You do not need guns. It is possible to live without them. And yet you are very possessive of your guns. You feel that you cannot give them up. But that is an addiction, a false dependency. As an addiction, it looms large in your life. It constrains you to give yourself reasons why guns are necessary and to fight for your right to own the guns of your choice. But you do not need guns; you need a Higher Power.
We can live without the second amendment. Other nations do. It has not made us a better or more exceptional nation because we have it. We can live without it; we cannot live without Love.
Our children can grow and flourish without guns and without violent video games and entertainment; they cannot grow and flourish without Compassionate Love.
Weapons of war will never secure us. They have only added to our insecurity, whereas, the One in whose image we are created holds our lives together, even in the midst of trial and tribulation. Rooted in God, our true center, we find that, rather than live in fear of others, we can enter into the suffering of others in order to serve them in love—even in the face of death.
By the love of God, we can grieve with those who grieve. We can grieve in a way that is true to grief, to the way the Spirit of God grieves. We can grieve with compassion that engages others, not with platitudes, but with repentance and change that moves toward healing.
Love constrains us to act. It will have us act in concrete ways that align with true needs. Love does not pit one addiction against another. Love does not pit one kind of politics against another, one ideology against another, one set of beliefs against another. Love responds to the needs present in a way that is timely and real.
With the love of God, we are freed from trying to force others to conform to our way of thinking (or to our addictions). As St. Paul says, “Love does not insist on its own way.” Love does not have us fighting others over beliefs and values as if they too were addictions that we cannot live without. Rather, love will simply direct us to the actual needs of the moment and will have us work for true life-giving change.
The change we desire for our nation, the end of the stream of mass shootings, will make little progress without the relinquishing of our addictions, our political tribalism, and our insistence on having our own way—surrendering these (and ourselves) to the God who is Love. Let love act! Do what love directs us to do!