A Virtual Church

Swords and plowshares

Today

In the eighth century BCE, Assyria was the great leader in the western world. God’s people in Judah lived under a long list of both good and bad kings. Isaiah, a major prophet of the Old Testament, outlines the sins of a people, the destruction their sin wrought, and the restoration God brings at the end of the suffering.

In Chapter Two, Isaiah outlines what will transpire in the “days to come,” if the people will listen to the instructions of God and walk in his ways.

Isaiah says, “For out of Zion shall come forth instruction that God will judge between nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

Stop right there. Isaiah shared this vision thousands of years ago, but there are weapons of war that proliferate our country. Too many people die at the hand of the grieved and angry. God’s vision of a world where weapons are re-tooled into farm implements and the world thrives in peace and reconciliation, is not yet realized. And the killing continues.

Charlie Kirk’s assassination is just the latest of deaths brought about by a killer with a gun and a gripe on his mind. The young killer of Charlie Kirk was a 22-year-old Mormon who was raised in a gun culture and taught how to shoot like a marksman. Regardless of what anybody thinks about Charlie Kirk, he should not have died this way.

Kirk was young, passionate about his cause, and persuasive among the Gen Z followers he gathered by the millions. I may disagree with some of what he said, but I disagree with what a lot of people say. It never crosses my mind to go out and kill them.

The list of killings and the rising concern among those who serve in our government – state and national, as well as our judiciary - is growing, yet nothing concrete is changing the cultural failures that fuel the chaos, angst, and death.

Heated rhetoric bombards us unvetted on social media. It is programmed 24-hours a day on news media too slanted for objectivity.

Until we find our way back to civil discourse, active listening, and smart gun control, we will continue along a path of violence and death.

Our understanding of free speech and second amendment gun rights is skewed. Speech that is intended to spur discord cannot be what the framers intended. Neither is automatic and semi-automatic weaponry anything the framers would have even imagined. The killing power among the gun owners in our nation is beyond the pale. We are experiencing what a fascination with guns does to create chaos and pain.

Swords into plowshares, like the lion laying down with the lamb, are ancient imagery of what the kingdom of God looks like. The second creation story reveals the problem. The human quest for dominance and power drives us away from what is good and into a very distorted expression of who we are called to be as God’s beloved.

Charlie Kirl’s death is the result of the availability of high-powered weapons and poor judgment on the part of a family. We cannot think nothing will happen when people are fed a diet of vitriol. Neither can we expect young people, who wean themselves on weapons, treat guns like there are no consequences for using them.

Very few people want the kind of peace envisioned by the prophets. As long as we have big sticks, bully pulpits and a microphone or social media platform, and as long as there are people affirming even our worst instincts, the merry-go-round of death, offering of prayers, and media attention puffing up the warped ego of bad kings will continue.

Charlie Kirk is not an anomaly. He is one of many shot down in their prime for no good reason. I think of the footage of Jack Kennedy shot in the back of his car in a parade in Dallas, MLK shot on a balcony in Tennessee, Robert Kennedy killed in a kitchen in California.

I think of Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, Harvey Milk, Emmit Till, and all the others whose deaths mar our history. We have not learned. At this point in the history of the United States we appear to relish the killings and the militias and the campaigns of intimidation and retribution.

Charlie Kirk’s death is being used as a rallying cry to blame the Democrats. There is no voice of reason and peace, of plowshares coming from the top. Shame is too tame a word for the unconscionable ramblings of a thoughtless man.

A reader posed a question to me: “Do you think we are too far gone to change our outcome?”  We stand to risk our democracy and our civilization in the current barbarism we find all around us.

Lib Campbell is a retired Methodist pastor, retreat leader, columnist and host of the blogsite www.avirtualchurch.com. She can be contacted at libcam05@gmail.com 

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