This week, I wanted to introduce you a little more to Charles Wesley’s wife-to-be, Sally Gwynne, and her sister, Becky.  Sally and Charles have a really wonderful romance story to tell, and much of what makes it so is how interesting Sally Gwynne is as a person, and how completely uninterested John Wesley was in them as a couple. I love how Charles wrote all these hymns wondering if he was being unfaithful to Jesus by loving this woman (and yes, he did write a line suggesting he’d rather die than let romance ruin his walk with Christ).

Romantic love does weird things to us, causing us to question and challenge long-held beliefs.  It stirs up a sense of protection for the ones you love that requires us to have meaningful conversation about appropriate use of defense and force. Ethics gets all wonky when you have goo-goo eyes for someone, but that’s no reason to shut down the conversation. So good luck to you as you and yours attempt to have meaningful conversations around the future of gun violence in the most armed society on the planet…

“They will beat their swords into iron plows
        and their spears into pruning tools.
Nation will not take up sword against nation;
        they will no longer learn how to make war.” (Micah 4:3)

Here’s the deal…even iron plows and pruning hooks can be used to kill. When conservatives argue that gun laws don’t eliminate the problem of violence, they’re not wrong. We’ll find ways to be violent as long as there is sin in the world. The peaceable kingdom that Micah envisions echoes through all of scripture as a time when the violent tendencies to take what is not ours to take will disappear because God’s love is written on everyone’s hearts.  It’s a vision of a future when sin and suffering and pain and death are all a thing of the past. It’s a vision worth striving for, worth reaching for…at least, it is if we mean what we say when we pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

It is not enough to say that human violence is a “sin issue,” not a “gun issue,” and therefore a society organized by laws should not regulate stricter laws around gun control.  If it is truly a sin issue, we typically say that the best way to deal with sin as Christians is to repent of our wayward impulses, remove the temptation, and strive to live a life where that sin can no longer be displayed in our lives. Sure, stricter gun laws will not be the end of violence. But neither will giving everybody a gun be the end of violence. Forcing an ALL GUNS or NO GUNS debate sets up a ridiculous and false framework and makes any solution impossible for our society.

Brené Brown sums it up nicely in a recent blogpost:

“The only way to successfully bring about gun reform is if a critical mass of us are willing to have honest, tough, civil conversations outside of our ideological bunkers. Gun reform will not happen unless the silent majority of gun owners who passionately disagree with the NRA’s divisive rhetoric and complete lack of respect for responsible gun culture speak out and take political and economic action.  When we engage in the “us versus them” argument, we lose. The only person who wins is the person who owns the framing of the argument.”

(You simply must read her entire post at her website right now).

The United Methodist Church passed a resolution in 2016 and has resources for churches to engage the topic (Inform Yourself Here at umc.org).  Namely, we believe that prayer for victims of gun violence should lead to action: providing healing for communities affected by gun violence, Gun owners practicing gun safety, practice legal sales of guns, prohibiting guns on church property (yes, even for self-defense), and advocating for federal and state regulations (which are specified in the document).

I think that these High School students organizing protest is inspiring, and I have no idea what will come of it. But I want to believe with them that the mass shooting at their High School will be the last one.