Guns, God(s), and Thoughts and Prayers

Add my hometown to the endless list of places where mass shootings have occurred.  A 36-year old white male with an A.R. rifle killed seven and injured nineteen during a confusing ride through Odessa before his own death.  Somewhere in the midst of that run, the shooter sped through my old junior high school neighborhood, shot a postal worker, and took off in her van.  I am amazed at how much this shooting has affected me; since yesterday, I’ve felt generally ill and preoccupied, and sad.  Although we in the United States now experience one mass shooting every two weeks, according to an F.B.I. agent in today’s press conference, there is something different about these shootings when they hit close to home.

I can agree with Texas Governor Abbot on one thing: “I am tired of the dying.”  But that line in itself is disheartening; how long does it take us to become “tired” of the dying?

When these shootings occur, there are two immediate responses.  First, everyone sends or asks for “thoughts and prayers.”  Second, everyone thanks and praises brave first responders.  Both of these actions are noble.  Neither is enough.  Acknowledging the bravery and sacrifice of first responders is important.  In times like these, we know that we lean on their shoulders as they seek to protect us, and as we learned in the Odessa chapter, no routine stop is routine.  I cannot imagine the stress and exhaustion that law enforcement personnel must daily bear, and I join others in grateful admiration for these protectors and responders.  I wonder, however, if the litany of thanks and praise does not mask deeper problems.  We thank the responders because thanking them is one of the few immediate actions that we can do.  But we also thank them because enough acknowledgments can convince us that we have helped.  More gratitude and praise will lead them to more courage and fighting at the next shooting.

We must never doubt the sincerity of someone’s desire for thoughts and prayers, but all too often that move signals our lack of any perceived ability to help, or our own inability to see solutions or act for less violence.  God, after all, is somehow in charge and has a plan for us all.  Sometimes when a friend has a tragedy, I do want to send my thoughts and prayers; it’s a way of saying “I don’t know what to do other than pray.”  But that is the rub.  I think I do indeed know what to do before the next shooting.

I can certainly call on community and government leaders to help us return to a Godly, conservative morality.  The problem, we have begun to hear again, is “the evil acts of a handful of people,” as state Rep. Matt Schaefer said Saturday.  If fathers will not leave their wives and children, if discipline is used in the home, if “God-given rights” are protected, then the evil go away.  Often the refrain is slightly stronger: “Get God back in our schools!” they say.  I agree.  I call on legislators to increase funding for public schools, increase the minimum wage and provide better public transportation for mothers and fathers, and promote the discipline of caring and the virtue of selflessness.  I ask that Christians look to Jesus and seek to embody his model of justice and mercy, forgiveness and love.  I call on community leaders, pastors, and teachers to encourage contexts and communities of diversity, where fears, dreams, hopes, and actions bridge ethnicity and social status.  Watch as hate begins to go away.

And I can encourage action on sensible gun control.  Universal background checks, red flag warning systems, and outlawing military-style guns are widely supported measures.  The arguments here are so common and so tired.  We no longer see how sensible and reasonable these changes are.  It is time to say no to the NRA and to vote out legislators who remain beholden to that organization. 

After the El Paso shooting, I found myself embroiled in a social media “discussion” about guns and mental illness.  I pointed out that the mentally ill are rarely perpetrators of mass shootings and more often the victims of gun crimes.  My interlocutors found it difficult to see how anyone who was not mentally ill could kill in such a way.  But attitudes of the heart (such as hate) are not the same as deficiencies of the mind.  The painful truth is that “normal” people like you and me – people who have good days and bad, times of joy and moments of anger, desires for love and thoughts of revenge – can do horrible things. 

So I mourn the deaths of yesterday and today, and I recommit to doing what I can.  Will you join me?

Reflections on Confronting My Color Blindness

Stacy Patty

      

             Sometime around 1986 while in ministry in New York, I was attending Union Theological Seminary.  In a class on Theology of Culture, I was assigned the task of presenting and defending the black theology of James Cone, widely regarded as the founder of black liberation theology.  This was not a task I relished.  I read his God of the Oppressed carefully and repeatedly to try and understand.  But it was very offensive; Cone seemed to say that Jesus was black and that only those who had experienced blackness could comprehend the liberating Jesus.  But I had to complete the assignment, so I dutifully summarized what I took to be the book’s thesis and main points and then proceeded to explain that Cone was too offensive.  If black theologians want us to understand what they are saying, they must tone it down, seek common points of reference with normative theology, and go more slowly with their radical (even if perhaps good) proposals, I argued.  And then I took the barrage of strong, inflamed responses.  “You have not suffered!  You cannot understand!  You must repent!” seemed to be the sentiment, literally pointed at me, that day.  I don’t remember the exact words that day, but I will never forget one scene:  The young black minister in his fancy three-piece suit standing over me with anger and calling me out.  The professor – a white Methodist male of Southern heritage – remained silent.  I felt humiliated and defeated (“I was trying to help Cone and his followers!”).  I left angry (after all, I had been fired from one church by then; I had suffered!) and confused. 

            Over the coming weeks and months, I met with that professor, and two others – also coincidentally white Methodist males of Southern heritage).  They listened to my anger and confusion and whining and questions.  They offered encouragement, and over time, words of advice, but they never justified my thoughts that day in class.  I don’t know how long I remained angry and confused, and self-righteous.

            But one day along the way, it hit me.  The initial offense was necessary to wake me from my slumber, to begin restoring sight from my blindness.  As a white person growing up in West Texas, I always enjoyed excellent public schools within easy walking distance from home.  I only even know that there was another side of the tracks – literally – when my blue-collar parents brought Mandy in once a week to clean the house.  Occasionally I would hear the n-word, but it never really seemed anything other than an identifier; even so, I sometimes joined others in fixing things by “n-rigging” them, but that phrase “meant no harm.”  I never worried about getting into a college, or paying for it, really.  And I never gave a thought to any real concern of one day getting a job and raising a family in peace and prosperity.  I realized that my family legacy was one of hard work and strong faith, and thereby life successes, but I never gave any consideration to the many others whose hard work and strong faith left them hungry, homeless, or in extreme poverty.  And in adult life, I have been fired – twice so far, and nearly three times – but I’ve never lost the safety net of family and savings and the ability to borrow money at reasonable rates.  I’ve never been stopped by the police and feared for my life.  I’ve never been followed around a store as if I might steal something.  I’ve never been turned down for a job because of my color, or my inferior educational past, or my prison record due to a lack of legal funds for adequate defense.  I’ve never been told that my ancestors did not have a soul.  I’ve never had to realize that I don’t know my original last name.  I’ve never had to sit on the back of the bus.  For that matter, like most of my contemporary friends, I’ve rarely had to even ride a bus – they’re much too slow and dirty.  I’d never realized that mid-20^th century laws regulated housing developments and distorted regional voting districts at the disadvantage of black families.  I’d never realized that the colleges and universities associated with the Churches of Christ were some of the last higher education institutions to integrate.

            And I’ve not really understood the Jesus of the Bible – a darker-skinned Jew who challenged religion and fought for social justice and dependence on God alone, with an end of all idolatries.  I’d never considered well, before my encounter with liberation theology, that the oppressed can teach me more about God than many European theological giants.  I’d never really understood suffering as a place close to God.  I’d never really listened to the words of spirituals.  I had not really known the Gospel.

            I still struggle with my own subtle racisms and/or attitudes susceptible to festering racism in me.  If I enter a restaurant and find only a few seats at the bar, I will likely avoid the one next to a black man.  I can easily make judgements about my black academic colleagues and their “over-the-top” cadences and rhetoric.  I walk through a D.C. neighborhood at dusk and avoid the black people on the side of the subway.  I enjoy a good black spiritual because of its “unique” style.  I’d rather not sit through a long and emotional worship service at a black church.  I admit that I remain complicit, even sometimes perhaps subconsciously, in structures of oppression and injustice that my own lifestyle supports or fails to confront.

            I am thankful for that class assignment, those professors -- Tom Driver, Christopher Morse, and Larry Rasmussen -- for Jim Cone, and for the many mentors, friends, and people of color who continue to help me see.

slp

11 June 2019