I wrote this over a month ago, but wanted to wait to post it until we were a bit removed from the event.
The school shooting in Florida has once again ignited the
standard debate that erupts after these events.
One side screams that if you don’t want to get rid of guns immediately,
you don’t care about the children. The
other side claims that any gun control will immediately result in the United
States spiraling into absolute totalitarianism.
Both arguments are irrational; both are, simply put, dead wrong.
I’ve posted over 100 times since 2014: only one other time
did I discuss gun control (here
) and I didn’t argue for or against it.
I believe in private ownership of guns because of the 2nd
Amendment, just like I believe in free speech and freedom to exercise my
religion because of the 1st Amendment. However, just as there are limits on the 1st
Amendment freedoms (for instance, I can’t use my free speech or my freedom to
exercise my religion to defraud or defame someone) there can be appropriate
limitations on gun ownership. I guess
you could say I take a middle of the road approach.
I could cite plenty of numbers to back up a reasoned
argument that gun deaths are an insignificant portion of deaths among teenagers
[you can review the CDC numbers on teenager deaths for yourself here.] When
you combine those numbers with the number of children in middle and high
schools across the nation it becomes clear, via simple math, that there is no
school shooting epidemic that requires instant and drastic intervention. See the NCES numbers here. What the numbers suggest is that it is
irrational for a parent or a child to fear there is anything more than an
infinitesimal chance that child will ever die in a school shooting or even be
present when a school shooting takes place.
This is much like the very irrational fear that flying in an airliner is
at all likely to result in death (there were ZERO deaths from airliner crashes
in 2017, across the entire world).[1]
I fully understand it is no consolation to a grieving
parent, family member or friend to know your teenager’s death was a relatively
unlikely occurrence. Nor am I, by citing
these statistics and numbers, attempting to make light of any teenager’s
death. Far from it, I believe each one
of these teenagers was a soul made in the image of the God of the universe and,
for that reason, had value, meaning and purpose imbued into their very
existence.
If people truly want to figure out how to minimize these
school shootings, the question we should be asking isn’t about guns, but about
why these young men make the choice to go on these rampages. I believe the answer lies in what we teach them
about who and what they are.
Our society has for many years promoted a materialist
understanding of reality. By this I
refer to the view that the material universe is, as Carl Sagan liked to
famously point out, “all there ever was, all there is and all there ever will
be.” There is no room for the
supernatural and very little room for religion of any kind. As a consequence, our public school students,
in particular, learn from the time they are very young that they are nothing
but animals – higher order animals to be sure, but animals nonetheless. Oh you can fantasize about being “stardust”
and get all jittery and spine-tingly about it, but the consequence of this
belief system results in an understanding, learned all too well, especially by
testosterone laden young men, that human life has no true meaning, value or
purpose. We are merely cosmic protoplasm
that has developed for no particular reason into human animals due to forces
that operate without any morals, standards, or design. Thus, since we have no intrinsic value,
meaning or purpose, young men have nothing restraining them from engaging in
these kinds of acts. Moreover, this
nihilistic tendency absolutely follows from such a dim and dark view of reality.
Rather than asking why these shootings happen, we should really be asking why
don’t they happen more often.
Until we are prepared to acknowledge this reality, we will
never get a handle on the school shooting problem. If we keep teaching our children that they’re
nothing more than an accidental blip in the evolutionary ladder, our young men
will continue to believe their lives have no meaning, value or purpose. Once they imbibe this teaching, particularly
young men who have no influences outside school to give them some
counter-balancing, we’ll continue to get school shootings. Or go ahead and take guns away and you’ll get
kids crashing cars into crowds of students or kids using knives or baseball
bats or making homemade bombs or finding other inventive ways to take
lives. It’s not a gun question; it’s a
moral, philosophical and, most importantly, theological question.
There is, of course, an obvious way out. Allow students freedom to use their 1st
amendment rights to actually “exercise” their religion. That would mean that, yes, some students
would actually proselytize others. But
it also means that many Christian students and teachers would seek ways to
engage students with kindness and generosity and acceptance. They would be allowed to actually pray for
them while on school grounds without fear of reprimand. They would be allowed to actually speak the
name of Jesus or read the bible to others.
I’ll ask the question I asked a friend of mine years ago
when he claimed religion didn’t belong in schools: what are you afraid of? Are you worried that kids will become Christians
and will suddenly start treating each other with greater kindness and respect
and dignity. Oh, how awful that would
be.
I can hear the cacophony of “but what about homosexuality
and transgenders – you Christians are bigoted, misogynist, et ceteras when it
comes to those things. How can we trust
you to treat young men right? We don’t
feel like you treat us with kindness, respect and dignity.” Some who claim the name of Christ are not
always sensitive about how they present the gospel message; this is true. Yet, Jesus met a woman at a well who was a
sexual sinner of significant magnitude and he called her out on it. He wasn’t mean, nor did he dwell on her
sin. But he didn’t hide from it,
either. As Christians we have an
obligation to explain what the Bible teaches, even when it’s unpopular. The Bible teaches that everyone, including
lost young men, lost homosexuals, and lost transgenders have value, meaning and
purpose and that all who call on the name of Christ will be saved. It is absolutely necessary that Christians
explain what sin looks like, just as Jesus did with the woman at the well and
it should be done with reserve and respect.
But until someone recognizes they are a sinner, just like every other
human who has ever lived, save Jesus, they will never see the need to call on
the name of Christ. Those who claim the message is bigoted, etc. need to take
that up with the God of the universe – he inspired the writing of the book such
that it would say what it says. No man
simply wrote what was on his mind.
This is incredibly important to understand because Christianity
teaches, Jesus teaches, the Bible teaches, that all people are meaningful,
purposeful and valuable. The secular
materialist viewpoint teaches people have the value assigned to them by
society’s whims. Don’t get me wrong,
Christian beliefs won’t inoculate the schools from ever seeing another school
shooting. But it would sure go a long
way toward teaching these young men that their lives and other’s lives are
worth something. It’s really hard to
randomly start killing people if you think they’re something more than just a
mere animal. It’s even harder to do if
you believe your own life has value, meaning and purpose. But as long as we continue to teach children
they come from primordial slime, they’ll keep growing up to act like the slime
they’ve been told they are.
