Did you ever the one where Jesus walked into J.C. Penney's with an AR-15 strapped to His back? No? Neither did I. But then, that's the point.
There is this incongruousness between the "Christian" and the "right" in Christian-right, that as a Christian, I can never wrap my head around and it's never been more evident than in their recent engagement to gun rights.
Now, lest you jump to the assumption that I'm just some sort of God-hating, liberal atheist, I am not. In fact I fully believe in Jesus as the Son of God who died for my sins. I've read the New Testament over 100 times. I've read literally over 100,000 pages of Christian literature, including large portions of the Church Fathers.
My point here isn't to give a full auto-biography. I just want to state clearly that I am a Christian, and a reasonably well read one. And as a reasonably well-read Christian, I'd like to weigh in on the Christian side of the gun control debate.
First, a brief aside though. As a Christian, I see the need for a separation of Church and state. I don't want Muslims deciding what I can and can't do, so I feel that means I don't have the right to determine what they can and can't do.
Too many Christians today view the separation of the two as a protection of the state form the church, but it was intended as a protection of the church from the state.
But that comes inherently as a two way street. If you want your religion protected, that means ever religion has to be protected, and that includes the rights of those who chose to have none.
At the same time, I think that it's reasonable enough that the heart of my faith is a part of who I am, and what my values are, and that as a voter I can vote the essence of my fundamental belief, even if I don't favor legislating the specifics of it, just as any person of any faith (or lack thereof) can do.
Now, to return to the main thesis. In the course of my study, I can say this much. The New Testament can be summed up in three words. "God is Love." It is the very nature, the very essence of what He is.
Love is the motivation for Him sending his Son. That's the whole point of John 3:16, "God so loved the world that he sent his Son..."
While He was on the earth, Jesus did not rebuke a single person for their sins. Not one. He did many things, healing people, teaching people, and feeding people. You could say He had a pretty liberal agenda. What He never did though was condemn someone for the sins.
He never uttered a single word about abortion or homosexuality (though yes, it addressed elsewhere in the New Testament, but you could read the aggregation of all the verses in the Old and New Testaments relating to both subjects in less than two minutes).
He did rebuke a certain class of people though—the self-righteous. Those who ran about, bragging about how righteous they were, while condemning others, were the only ones he ever spoke negatively to. And while we're at it, so did Paul, Peter and John.
The very core of the Christian belief is that because we are sinners, we are in need of a Savior. Because God is love, He died for our sins.
That's because God is love. This is the sum of the Bible.
This is also why it befuddles me that so many Christians have muddled into right-wing waters, which have nothing to do with being a Christian.
If we know our failure to be righteous is why we need a Savior, why do some Christians feel the need to legislate righteousness? It misses the whole point.
At most issues like abortion and homosexuality are extremely tangental. Neither is remotely a doctrine pertaining to salvation. Yet the right-wing has somehow used these tangental issues to hoodwinking the "Christian" right into thinking that to be Christian is to be Republican.
So much have they ingrained this notion, that they would even have you believe, that strapping a weapon designed for the explicit purpose of killing large numbers of people to your back and walking into a department store while the mass murder of innocent children is still fresh on the minds of shoppers, is defended by Christians.
Set aside the Second Amendment issues and whether you have a right to carry a gun long enough to question, does God want you to carry a gun?
What would Jesus do?
Some are probably offended that I would even ask this question. But that's my point. I'm offended that you don't.
Would Jesus walk around with an Bushmaster strapped to his back, a couple of Uzis on his hips, and a vest full 33-round magazines?
Would Jesus rant about how the ATF could pry His guns from His cold dead hands?
One hardly thinks so. It's not too hard to say why.
God is love, and walking around with killing machines doesn't say love.