Pulling in the Wrong Direction

“Violence is what happens when we do not know what else to do with our suffering.”

- Parker J. Palmer

I am pleased to hear that authorities have taken into custody the shooter accused of killing Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark; and wounding State Senator John A. Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. I am quite troubled, however, by this game that gets played each time an act of violence like this occurs, which is so frequently that we have developed patterns.

This game is the “blame game.” The political binary seeks to lay blame as quickly as possible on the “other side,” assigning guilt to the political ideology and pointing fingers to prove the derangement of the opponent.

And I could do a lot of analysis on the “sides,” showing statistics about party affiliation and gun ownership, a rhetorical study of political language, or looking in the past to see that the overwhelming majority of mass shooters are male, between 20-40, white, with significant history of violence and some form of mental illness to draw conclusions. And those conclusions might be statistically accurate. But I think that they would miss something.

We are increasingly creating a world that generates suffering. Economic inequity, educational failure, lack of access to healthcare, housing, inadequate social safety nets, and a culture of violence that is displayed on screens everywhere, always with the “good guy” mercilessly killing the “bad guys,” thereby solving all of the plot problems with a bullet…or usually a whole lot of bullets…a rapidly changing world climate, and the impacts of “once in a lifetime” storms happening yearly all take their toll. Add to that the well-documented effects of social media on our mental health, which people in the US consume voraciously, and we have a deeply difficult world in which to live. The stress on everyone shows, albeit in different ways.

The MAGA movement has exposed a lot of things in our culture, and it has been difficult to admit some of those things. We are indeed meaner than I thought we were, perhaps even less moral. We have high percentages of people who are lonely, even despondent. They don’t have close personal relationships and, in fact, don’t even feel like they are worthy of them. That kind of feeling produces sadness at first, then anger and finally rage, even despair. And people who are desperate do crazy, even dangerous things. We now have signs at restaurants and stores, even at hospitals, that say something like, “abuse won’t be tolerated.” You might be thinking, of course it wouldn’t be, but that apparently needs to be said. We have political violence at what feels like unprecedented levels – think of the attacks over just the past couple of years – and, at least here in Oklahoma, we have armed ourselves even more heavily, adding fuel to the fire.

Where is our faith in all of this? Is this “culture of despair” only because we’re isolated economically and socially, or is it because we’re never taught how to live amongst people who are different with compassion and empathy, or to disagree agreeably? In a country where a majority of people identify as Christian, we might begin to wonder what a life of faith is doing for us…or maybe doing TO us? Why does such a high dedication to the “Prince of Peace” not produce a more peaceful world? Why does the religion that teaches us to “love our neighbor” produce so little love for neighbors?

The suspect in Minnesota, Vance Boelter, was a deeply religious man. He grew up Lutheran in Minnesota, not a stretch at all. But then, in his late teens, he was “born again,” which I find is code for some kind of evangelical/fundamentalist experience. After all, why would someone raised in the Lutheran church need to be “born again?” It is a hallmark of fundamentalism that their way is the onlyway, rendering any baptism/church life/dedication from a prior expression is meaningless.

We know that while he was an active participant growing up in his ELCA congregation, sometime after college he founded a website and claimed to have been ordained in 1993. So, he was an ordained preacher and a missionary, and perhaps affiliated in some way, according to his own documentation, with Christ for the Nations Institute, a part of the vast, nondenominational world of charismatic and fundamentalist Christianity. Suffice it to say that he clearly had all the “God” he could handle, and yet his God was apparently saying something to him that I find unrecognizable.

What troubles me is that this term “Christian” gets thrown around a lot, and there’s not much of a measure for what a Christian ought to look like. Perhaps better said, the measures we have are the weakest possible – were you baptized? Followed quickly with “in the right way?” Do you believe these central points about Jesus? There is little offered in the way Jesus lived. Is there any challenge offered, or does “Jesus is King” roll off the lips and straight onto the floor, never to confront the other kings around us?

I am troubled by so many things, and perhaps the one that haunts me the most is that not only is “the church” not addressing the most critical issues facing us – which are not abortion, same-sex marriage and gambling, by the way – it is actually making everything worse, pushing us farther away from each other, embracing the love of power and ignoring the power of love, while continuing to dispense a “gospel” that is good news to almost no one. It doesn’t heal the sick, tend to the poor, or visit the prisoner. It doesn’t do anything for the least of these, and increasingly little for the “most” of these. It is anemic and helpless to offer anything that confronts the eschatological crises that we face with anything other than more of the same.

Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had been raised.

On Sabbath he went to the synagogue as he normally did and stood up to read.

The synagogue assistant gave him the scroll from the prophet Isaiah.

He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me.
He has sent me to preach good news to the poor,
to proclaim release to the prisoners
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to liberate the oppressed,
and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the synagogue assistant, and sat down. Every eye in the synagogue was fixed on him.

He began to explain to them, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled

just as you heard it.”

Everyone was raving about Jesus, so impressed were they by the gracious words flowing from his lips. They said, “This is Joseph’s son, isn’t it?”

Then Jesus said to them, “Undoubtedly, you will quote this saying to me:

‘Doctor, heal yourself. Do here in your hometown what we’ve heard you did in Capernaum.’” He said, “I assure you that no prophet is welcome in the prophet’s hometown. And I can assure you that there were many widows in Israel during Elijah’s time, when it didn’t rain for three and a half years and there was a great food shortage in the land. Yet Elijah was sent to none of them

but only to a widow in the city of Zarephath in the region of Sidon.

There were also many persons with skin diseases in Israel

during the time of the prophet Elisha,

but none of them were cleansed.

Instead, Naaman the Syrian was cleansed.”

When they heard this, everyone in the synagogue was filled with anger. They rose up and ran him out of town. They led him to the crest of the hill on which their town had been built so that they could throw him off the cliff.

But he passed through the crowd and went on his way.

Let those who have ears hear.