Another tragic shooting. Lives lost. Families, friends, and an entire community forever marked with unimaginable grief.
Law enforcement, health care professionals, media outlets, and political leaders all swarm to the scene to do their jobs. As remaining victims fight for their lives and loved ones pray for mercy, police secure the perimeter and investigators search for clues. Yet what took only minutes for one gunman to rip apart, an army of well trained, well-intended responders can never repair.
We search through the continuous, every angle news coverage for an explanation that will comfort us. But there is no comfort at the scene. A false religion’s radical ideology seems to have given a man the motivation and permission to take the lives of forty-nine innocent people and injure dozens of others. Whatever that is, it is not an explanation that explains anything at all.
That was Orlando on June 12, 2016.
The United States Supreme Court ruled on Monday to strike down Texas law that required abortion clinics to provide “ambulatory surgical center requirements common to most outpatient facilities…[It also required] abortionists to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the abortion facility to be able to handle emergencies when something goes wrong” (The Weekly, ERLC, June 27, 2016).
Rather than treating abortion providers as healthcare professionals concerned about the life and welfare of women, the Supreme Court endorsed a business model for abortion clinics that is more closely aligned to a payday loan franchise than a doctor’s office. The ruling confirmed that abortion is an industry designed to profit from the weakest and most vulnerable among us.
But we did not need the Supreme Court to illustrate that for us. One year ago, videos were released so all of us could see the cool operators of abortion clinics negotiating a profit for the well-formed parts of aborted babies. In natural dinner conversations, they spoke of greater profit margin for more valuable parts. In one video of the actual harvesting of a baby, the abortion provider declared the baby was a boy. She knew he was not fetal matter or a blob of tissue, yet she removed his parts for sale.
Abortion providers deflected. Congress stalled. And the rest of us went on vacation.
That was summer 2015.
These are only two examples of our growing culture of apathy toward the value of human life. The response from the left is more gun control for those who want to own guns legally and less healthcare oversight for those who want to abort babies. The response from the right is to close our borders to refugees and to restrict religious freedom for Muslims.
This pragmatic view of human life from both the left and the right reveal that our problem is not political but theological.
In contrast to the left or right, Gospel people, those of us redeemed by Jesus, are called to a priority that is bigger than the political rhetoric in our 24-hour news cycle. We are called to something greater than our nationalist pride or even our personal rights.
Jesus met up with some political operatives from time to time that were more concerned about their kingdom than His. On at least one occasion they cornered Him and asked what was the greatest of all the commandments. They thought they were more committed to truth and righteousness than He was, but Jesus did not blink. He said the greatest commandment, the way to please God more than anything else we could do, was this:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the greatest and most important command. 39 The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. 40 All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands. Matthew 22:37-40
Jesus could have said many things to rally the nationalists to His side. He could have used the Old Testament Scriptures to proof-text a radical movement to overthrow Rome and take back the country. He could have railed against the abuses of Rome against her citizens, and He would have been justified to do so. Rome’s abuses were real.
But instead, Jesus took the moment to speak into the lives of those who thought they were on God’s side to remind them that the best thing they could do was to love God and love their neighbors in the same way.
If we are looking for a righteous justification to deny a safe-haven for refugees and yet attempt to protect the unborn, our view of Christianity needs a major re-evaluation. If we think religious freedom means denying Muslims the right to worship that Christians enjoy, we need to take a hard right turn back to biblical Christianity. If we are looking for a faith that gives us permission to champion a cynicism toward our neighbors, whomever they may be, our faith is not Christian at all.
Instead, Jesus praised a Samaritan who stopped by to help a man not even the religious leaders would help. At risk to his own life and cost to his pocket book, this man, despised by the religious elite, gave care to a stranger and showed himself the kind of neighbor Jesus calls us to be.
Jesus Himself looked on those who beat him and put nails in His hands, and He petitioned the Father to forgive them. The redemptive work of God is not achieved through cynical power plays toward our sinful neighbors, but through our Gospel-driven compassion for them.
Have you wondered what happened that we are now watching gunmen shoot innocent people in a nightclub or that we are witnessing the U.S. Supreme Court promote practices that not only endorse the killing of babies but put mothers in harm’s way? Is it because Christians are too quiet or too poor or too naive in Washington? Is it because more Christians have not stood up for our rights?
Doubtful.
As long as sinners walk the planet, people will hurt each other. Adam’s first son murdered his second. But as Gospel people, it seems we have too often overlooked our greatest responsibility. Jesus called it our greatest commandment. It seems somewhere along the way, we forgot love has a price. We came to believe we could win the world and save ourselves at the same time. We thought we had an inalienable right to peace and prosperity. We thought we were born to win.
As a result, no one believes us. Abortionists don’t believe us. Muslims don’t believe us. Refugees don’t believe us. Judges don’t believe us. Heck, a lot of our own kids don’t even believe us.
Perhaps we forgot that Jesus did not expect us to love our neighbors without losing our lives.
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wants to come with Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. 25 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of Me will find it. 26 What will it benefit a man if he gains the whole world yet loses his life? Or what will a man give in exchange for his life? Matthew 16:24-26
We all know that the betrayer Judas did not like Jesus’ predictions of sacrifice, but these words are in specific response to Peter’s objections that Jesus would suffer and die for the sins of the world. No one likes to lose, but Jesus was clear. He loves us, but our personal rights and our temporary safety and our fleeting prosperity are not primary concerns for Him. As long as they are primary concerns for us, we will not only lose our influence in the world, but we may just lose our souls as well.
Joining God’s activity to redeem the world calls us to live for a Kingdom that is bigger than ours. That means political cynicism and biblical compassion are not friends. Both cannot survive together. One will always put the other to death.
We tried rallying for our rights. Perhaps it is time we try dying to our self. Perhaps our neighbors will see the beauty of Jesus when they see us live for His Kingdom rather than for ours.
