of loved ones lost violently and prematurely at the Oak Creek temple.

Yours in Christ,
Eric