I don’t know what to say if you’re not angry, tired, frightened, frustrated, and exasperated by gun violence. We must all be heartbroken and disgusted. No matter your position on the Second Amendment, children being murdered in schools cannot be normalized in any civilized society. We shouldn’t shrug our shoulders and say, “Well, that’s the cost of freedom.” Death is an inevitability. We should all be so lucky as to die in our 90s, as we sleep in our beds, surrounded by people who love us. No child or adult should bleed out on a classroom floor, playground, or grocery store from wounds sustained after being gunned down by weapons designed to be used on the battlefield in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan.
It is as if we are all being tested. It seems that God is testing us. We are testing each other. I believe we are failing.
What is the test? What do we value more, human life or the “right” to be armed with the deadliest weapons humanity has ever created? Why is this right important? We must be armed, we are told, in case the government becomes tyrannical, and we need to defend ourselves. But, friends, if the government wants to kill us, no AR-15 or assault rifle will save you. They’ll send a drone. Look at all the terrorists we’ve killed around the world.
So, I return to the test’s original question: what is more important, human life or enabling anyone and everyone in society to take a life? How far are we willing to go to fail (or pass, depending on how deep down the rabbit hole we’ve fallen) this test? How many more children must be sacrificed for straw man arguments?
I am reminded of a story from a long time ago. There was a very devout man. God had called this man to be the father of his people. From him, a whole nation would grow and prosper even today. His life was a testament to faith and devotion to the one God who called him from his home to travel to new land thousands of miles away from his family and friends. He followed his God. He obeyed his God. He trusted his God. When others doubted God, Abraham believed in what he could not see, hear, feel, taste, touch, or embrace. Those tactile realities did not matter to him. God’s promises were a tangible reality enough. Abraham’s faith was unshakeable.
So, it seemed, and so it was, until one day, God appeared to test the core of Abraham’s faith. God asked Abraham to do something so horrific to consider. (And yes, it is horrific to ask a father to kill one’s son even though we, the reader, know the eventual outcome of the story and know this story is found in the Holy Bible.)
Imagine Abraham’s pain, fear, guilt, sadness, and grief. Abraham is not Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, or Captain Ahab. He is a flesh and blood human being with emotions like you and I. He and Sarah waited so long to conceive a child who brought great joy into their lives. And now, the God who had led and sustained them through perilous journeys and dangers was asking them to sacrifice (a holy word for murder) their only child. Surely Abraham was asking himself, has it all been worth it? Was this some cruel joke? Had God toyed with him for just this moment? Was this the only way he could show his loyalty, devotion, and love for God, by killing his son?
And so I would ask, in this test we face as Christians in America, is this the only way we can be the people of God or Americans, showing our loyalty, devotion, and love for our country by normalizing the killing of our children? This is our test.
Abraham was not one to second guess God. As difficult as the request was to hear and bear, he would do as the Lord required. He would take it if it were a test, and Isaac would die. If you want to look into Abraham’s eyes, you need not travel back in time. Just look at the family members from places as diverse as Uvalde, Buffalo, Sandy Hook, Parkland, and Nashville. You will see that same 10,000-yard stare. Abraham’s eyes. The look of a man asked to do the unthinkable—the look of people suffering the unimaginable. Children sacrificed on an altar called the culture war.
They went to a place called Mount Moriah. Altars were on high places, mountaintops. That’s where sacrifices were made. Today, people are sacrificed in classrooms with cubbyholes, grocery stores near the milk aisle, movie theaters, and high school cafeterias. People die in the sacred places of everyday life.
We do our best to protect our children from the dangers of the big evil world. Unfortunately, that’s getting harder to do. Whether it’s fentanyl or armor-piercing rounds and the need to buy bulletproof backpacks, there is a tacit acknowledgment that the world has changed. We must protect our children in the United States of America in ways no civilized country has to guard its children. I say this as someone who lived in Northern Ireland, a region of the United Kingdom that still has an active terrorist threat, had my car repeatedly searched for bombs, and was beaten in the streets. Somewhere along the way, we let our country change, and if we can still get Netflix and pizza on Friday nights, we are okay with a more violent country. Candlelight vigils and epidemic mental illness are the costs of freedom. As a person who believes in a man who said he was the truth and the life, I believe we are too easily accepting lies and death. That is actual heresy, unlike any opinion I’ve ever expressed online.
For the most part, most of the eight and nine-year-olds who found themselves in the crosshairs this week came from privileged families. They did not know violence. Yet for most of our children, mine included, active shooter drills are a way of life in our schools. My wife Mary just completed active shooter training in the Carrboro Town Hall. The saying, “Run, Hide, Fight,” is something we’ve all learned since the Columbine shooting in 1999.
Isaac didn’t grow up with active sacrifice drills. He had no idea what his father was doing or that he might be the sacrifice. Human sacrifice, both now and even in the ancient world, was considered an abhorrent practice. So why would his father kill him? Indeed, they would find a lamb on the mountain. Yes, it was odd they weren’t taking one along, but the thought never crossed Isaac's mind that he might be about to die. Those who died this week never thought they would go to school and never return home. Why would they think that way?
Can you imagine the terror in Isaac’s eyes, mind, and heart when his father tied him down and he realized he was the sacrifice? It is the same terror inflicted this week on the children and school administrators when they saw a shooter pointing an assault rifle at their bodies. I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m the next statistic. Dear God, tell my family I love them. Where is my mother, Sarah? Why is God doing this? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to guess what they were thinking. Oh God, no, not here, not now, not the children.
And what is Abraham thinking? I’m sure he is praying. “Dear God, stop this madness, stop this test, let me fail!”
That is my prayer today, what I call Abraham’s prayer. “Dear God, stop this madness; whatever test this is, let us, let me fail it. We are faithful; I am faithful. Find another way. In the name of God, let the killing stop.”