Well, as I write this, we are once again shaking our heads due to the tragedy of a mass shooting here in our country. Not surprisingly, people already are writing about the need for gun control, fears about those who want gun control, mental health issues, and terrorism. Many of us are scared, either specifically about our own safety or generally about the state of the country.
I think all of those topics are important, and like any complex issue, each perhaps plays a role in the discussion. And yet, I think what we’ll hear will simply miss the bigger issue. Our country has changed drastically over the past 70 years since the end of World War II. We have lost our way as a people. In doing so, we no longer grasp the issue of how character is developed, either for good or for ill. We have forgotten, or chosen to not believe, that character is molded, but that doing so is also based on foundation.
As I have written previously, our country has always had guns. We’ve also always had some rough people who had no problem taking care of their issues with violence. We’ve also had mentally unstable people. We’ve long been a country where there was easy access to weapons.
We did not have the frequency of shootings like this until the 1980s. What happened?
Years ago, certainly before the war, we collectively agreed that the foundation was what would have been called a “Christian ethic” or “Judeo-Christian worldview” or maybe just “Christian values.” Note, in no way am I suggesting that most people in America were practicing Christians…though probably 90% of all citizens would have claimed the title. So, the point is that even if many weren’t “faithful Christians,” or weren’t going to church, almost all accepted the common values of a single foundation from which good character would be molded by society.
By the 1960s, however, there was a sense already developing that this common foundation was losing support. Life Magazine published a five-part series entitled “The National Purpose” in which editor-in-chief Henry Luce spelled out national concerns about the direction of the country. By the late 1970s, it was clear a shift had occurred, perhaps mostly fueled by our great success in the war which set the country up for a move to an affluence never before seen, at least not in our country. TV and consumerism took over the country which was then accompanied by a decline in community and a new focus on individualism. In the late 1970s, Christopher Lasch called it “the culture of narcissism”…you’ve read me call it the “land of the self-absorbed.”
To see this change, just think about the recent celebration of the 50th anniversary of A Charlie Brown Christmas. NPR recently had an article indicating that it is very doubtful that our culture would produce such an openly Christian production…even though the entire point of Christmas is a celebration of a Christian central tenant. Keep in mind that other children’s cartoon stories like Rudolph and Frosty were also produced in these years…so there was no movement or stress to remove Christian thoughts from the broader story of the holiday. So, since 1965, we’ve gone from a time with an agreed upon foundation of values that were Christian in nature could easily produce a pro-Christian message that centers on Jesus for the holiday, where today, to do the same one has to dare the process, as I am doing now.
We keep hoping that we can legislate our way out of mass shootings, but we refuse to admit that the problem is the character of our country. Everyone I know, Christian, Muslim, Atheist, others, wants their kids to be raised well, and yet it is refused to accept that to do so demands a willingness to bend a child’s character to a common foundation of good morals. Yet, if the various peoples of this country refuse to accept that there even is such a thing as a foundation of good morals….well, to do so demands one accept the premise of absolute values. We gave that up, or at least many in the country did, in the 1990s, and having crossed the bridge to the land of post-modernism where nothing is true…we now find ourselves wanting to demand “good” from people without actually being willing to assert there is such a thing as “good.”
Christians are little help. We Christians too, at least the vast majority, have also given up the core foundation of values based on the Nature of God, thus absolute, beyond me, a standard not created by any human to which I can strive to match. The Barna Group just released today a study on the idea of discipleship, which they mean to be “the process of growing spiritually.” One stunning finding is that only 20% of Christian adults are actually engaged in activities to accomplish this task, this act of growing spiritually. So, if the Christian adults are not concerned with working on how to live their life in a manner that would give evidence of a life built on a common foundation of good character….how in the world could anyone NOT expect such a thing as we see today with repeated stories of mass shootings.
What happened in California is terrible. What happened in New Orleans is terrible. What violence that happened on the streets of most of our major cities like Chicago, events that now just brushed away, just one more murder, is terrible. If we could wave a magic wand and eliminate all guns in the country, that might provide a space of relief from the ongoing refrain of death….but it would not solve our problem.
Our problem is not a problem of policy, laws or economics.
Our problem is a spiritual issue. We must confront this. We must do better.