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News Blogs
 
Church shootings
By Carl Strock
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
I’m interested in the different responses of the two church congregations that have gotten shot up recently. First the fundamentalist megachurch in Colorado Springs last December, and second the Unitarian-Universalist Church in Tennessee just the other day. The fundamentalist New Life Church in Colorado Springs professes belief in the Bible as “infallible and inerrant.” Does that mean that the members of the church meekly offered themselves to more gunshots last December, seeing as how Jesus, in the Bible, enjoins them to turn the other cheek? Not at all, they engaged one of their members as a security guard when they got wind of trouble, and when the shooter burst into their church, the security guard gunned him down. Gunned him down and then gave thanks to God for steadying her hand. The Unitarian-Universalist Church, meanwhile, is about as loose theologically as you can possibly get. The one in Tennessee says on its Web site that its members are “encouraged to develop their own personal theologies” and further, “we believe in the authority of reason and conscience.” They’re liberal humanists who give no more importance to the Bible than to any other religious or philosophical book. So how did they react to being shot at? According to a witness, one of the ushers stood up and “put himself in between the shooter and the congregation” and got killed by doing so, whereupon other congregants tackled the shooter and held him for the police. So the non-literalist usher acted in a way that Christians like to think is distinctly Christian: He sacrificed himself for others. The Bible-thumping Christians opened fire. As a connoisseur of irony, how can I not relish this?
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December 3, 2008
1:40 p.m. [ Suggest removal ]
The real question should be why does a church need an armed guard? Who do these Christians pray to and what do they pray for that requires armed protection.
4:40 p.m. [ Suggest removal ]
Well, there seem to be two schools of thought. One uses human lives to combat terrorism. The other uses tactics & tools for the same purpose. Essentially it all depends on how much you value life, and in particular, how much you choose to place your life on the line for another. Assuming you value anothers life more than your own, for whatever reason, you place yourself between the violent attack, and the intended victim. If however you choose to value your life more than another, you could choose to take no action, or wait until there is a general move to action, and join in. Lastly, if you have considered all this, and you feel the need to prepare for such events, you might choose to develop tactics & tools, to counter the threat. With diligent practice you would then have options that could well allow action that results in no harm to anyone, or at most harm only to the attacker. Often such skill results in harm, but not fatal harm.
It's all how much you choose to act, not react in the moment. To many, this awareness of the moment IS a reflection of their reverence to the Absolute.
Tim