It's the Culture

I've always been haunted by the statement made by Clint Eastwood's character in the movie Unforgiven: "It's a hell of a thing, killin' a man..."

I still remember a sermon Dad preached sometime back in the mid-80's.

The main idea of the sermon is gone now, but there is a line that stands out. I can still hear it in Dad's voice:

"...and I'm sure if someone came into this assembly today with a gun, telling us we would die if we didn't turn our backs on Jesus Christ, there's not a person here who wouldn't say, 'Fire away'..."

This was in the days before, but not long before, American gun culture and American evangelicalism became so intertwined as to become more or less one and the same. I'm not sure if my delayed awareness of gun culture was a regional thing as a Southern California kid, but we were not quite up with the speed of the move toward people thinking everyone should be able to carry a gun with them everywhere they go. 

(I still remember the first time I ever heard this idea, as a freshman in college in Texas in 1991, and I was so shocked I questioned the professor in front of the class, certain I must have heard him wrong.)

But back when Dad preached this sermon, his assumption was, like mine, and like that of everyone in the congregation that day, that if someone entered an assembly threatening the people with a gun, it would be for some discernible ideological reason, (renounce Jesus or die), and that the victims would be more or less at the mercy of the shooter.

I'd like to think that if such a thing had happened, we would not have just sat there and been shot, that people would have at least tried to subdue the attacker, risking being hurt or killed in the process. It seems like that would have been the normal human reaction, rather than a dramatic, conversational scene playing out according to the attacker's script, as Dad presented in his sermon.

Of course, I'm glad we never had to find out.

But how the world has changed since that time.

A few years ago, a congregation from the same denomination in which Dad once preached, nearly had a mass shooting in their assembly, but the shooter's attempt was snuffed out when several church members pulled their concealed handguns and shot to kill.

As American gun culture became our very heartbeat, and mass shootings became so common we can't remember most of them, it makes sense that this scenario went from an obviously fictitious hypothetical in a mid-80's sermon, to a very real part of life. It's no wonder a church would go from never contemplating this at all, to having an actual plan for what to do when this happens.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but part of me wonders: Did we even realize we had made this move? Did we talk about this? Did we discuss a shift away from saying "Fire away" if we were ever threatened for our faith, to saying instead that if anyone comes in here with a gun, we'll send them to meet the Maker we happen to be worshipping right now?

I don't recall any evolution here, just suddenly being in a different reality than we were before. Again, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I do find it...I don't know...it's something...that we made this shift, from not contemplating the taking of a human life, perhaps even the assumption that we never would take a human life, to the other end of the spectrum, an automatic assumption that we will kill without hesitation and not be much bothered about it.

What I've said so far is already enough for some to cast me aside as a fool, and I get it.

No, I'm not saying that it would have been better if the would-be shooter had had free reign to conduct a massacre. I am greatly relieved the worshippers were spared.

I'm asking whether we have wrestled with what this transition means, and why we made it.

I understand that to even question being ready to kill someone nowadays is laughable to many, but...there's still something here that I just can't shake.

In the denomination in which I was raised, in which Dad preached, and in which the would-be mass shooter was put down, we fervently believed that we were under constant pressure, if not outright assault, by "the culture", "the world", the "winds of doctrine" that threatened to blow us about and fracture our foundation. The world out there was not anchored in Scripture, but was constantly evolving with the self-seeking whims of man, as people drifted further away from the truth and further into the darkness of their own thinking.

We cautioned constantly about the mindset of the Israelites in the Old Testament, who turned to idol worship while Moses was on the mountain, then later wanted a king like all their neighbors, then later, when they had no king, did whatever they all saw fit, all of which were mindsets we recognized in everyone around us, from our neighbors next door, to every wrong-party politician, to many celebrities, to much of society's popular entertainment, and especially in so-called Christians who allowed themselves and their churches to cave and conform to the culture.

In my experience and upbringing, this always meant that some group of believers had gone liberal.

Yet here we are, like frogs realizing the water has already boiled us, having made a 180 on a matter of life and death without anything like the kind of scriptural and theological deliberation we have applied to so many doctrinal disputes that we can't even remember them all, and may not even be sure anymore which ones we've divided ourselves over.

The conviction that we are entitled to shoot to kill, even in what we believe to be self-defense, is not something we arrived at through careful scrutiny of Scripture, open debate among believers, or consultation with the older and wiser among us.

It is a conviction we adopted from the culture around us.

It is culture, pure culture.

It is culture, just as much as every worship innovation, scriptural translation, clothing style, family dynamic, popular song lyric or movie script we ever agonized over, as much culture as anything we ever told ourselves we'd better resist for the sake of our children and the future of our faith.

Just because it's Dirty Harry instead of Harry Potter, doesn't mean it's any less "culture" or any less of a "worldly" influence on us, on our thinking, on our faith and our practice.

In fact, it's even more "culture" than all those things, as it has greater potential to define us in the eyes of our neighbors, who are supposed to know we are Christians by our love.

Is our call still to resist "the culture"? If so, what does that mean? Do we think it means resisting only the cultural influences we happen to find offensive at our moment in history, while conforming to the cultural forces that turn us on?

It's interesting to me that since American gun culture became one and the same with American evangelical culture, I don't see the old 90's "What Would Jesus Do?" wristbands much anymore.

I really don't even hear that phrase anymore.

No matter how we rationalize it, I can't see Jesus pointing a gun at anyone.