Jesus and Open Carry

Here's one of those things I'll never get: Why is it that whenever there's a crisis involving personal weapons it involves a Christian organization? The latest problem child is the Open Carry Movement, where otherwise sane people think that they should be able to carry weapons everywhere.

The logic is pretty basic: Although violent crime over all has decreased over the last decade specific incidents have increased in number and fatality. The poster child has been the school shootings, which seemed to have increased in not just frequency but also the number of people killed and wounded. In order to combat this a number of otherwise regular people have responded by carrying weapons in plain sight so that potential shooters will think twice about using their own weapons.

Three factors are largely at work here. The first is the concept of deterrence; if a shooter sees someone willing to shoot back he is unlikely to take the first shot. Statistics back this one as the states where people carry firearms also tend to have the lowest number of murders and other violent crimes. The second is that a number of states have Stand Your Ground laws that allow someone to shoot first if he believes his life to be in danger. These laws have become a major headache in recent years. The third is that local ordinances prevent the carrying of pistols, but not rifles, thus somewhat encouraging the size of weapons to be largest available; after all, if you're going to carry something visible, you may as well make it as visible as possible.

The problem is that from a Christian perspective this makes for some interesting discussions. First off, let's be clear about one thing: This does not fall under the purview of the "Thou shalt not kill" commandment; The Bible makes a difference between murder and taking life as a means of punishment, military purposes, and that of self-defense. Although one can argue his personal beliefs, The Bible itself allows for the possibility of killing. However, some other issues do come to mind.

In and of itself, carrying a weapon is not an issue. Even The Bible allows for casual weapon carrying; as per Luke 22:35-38, Jesus even makes sure that his party has a means of defending itself (two swords apparently being enough) so obviously God has no problem with people arming themselves for self-defense. But Jesus also later rebukes Peter for using his sword against the soldiers sent to capture him (going back to the message that Christians need to obey the law of the land, of which Jesus was in violation of by His very nature (He was making some revolutionary changes, after all)). So you can defend yourself, just make sure that you are in the right.

However, there is the issue that carrying a weapon encourages its use. It's hard to turn the other cheek when you are carrying a weapon; a lost temper can easily result in a lost life. When you realize how few people that are carrying lack training in their weapons, in terms of shooting, maintenance, or legal, it is just asking for a potential slaughter, especially if two such groups encounter each other and neither backs down. An untrained person is going to look at his weapon first before other means, and that makes this just a matter of time before something bad happens. Once it does, and I feel it will, the legislation that is passed is not going to make anyone happy; we may be reduced to carrying dueling pistols.

Bottom line: I'm all for people carrying firearms, but only if they have the proper training for them and if the local laws carry stiff penalties for their misuse. The Open Carry movement makes me nervous as neither of these qualifications are being met, especially when you have people looking for the biggest, but not necessarily most effective, weapon they can get their hands on, and in states with a Stand Your Ground law. I'm hoping someone steps in soon and does something or there will be some pretty sad consequences coming.

The Desire to Be Loved

Part of the feminist movement that makes the more religious nervous is that sexual freedom has always been linked to it. The problem is not necessarily the act of sex in and of itself, but that are additional ramifications that act that need to be debated.For the sake of this discussion abortion and birth control will be ignored, as well as inheritance issues. Those are really just distractions.

A major part of the issue is that women want sex just as much as men do, but have more restrictions. Those restrictions have actually gotten worse since the Black Plague, when chivalry really started. The European world got a nasty shock when over a fourth of its people died in three years and so they did what they could to survive, which meant protecting the women at all costs. In Asia everything was about how everyone should remain in their spot, so women were locked into a subservient role. In the Middle East men and women were locked into their roles by religion. In the more civilized world, women were locked into their subservient role.

The bad news is that it put men in control of the sex, even though women enjoyed a number of protections. Yeah, it really sucked for the women. The most they could do was resist sex, but it was a bad idea.

[Interestingly, in more tropical climes women enjoyed more sexual freedom even though they were still stuck in specific roles. It seems that as a group became more civilized gender roles seemed to solidify and men took on a more governing role. When actual cities came into being women took over the home and men took over everything else. Europe was actually hitting a new stage where women were starting to take on some of the governing roles (women were allowed to lead men into battle in certain situations and women were beginning to be taken seriously as intellectuals). If not for the Black Plague, some feminists have estimated Europe would have seen gender equality by the 1600s.]

Suffice to say, chivalry sucked even more. It took women almost six centuries for women to dig out of that hole. However, as feminism has taken hold women have accrued more sexual freedoms. It needs to be noted that rich women and women on the fringe have enjoyed more freedoms; rich men had a lot to lose if their wives weren't happy and so turning a blind eye was worth it, while women on the fringe could pretty much make the rules up as they went. As long as long as the women didn't push too hard. It was an interesting societal contract.

Suffice to say that sexual freedom was a major component of the feminism movement; women wanted the same sexual freedoms of men. Somewhere along the way things got...weird. After the lead-up of the 1960s followed by the charge of the 1970s, the 1980s forced a cool-down thanks to the AIDS crisis. People actually started thinking about sex and its ramifications. One of the weirdest was that everyone, male and female, were expected to sow their oats in high school and college, but were to start settling down by their late twenties. Men were still expected to bring home the bacon and women were still expected to cook it, but then it got weirder. Really weird.

The most interesting aspect of this is that people lost track of what's happening on both sides. To put this in some sort of perspective, it needs to be pointed out that America puts more porn, more gay and lesbian movies, and is one of the leaders in amateur porn, yet is still seen as a puritanical country. The only thing you can't do in America that you can do almost everywhere else is buy sex without risk of legal issues (you can in some areas, but that's the exception to the rule). I'd really love to understand how people reconcile that.

It gets weirder when you realize that America is one of the few countries where a women can go to convention hall in a bikini and not only has the right to get offended if she is harassed, but can expect help if she asks for it. But that is somehow ignored. Another interesting trend is that boys can't lie about having sex in locker rooms any more; a  boy will not only get called on it if other boys think he is lying, but faces severe punishment (i.e. a beating) if he lies about the wrong girl. Heck, a boy that has too many partners is going to be looked down, and that only gets worse as he gets older.

Yeah, you heard that right: Men are subject to slut-shaming just as much as women.

The other side is that a lot of women like how they were treated under chivalry. That is, they like that they were treated like queens. The problem is that they want Chivalry Lite; they want the Royal Treatment, but not the pedestal that goes with it. This confuses a lot of guys. Combined with a lot of miscommunication (women love romcoms but if a guy acted like a man in a romcom he would arrested as a sex offender), and it's really hard not to see why .

It's really hard to not understand why a lot of men want a return to traditional values; men knew where they stood and faced a lot less uncertainty. Making it worse is that you have a lot of women that say they want the same thing, but it's just more Chivalry Lite; they want the protections offered women, but not have to deal with a lot of the limitations. Suffice to say, a lot of guys are getting in a lot of trouble.

Sorry if it's a bit long-winded. Suffice to say that a lot of church leaders are facing some interesting issues. On one hand, if religion doesn't change with the worshippers it gets discarded, and legitimately as it is no longer relevant. On the other what people like about it is that it can be like the unchanging security blanket you can always hide under when things get scary. The problem is that people have figured out something else they can do under that blanket, and church leaders aren't really sure what to do about it...

Converts and Compromise

Too many people tend to focus on conversions by the sword, possibly because as kids it was easier to understand them. It's just easier to imagine oneself leading a charge against the heathen for the glory of God and saving their souls from a fiery death than it is to envision a more peaceful conversion over time.

The reality is of course that most religions tend to frown on conversions by threats of death. Ignoring the obvious issues that those converted thus are more likely to betray their converters, there is also the question of whether or not the believe with their heart and, more importantly, soul. In fact, most conversions happen by example and over time.

European pagans did not become Christians because of the vast armies sent forth to defeat them, especially when you realize that they were far better warriors than those sent to pacify them, and actually lived for battle. However, the riches present in the Christian cites gave them pause, and the healthier living made a lot of them question their own lifestyles. The Christian towns were also better defended than theirs and virtually invincible against their armies. It was just easier to be a Christian as the benefits easily outweighed the few disadvantages.

The Church welcomed these new recruits a little hesitantly, but some concessions were made. A number of holidays were added or modified to accept them. Christmas, for example, was combined with Saturnalia to form a combination of celebration of Christ's birthday as well as to celebrate the passing of the old year into the next. Samhain was changed into a celebration of saints in order to keep the idea that the dead should be honored. The cerebration of Christ's resurrection was combined with spring fertility celebrations to give us a holiday where rabbits hid eggs.

Of special note is the Thor's Hammer I wear as a cross. Just as the Vikings were turning from raiding to exploration they converted en masse to Christianity. A compromise was made taking advantage of the shape of the most popular Viking holy symbol and allowing it to be worn as a cross. The barbarians at the gate often became the petitioners in church, praying to a more peaceful god that ended up giving them greater health and prosperity, all because of followers that were willing to compromise in order to make things easier for their estranged brothers and sisters to join them.

Atheists in Fox Holes

Christians need to back off of atheists on a number of different areas, one of them being foxholes. The military needs to be a melting pot of different ideas if it is going to adapt and survive, and that includes religion as well. Atheists should not be looked down on because they approach things from a different direction than their Christian brethren, and that should not be happening.

Atheists approach death different from their religious brethren. While most of their religious brethren believe in some form of life after death, be it Heaven, reincarnation, or some mixture of the two, or even something different, an atheist tends to approach death nihilistically or head on. Some live their life as if any day could be their last, with the ideal that no one will forget them when they are gone. Others dread each day because it could be their last, but still wanting to ensure that their lives meant something. This means that while some charge straight in, others tend to be more cautious. Both approaches tend to be good for the military.

A gung-ho attitude properly leavened with caution is not necessarily a bad attitude. A soldier, especially the lower ranks, needs to be able to head into danger; sometimes the battle takes then into danger. You need to be able to charge when needed, and someone who is not worried about a higher power but instead his own morality is sometimes able to go where no one else can. Atheists tend to be passionate about what they do, and sometimes that passion is needed on the battlefield.

Even in the higher echelons that passion can be well-used, as it provides the necessary passion to focus on the job and to persevere no matter what. A leader should be passionate about what they do, as well as have clear-cut morals; an atheist who is willing to risk his life is scarier because he knows he only has one life to give, and he's going to make it count.

Of course, the more nihilistic need to be weeded out before they hit a leadership role just as the more fervorous religious do. They may be willing to sacrifice too much in order to get the job done, or even send good soldiers to die when there is no reason. However, just like all other types there are those that need to be weeded out as the majority serve and serve well.We need to value them just as much as their religious brethren in arms.

The Broken Theory of Religion and Control

One of those topics that invariably amuses me is that atheists honestly think that religion has some sort of control over world events, despite all of the evidence to the contrary. It comes up often enough that you really have to wonder if these people paid  attention to those mandatory history classes.

Look at the Christian branch. One of the first acts by a human is the rebellion of Adam and Eve. If God had so much control over his subjects then there the Serpent's Temptation would never have succeeded. Instead, the Serpent just had to ask the right questions and let Eve form her own opinion. Within the hour she and Adam were hot-footing it out of the Garden of Eden. (And I'd hasten to remind the class that Adam was right there, so he's just as culpable a Eve for not saying anything.)

And then there's religion in history. If the Church held such power there would never be schisms, those times when churches branched off and separated from Rome, such as the Reformation Church caused by the 65 Theses of Martin Luther. Or the Church of England, when Henry VIII decided that, yes, divorce is acceptable and that the nobles decided that a live divorcee was better than a dead daughter. For that matter, If the Catholic Church were truly all that powerful Galileo would not have been able to annoy more than his fair share of high-level clergy; he would have "disappeared" very early in his career.

Consider the Crusades. The Pope woke up one morning to find all of these armies camped out on his lawn asking for his blessing. If he had had any control he would have known about it well ahead of time and probably even fomented it rather than basically going, "Um, sure, let me get my robes on<" and then blessing the assembly and taking advantage of the situation. This would lead to the formation of the Templars, who would demonstrate Church control by being outlawed by King Philip of France and their lands being taken by the crown. Obviously the Church was in control.

Even when it came to modern events the Church ha bowed to temporal events. The Caholic Church felt the need to sign a treaty ensuring that it would not interfere with Germany in exchange for the safety of it members in Europe; Germany would not send its members to the gas chambers until the last days of the war. Even its off-shoots had had to deal with current events; the Episcopalians have had to start allowing gay clergy to appease their community.

In short, religion lacks a lot of ability to control it members that has been ascribed to it. There has just been a lot less control exerted by it than imagined, and that difference makes for some great comedy moments.