Peace Hacks

Nobody agrees that “the right to bear arms” should be interpreted as “the right to bear any firearm you want.” It’s illegal to own an RPG, for example, or an anti-aircraft gun. Bombs, grenades, poisonous gas, tanks, land mines, incendiary weapons, etc., are all illegal because there are crazy people who would use them.

So, somewhere between the hunting rifle and the rocket propelled grenade launcher, we have to draw the line. Following the Uvalde shooting, we’re once again having a big fight about where that line should be.

For anti-gun-control folks, any attempt to move the line towards more control is a threat to all gun ownership. But that isn’t born of a love for guns, or freedom, it’s based on a years-long, growing mistrust of government. “They’ll come for our AR-15’s first,” as it’s commonly prophesied, “but it won’t stop there.” This crowd will rightfully cite multiple episodes from human history when a law was passed that ultimately led to a dictatorship-level loss of freedom.

I’ll point out that none of those examples come from American history.

Also missing from this side’s analyses are examples of other Western, first-world countries where gun control laws are much stricter than they are here, and their levels of gun violence (including mass shootings), much lower. It is illegal to own an assault-style rifle in New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, for example, all countries whose mass shooting rates are far lower than ours. In all of those countries, guns are still legal.

After a British gunman killed 16 people in 1987, the country banned semiautomatic weapons like those he had used. It did the same with most handguns after a 1996 school shooting. It now has one of the lowest gun-related death rates in the developed world. In Australia, a 1996 massacre prompted mandatory gun buybacks that saw, according to some estimates, as many as one million firearms melted into slag. The rate of mass shootings plummeted from once every 18 months to, so far, only one in the 26 years since. Canada also tightened gun laws after a 1989 mass shooting. So did Germany in 2002, New Zealand in 2019 and Norway last year.

There are more than a few governmental administrations that imposed strict gun laws that didn’t spiral into some Nazi-style, 0 gun state.

It’s also argued that we have a “mental health issue, not a gun issue,” and that we should tackle the former before we do anything else. Amen on the mental health issue; only a twisted emotional state can convince someone to go to war with children and defenseless teachers. You’ll get no argument from me that America has a significant problem that needs immediate attention.

But how long it would take to develop a system that can identify the next 5 mass shooters, especially those who’ve shown no definitive signs of mental unhealth that warrant some kind of law enforcement intervention? It would take decades at the least. In the meantime, scores of children would be gunned down. If you’re OK with that, I can’t help you, and you’ll understand why I’m not interested in your perspective on abortion.

Another argument against gun control is that schools simply need tighter security. Sounds good at first, but when you compare the exorbitant cost of providing armed security for every school in the nation to the cost of simply banning semi-automatic rifles, you’ll understand my frustration with this argument. The level of security required to repel would-be shooters at, again, every school in the country, requires government spending that I don’t want to support financially but would be forced to.

With regards to personal freedom, what’s worse, a relative few people being banned from owning assault-style rifles, or half of America forced to pay for something they don’t agree with?

You’ve heard it said that banning these kinds of weapons is an assault on America’s deepest value. I’m lost on that one too. We are not a nation of laws, we are nation of freedoms, but when a bunch of people try to do life in the same country, you’ll get a few opposing opinions about what’s permissible and what’s not. Without laws, people will act in ways that infringe on the freedoms of others.

For example, at one point in our history, there were people who wanted to drive their cars as fast as they pleased. But that resulted in the deaths of people who chose to drive at a more reasonable speed. So, we passed laws that restricted the speed limit. We didn’t launch some decades-long national campaign to try and deal with the underlying emotional causes of speeding, we simply passed laws and punished accordingly. It was the cheapest, fastest, most reasonable way forward.

Whenever someone abuses their right to own, act, choose, whatever, in a way that infringes on the freedom of others, laws will follow. I don’t know a better way to define the word “democracy.”

Regardless of where you stand on anti-assault-style weapon regulations, they’re coming, as they should. Every time a bunch of kids are gunned down, more anti-gun-control lawmakers will step over to the dark side, the scales will tip, and we’ll make our laws.

Assault-style rifles and a few other semi-automatic weapons in the US will ultimately be banned. But don’t worry, America, it won’t happen today. We’ll get there, eventually, years from now, then look back on today and ask, “how could we have been so stupid?”

Between then and now, we’re going to bury a lot of kids, and all we had to do was pass one simple law, like we’ve done so many times before.

Shame on us.

Every year I take a trip to Costa Rica to pursue a very large bucket list item: surfing. I finally got to go for the first time since COVID, and my neighbor tagged along, so this trip was extra special.

There’s no way to get torn up in the ocean for 2-3 hours a day without a good celebration after, so I planned on taking a break from my alcohol break, just for the week. Upon my return, theoretically, I would continue my year-long abstinence campaign.

We hired a surf instructor who took us to Playa Grande on day 1. Paddling out to the back break was murder and I spent enough time in the water to remember that I’m still not the best surfer in the world. For the record, it’s not a good idea to slam a burger and a pina colada before paddling out into the big stuff.

During our week, Ryan and I didn’t drink a ton, but we drank daily, toasted our efforts, walked on beaches, talked about many things, and relaxed sans children. We really needed a break from at-home dad life.

It was a memorable trip, but I can’t say that it was more fun than my trip to Hawaii with Elaine in March. I didn’t drink then but had an equally amazing week. On this Costa Rica trip, drinking was fun, but it didn’t add any overall value; I won’t be tying the best memories to alcohol.

One of the things I’ve noticed about this no-booze journey is that my life is not worse off without it. When I reflect on the past 7 months, I don’t see desolation, dead trees, and grey skies like I do when I look to a future without alcohol. There have been good times and bad, like always, but it’s been no different than my life with booze, save the following exceptions:

First, I’m much more patient with the kids. Earlier this week, our 11-year-old Amara was packing for her first school-sponsored overnight trip. We were going through her list and ran into a huge, unexpected hurdle about the need to bring extra shoes. It took three hours and a 500-word essay to resolve.

I kept my cool the entire time.

Since I stopped drinking, episodes where kids are being unreasonable, and dad responds by losing his bacon have been few and far between.

Second, something happened a few days into the trip that surprised me. All of a sudden, and for no apparent reason, my emotional wellbeing took a bit of a dive. I was happy to be at the beach with a good friend but struggled with a bit of depression that I haven’t felt in a long time. It all went away around cocktail time of course, then returned the next day, making cocktail time a bit more important than it should’ve been.

Here’s a working theory on what happened and why: whatever I gained in 7 months of no booze came on gradually, almost imperceivably. When I dove back into drinking, it went away fast, so fast that it made my head spin. It might be that the benefits of no booze weren’t apparent until they suddenly disappeared.

Back on the wagon, I’ve been home for two weeks, maybe struggling a little but I know that won’t last long. I don’t feel guilty about taking a break, mainly because it was intentional and because of the many things I’m reminded of.

As all my trips to the beach, this one is now part of my favorite memories, something I’ll reflect on when I’m older and/or when life is nothing but the beach. Again, these memories have little to do with alcohol, and more to do with time away from the rigors of my life here, the ocean, getting .005% better at surfing, and hanging out with a friend.

The funnest part about the alcohol started a few weeks before the trip, dreaming about the freedom of drinking a beer after surfing, or sitting at a sweet oceanside bar sipping cocktails. When I look back on the trip, it would have been just as fun booze free. The same memories would’ve been made, and nobody would’ve gotten sick at Playa Grande after 2 hours in waves that were too big for us, funny as that was.

Common to Christianity worldwide is the belief that the Bible represents the values, perspectives, desires, expectations, history, and moral precepts of God himself.

To the vast, vast majority of non-Christians worldwide, that’s hogwash, but if that’s you, please keep it to yourself; us believers get really grumpy when folk trash the Bible. It’s OUR book, for crying out loud, and we can’t understand why non-Christians refuse to embrace it. Never mind that it’s been used throughout history as a call to war, or that it tells an occasional story of God commanding his people to perpetrate atrocities, or that it just can’t seem to jive with contemporary life.

Up until my early thirties, I saw the bible as a weird collection of writings that had something to do with God and church. I then stepped onto planet Evangelical and got more bible than I could ever want, ultimately enrolling in a 4-year master’s-level study that focused heavily on even more bible-related things.

Today, I have a view of the bible influenced by academia, friendships with people on both ends of the faith spectrum, and now, a two-year COVID-induced break from church. To the idea that the bible is the “word of God,” I have some thoughts.

You’ve likely heard that “Constantine collated the New Testament,” i.e., the books of the bible were written hundreds of years after the time of Jesus, then curated by people of immense power and a nefarious political agenda. I also hear a lot about our modern bibles being copies of copies of copies; it can’t possibly represent what was originally written.

There’s certainly some evidence to support these perspectives, otherwise you wouldn’t have PhD-level folk writing so much about them. But the associated historical/archaeological data (there’s a lot, go figure) paints a much more complicated picture, one that’s embraced by an equally impressive number of PhD-level folk who tell a much different story.

I know this will make you sad, but I’m not going to nerd out on all of that. If you want to study the origins of the bible more deeply, I’d ask that you consider both sides of the story – all the data, like we should with any hotly debated issue – not simply the one that reinforces what you already believe.

I do however want to make a couple of important points about the idea that God wrote a book.

First, why a book? Can’t God simply come down and tell us what he wants us to do/believe? Christians say that’s exactly what he did, but instead of thundering his commands from heaven with lightning and chaos, he took the form of a human loser and gathered a large following of other human losers, some of whom recorded his odyssey for future generations.

A book is important because it is dismissible. I have the freedom to say yes or no to it, and the God of the bible seems to respect human freedom, even to our peril. An easy-to-dismiss collection of almighty precepts seems right up his alley. If he instead showed up as a towering monster who squashes anyone who gets in his way, we would be forced to believe, and I don’t think love works that way.

I’m OK with the idea that God decided to communicate via the writings of humans, hard as that is to believe.

What’s much more difficult are the parts of the bible that don’t square with my idea of justice. Again, there are stories in the Old Testament especially that should turn your stomach.

Consider the story of Jericho for example: the Israelites, now free of their Egyptian captivity, are commanded to attack, and promised a great victory. As such this story is frequently used as an example of how God loves his people, how we can trust him, etc.

I think it’s an awful story, for both sides involved. The horror of that day is not something that we should turn into a sweet Sunday morning church tune.

When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.

Only a sick individual could walk away from that day, covered in blood, screams of children still ringing in their ears, thinking, “Yay! We won!!” At the least, their thoughts about God would be different than before the walls of Jericho fell.

If we were given some kind of rationale this might make more sense. If we could, for example, go far into the future and see that Jericho blossoms into something akin to Nazi Germany, that might help a little; I could understand this story the way I understand the many times that us mortals have gone to war. But we’re given nothing. The multiple human rights violations of Jericho seem pointless, and in their pointlessness, unjust.

But it doesn’t stop there. The bible has a few moral precepts that seem over the top to me. If the bible is the word of God, and God is love, why is he so hard on things like human sexuality, for example? Christians throughout history have waged war on this front (while completely ignoring so many others), beating people over the head, refusing to bake cakes, completely alienating themselves from the non-churchy world, etc., etc.

But if God is against something, shouldn’t we be? If the bible is the word of God, and it calls something an “abomination,” shouldn’t we go to war against it? So many Christians over so many hundreds of years would say yes. While I understand this sentiment, and have a waning compassion for it, I don’t agree that the bible is a declaration of war.

But, as a bible-believing Christian, I have to square with these things that don’t line up with my understanding of reality. Following are the basics of how I’ve managed that over the years.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that God, via humans, penned the Old and New Testaments and made sure that it was preserved throughout the centuries. There would be one thing about these books that nobody should argue.

ken [ ken ] noun
knowledge, understanding, or cognizance; mental perception: “an idea beyond one’s ken.”

If God exists, and he’s capable of creating a universe, his ken would be more extensive than ours, i.e., his ability to understand things, grasp concepts, and operate in the best interests of humanity would forever outstrip ours.

That’s insulting to a planet of people who’ve gotten a bit too impressed with discovery and accomplishment. The idea that there are things too far removed from our ability to understand is anathema to us, as is the idea that our ignorance far outstrips our knowledge.

But us, trying to understand the entirety of the cosmos, is not unlike a four-year-old trying to learn how to drive a car. He doesn’t have the reach, there are things he simply can’t understand. Mom and Dad could sit with him all day long and try to explain but it’s not going to happen.

And if Mom and Dad wrote an over-simplified version of how our world works, there would be some things he’d agree with and others he wouldn’t. Parts of this document would seem patently unjust. If you’ve tried to raise kids, you know the difference between your ken and theirs, and how they react when you tell them to do something that isn’t “fair.”

If God wrote a book, it would, at times, seem unjust to me. It would contain moral precepts that seem little more than prudish overreach. There would be some things that make sense to be sure, and others that simply wouldn’t add up. To that, St. Paul commented:

…the foolishness of God is wiser than humanity’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than humanity’s strength.

If God wrote a book, it would also have to be unique for me to buy in. Why not embrace the book of Mormon, or Quran, or dig up some old clay tablets from ancient Ugarit? What’s the difference? These religions reference holy books that rival the bible’s nonsense, so why pick the bible?

I’m not going to exalt its content over that of other holy books. I will however point out that the bible’s version of anthropology, soteriology, and atonement (equally emphasized in other holy books) has no rival in religious thought. Nerdy words, I know, but if you believe the bible on these three issues alone, you can’t judge others, you can’t exalt someone for their religious heroics, or exalt yourself over someone else. You’re forced to accept your own glory along with everyone else’s. And if you can’t forgive, unconditionally, you are no Christian.

The highest values in the bible are peace, mercy, justice; things that would turn this world on its head if the bible-believing people – just the bible-believing people – truly believed.

Either way, a God who has very strict rules but finds a way to unconditionally accept a humanity that is too week to follow them won’t be found in any other book.

It is, at its core, alien.

When I read a Jericho-ish story, or consider the bible’s prudish precepts, I’m forced to live in the tension between feeling like these are wrong and embracing a God who doesn’t think like I do. When I encounter these, I’m not going to develop a theology that places them at the center. There are too many other passages that are clear, easy to understand, and directly applicable to the human predicament.

And because of the bible’s alien call to unconditionally love my fellow humans, you won’t find me using it to justify some kind of war against people who don’t believe like I do.

But if I follow Jesus’ example, I might find myself at war with the people who do think like I do.

For bible-believers who uses our holy book to justify the sins within the church while condemning those without, I’ll continue my constant annoying reminder that the bible calls us to something much more difficult, and far less convenient.