Guns

Matthew 21:40 - "When, therefore, the landlord comes, what do you think he will do to those farmers?"

Jesus stops his parable short, because he wants to see what the chief priests and elders are thinking. He wants to know how they would handle such a situation. It is an interesting psychological question. Yet, before we look at their answer, I'd like to think about those farmers. Usually, when someone does something as far out of the norm as they did, white, American men go straight to "crazy" or "mental illness" as an explanation - only if they are white though. Otherwise, it's terrorism.

So, excluding mental illness, what are other possible reasons, not excuses, for their behavior? A grudge, perhaps they were mistreated somehow, perhaps the slaves demanded more than the agreed upon amount of fruit or mistreated them in some way, perhaps the vineyard did not yield enough for the farmers to live on after the landlord took his share. It took me less than five minutes to come up with these ideas. Surely we can do better as a society.

There was a school shooting in Parkland, Florida yesterday. It was the 18th school shooting in the US since January 1. All the Republicans seem to be able to say about that is 1> "thoughts and prayers," which does diddly for the grieving families and friends or for other children at risk, and 2> "mental illness," which paints all mentally ill people as violent and untrustworthy. Having a mental illness is hard enough without this added slur. Of course, the person is excused with mental illness only if they are white. All non-white people are "terrorists."

It is so heartbreaking to see so many families go through this unnecessarily. It's heartbreaking and frustrating to see our senators and representatives do nothing because they misread the second amendment or because they want to protect their NRA donations. I feel so powerless and helpless every time this happens. The people who actually have power to change this, won't. Such refusals are spineless and disgraceful and we should keep pushing them to act.

Yet, it's easy to point fingers in these situations. It's much harder to look at ourselves and ask, "What have I done?" It's easy to think we are powerless because we feel powerless. But .. feelings are not facts. We do have power when we join together. Chances are, there is an organization in your area that is already working on solving this problem. If your heart tells you to contact them, now is a good time. It's Lent, a time for confession and repentance. Working to make the world a better place is a good penance for our previous inaction.

I need to repent too. I used to call my own Republican Senator (Portman), but he's pretty hopeless - a true believer. I have stopped calling and writing because it feels hopeless. For today, I will again begin calling and writing and letting him now how I feel on this issue. Then, I will find a group working on gun control either in Cleveland, the state of Ohio, or the US and see how I can help them. Finally, I will write to editors of newspapers and urge them to push back against the narrative that white shooters are "mentally ill" and non-white shooters are "terrorists."

What about you?