For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. – John 6:33

Today’s Scripture Reading (October 12, 2017): John 6

Following the Las Vegas massacre, Trevor Noah of “The Daily Show” asked this question.

When is the time (to talk about guns)? If you say after a mass shooting is never the time, then you'll never have the conversation in America because there's a mass shooting almost every single day. When a plane crashes, we talk about plane safety immediately. When a bridge collapses, we talk about infrastructure immediately ... we seem to do everything to avoid talking about guns. So, just to keep track of the argument: Mass shooting, mass shooting, mass shooting...'We have to take care of this hotel check-in issue.'

I am tired. I am tired of hate. I am tired of reading about gun violence. I am tired of passive-aggressive social media entries that assume facts, not in evidence and slides toward hate. I am tired of division around the things that we seem to think is important, and even if they are important, I am tired of the negative feelings that are given life because of our division. I am tired of the way that we treat each other, berate each other, and bully each other. And every time it happens, every word that we speak in order to tear someone else down, we move closer to the next “worst ever domestic mass murder in history.”

I am for at least some kind of gun control. We don’t want North Korea to possess nuclear weapons, at least in part, because we don’t trust them with the technology. They haven’t proven that they are part of the global community and that they want to work with other nations toward peace. North Korea has not proven themselves to be a responsible nation, so keeping nuclear weapons out of their hands seems to be a very appropriate response. I believe that gun ownership is a right, but with all rights come responsibilities. And looking at the track record, we have not proven that we are responsible enough to own guns. So maybe someone needs to take our toys away.

Of course, someone should also take our social media accounts away as well, because we haven’t proven that we can be responsible there either. Social media has just become one more avenue for us to spread our hate and our fear. And in the church, the issue is magnified. We are the ones charged with the task of supplying “the bread of God” to the world. Jesus left us with a clear mandate, go and be a force in favor of life in everything that we do and with every word that we speak. While the rest of the world might want to suck the life out this world, we are the life givers. Jesus’s church will be a force for good.

I am not sure that that is the way that the world would describe the Christian church, but it isn’t too late to change the narrative and become the force for love that we were supposed to be. It is time that we left hate and fear behind, and that we began to measure all of our actions according to the life that we bring. Because “the bread of God” is inside of you, and it is time to let it loose among the people with whom you rub shoulders. It is time that the Christian Church brought life.  

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Matthew 15

Personal Note: Happy Birthday, Mom.