America and Its Violence as Creation and Salvation – Mark Rich
I chose this title as a deliberate and admiring reference to America and Its Guns: A Theological Exposé, by James E. Atwood. He unflinchingly examines the many faces of idolatry that we Americans create around our guns and our uses of them. In this essay I will not argue with any of Atwood’s analyses – indeed I urge readers to read and learn them. I wish only to add a few remarks from a more theological and spiritual perspective.
It seems to me that our American idolatry of guns is a special and more intense example of a more general human cultural fascination with and use of violence that dates back thousands of years. (Part of why the Bible is so useful is that it unveils that cultural and spiritual captivity so directly and, through the gospel, solves it so well.) In that captivity we humans come to believe two major things about violence: that it creates human culture and society, and that it saves human culture and society. (I won’t go so far as to claim that we believe that violence sanctifies human culture and society, although others may.)
Creation
Just as the murder of Remus by Romulus formed the foundation myth of the inherently violent ancient Rome, so also war and violence have come to form the foundation myth of America since at least World War II – and in some ways even before then. The victory of America in that war, along with the destruction and depletion of all other global powers, easily led Americans to believe the new myth promulgated from Washington: that this was now the foundation of a new world order, ruled righteously by America. This righteous rule was inconceivable without that victory, completed in two extraordinary steps of unconditional surrender and magnanimous generosity in defeat, at least when it came to Germany and Japan (not so much to the Soviet Union and China).
Thus we live under the sacred canopy of the “Good War”. That is what has founded and justified both American policy and American culture since that time. America has found itself engaged in numerous wars and struggles in numerous places that few Americans had previously heard of, out of the explicit belief preached from Washington that we and no other country bear that responsibility for the order of the whole world. These endless wars are sold to the citizenry on a very simple basis, that we are thus defending our own freedom. Such appeals are nearly always made along with the prominent iconography of military weaponry. Thus military weapons = freedom. In this way the practically very dubious claim that somehow American freedom is desperately at stake in such far-flung places as Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan is swallowed whole over and over again. Such strange claims would not be possible without the prior belief that we are the unique bearers of good war, and that such war is what creates the order of the whole world.
This creation belief is put into narrative form through movies such as The Patriot and the Civil War series that ran on PBS. The wide array of Western movies and TV shows in the 1950s and 1960s all confirmed and embroidered the theme of the utter necessity of good violence in creating America and its social covenant. Think of Daniel Boone, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, How the West Was Won, The Lone Ranger, Davy Crockett, Rawhide, The Rifleman, etc, etc, etc.[1] The cumulative effect of these dozens of shows was to inculcate the belief that it was the violence of these gunslingers that settled the West, or the Civil War, or the Revolution. They took the foundation myth of the ‘good war’ and retrojected it onto America’s founding in the 18th century and settling in the 19th century. This violent epiphany continues unabated in movies, television, and now video games. It is indeed true that these media shows do not in themselves make us violent, but it is also true that they encode and embody the violent foundation myth that American culture uniquely believes, serves, dies from, and dies for. It is not for nothing that America’s death rate by guns outpaces any other developed nation by at least a factor of three.
Salvation
The foundation myth about violent creation is also a myth about salvation, which in American culture is usually described as freedom. Just as many things (America, the West, Civilization, Christendom) are believed to have been founded through violence, so also are they saved through violence. The ideas of creation and salvation are always closely linked, whether they are based on the transcendent God of the Bible or the untranscendent god Death.
However, a new wrinkle has appeared through citizen ownership of guns. The myth of citizen guns – not just the ownership but the myth of ownership – now provides Americans with an additional belief in their ability to save themselves. This belief drives individuals with guns to do things that they would not ever consider otherwise; to become persons they wouldn’t otherwise be. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, in a recent program on gun violence, referred to a pastor friend of his, a handgun owner, who recently engaged in a successful shootout in his own home with invaders who he discovered in his house upon arriving. By some strange mercy the pastor was not hit in the exchange of gunfire, and he did manage to wound one of the intruders in the leg. By the grace of God alone not one fool was killed.
Like any myth, the myth of salvific violence goes a long way to prevent people from thinking, from seeing. But standing outside the myth, let us ask: How else could that specific situation have played out? How might it not have followed the mythic script of good violence? How easily could it have gone much, much worse?
The myth also goes a long way to cover up the horrifying truths about the suicide rates and the use of guns against their owners in America which far outstrip their mythic use against predatory intruders. But belief in the myth is stronger than facts, for the myth’s function is to cover over the facts.
The power of myth is in part the power of story, a power that supersedes that of mere facts. But it is also simply the power of paranoia, a narrative that is unhinged from reality and makes those who are gripped by it unable to connect with not only facts but with people.
Spiritually arming ourselves
The only solution is to arm ourselves spiritually. The apostle Paul describes this armature:
When they say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape! But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him. 1 Thessalonians 5:3-10
The only real solution is the spiritual one: to grow up in faith, hope, and love. In that way we are armed in our selves and not merely in our bodies.
Consider how at the end of the Cold War millions of physically unarmed persons stood up to and defeated some of the most brutal dictatorships in history. Those states had all the levers of power in their hands: military, political, economic, educational, cultural, media. But those states did not and could not have the souls of their own peoples in their hands, and when those peoples simply refused their consent to be governed any longer by those states, none of those other powers were powerful any longer. The only real source of power is spiritual power, and the only way to build up that power is to grow up in faith, hope, and love. This is also why the churches of Middle and Eastern Europe were so crucial to the organization of that opposition into a movement, because they were the only spaces in those societies in which faith, hope, and love could be proclaimed and embodied.
When a person arms himself/herself with a gun, that person is still the same fool he or she was before the weapon. If it were not so, he or she would not have felt the fear and the need to arm physically. Having never learned to live with and through Christ (and not just to worship Christ), this person does not know how to live without wrath. So when the tool of wrath is now in his/her possession, it instead possesses him or her. Not having learned to live in faith, hope, and love (one of Paul’s favorite formulations of the gospel!), he or she is unarmed against the wrath of the world but instead joins it. So then, once physically armed, he or she is even weaker mentally and spiritually than before. Physical weapons do not put us in control when we are out of control; they actually take us further out of control.
It is not for nothing that Christ disarmed his followers before his arrest, and we too need to learn from it. In all the chaos of fear, hatred, and greed that followed in his trial, humiliation, and crucifixion, he was clearly the only person in control of himself. Everyone with the ‘official’ authority and the weapons were all out of control, both led and epitomized by the mob baying for his crucifixion.
As the gospel teaches us, “There is no fear in love, but mature love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached maturity in love” 1 John 4:18. It is immature fear that enslaves and drives us. This nation can pass all the laws it wants, its citizens can arm themselves with all the guns and guards they want, and this nation will succeed only in imprisoning itself, for it is really only feeding its fear and insecurity with all its “security.” Desperately seeking “security” through guns, it only feeds its immaturity and insecurity ever more.
This problem is at bottom a spiritual one, and so growing up in faith, hope, and love are the only solution.
Mark Rich holds a doctorate in theology and ethics from Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, where he focused on the economics of Jesus. He currently serves as an interim pastor for the Central States Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He taught New Testament at the Lutheran Graduate School of Theology of the Malagasy Lutheran Church, and currently serves as an adjunct professor at seminaries in Canada and the US. He is married to Cynthia Holder Rich, is the proud dad of three great kids, and is a closet pacifist.
[1] See the list at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_TV_Westerns.