"Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."
Philippians 2:3-8
Since the school shooting in south Florida that's honestly all I've been thinking about. I didn't want to write about it, because I don't want to side with one argument over the other, which is why I was trying to avoid the matter, but when I drive past a school I cringe and have to pray over it. Not because I'm a super christian, if you know me you know I suck, but I look at the school and think about my kids when they grow up and go there--I don't want them to. Now I want to home school them. Not to mention my sister and dad work at schools, I have a lot of friends who are teachers and I'm constantly thinking what are they going to do in these scenarios. What's worse is these school shootings are, unfortunately, fruits.
Doesn't matter who you are, these stories are heartbreaking. You could be a 25 year old with no clue who just likes to go to the gym and do tinder and this will still destroy you inside. On top of that, we don't know how to respond. We keep tripping over ourselves trying to come up with an answer. We can't agree on anything. You can see society looks misled.
Another fruit: kids eating dish soap. I don't need to explain why this is stupid. And it's not so much that they're doing something stupid, because kids will be kids and everyone has their own story, but it's the why. It's as if they are all seeking for something, but they don't know what. And it isn't anything new, we've always tried to do things that we think will help us feel more at peace with ourselves; but it seems like social media has given everyone an open platform and it allows us to see the confusion society has been hiding.
These are examples of people trying to figure out how to be human and it kills me that they don't see themselves as how God sees them. They have to find ways to make up for that loss.
In the 1920s (started a few years before that, but it's ok) an art movement began that was a way to express how people felt about WWI called Dada. You look at the artwork and it gives you a headache. Very..nonsense. It's not good. But to each their own. However, it was done like that on purpose; the irrationality behind all the pieces were meant to express their feelings towards what was going on with the War. They wanted to show how crazy everyone was by making their illogical art and it definitely got the attention, but like anything else after a few years it morphed into something different and eventually went away. I bring this up to say, we as people tend to lose ways of expressing ourselves after not being heard after a while and do illogical things on purpose. And what if all this stuff going on is this day's Dadaism.
There has always been and will always be violence and attention-seeking folly until Jesus restores everything permanently, but there is clearly an increase. What gets me is these might be our new forms of expression, either reacting to the culture around them or intentional hate, because we are products of an environment. We all have it in us to do stupid and to do evil, but it's the people we're around that help us with our blind spots, keep us from giving into our carnal emotions or sinful nature. But what happens when the people who are supposed to help us with our blind spots have the same ones?
We know sin is sin in God's eyes, but we do see there are different types. The mechanic who busted his butt to diagnose and repair any and all problems, but overlooked the issue with the door locks not working didn't intentionally miss the mark. He was aiming for perfection, but he's human so he's bound to make mistakes. Another mechanic was supposed to change all 4 tires to snow grade since the car owner had plans to go up north, but instead of paying attention to the order due to playing a game on his phone he put regular ones and gave the customer problems, he missed the mark simply from not aiming and instead doing something else. A 3rd mechanic only had to do an oil change, but he lied and said the car needs new shocks, he missed the mark, because he was aiming at something else. School shootings and trying to fit in by eating Tide Pods happen when we aim at something else, taking away our humanness.
As individuals we have so many different idols to choose from: alcohol, money, sex, work, sports, sometimes family, ministry maybe, materialistic things, food, success, omg anything. However, as a large group of people we usually can only choose from a few to agree on, but we still manage to find something to follow. The church is no exception. Besides Jesus, we like to teach the world to worship other things: like individualism.
Us in the Bible belt struggle with separating church history from American history and the problem this causes is our founding was made up of fighting for our rights, independence, freedom, and individualism. While Jesus taught us to wash other's feet...
This is the root to the fruits. It's us, the American church.
Our church culture brings people towards American Independence along with Jesus and the two are very different. Particular values that are unique to America are glorified in church culture as if they were biblical, not realizing what they are doing to people. We're probably confusing people on what makes someone human. We teach to love our rights, but Jesus emptied himself of any. We preach about our personal salvation, our own sins, sing songs about God and me, but the Bible is focused on all. We want to show off our strength when Jesus preached weakness, humility, and he fought back by turning the other cheek--these things are definitely mysteries that perplex us, but Jesus was exemplifying something about the human design.
I would love to see what would happen if the church took our country's history and culture (which I passionately study and love btw, before anyone thinks I'm communist) and placed it within the biblical narrative. As of now, the two have been placed in the same altar, and it's making people think Jesus only cares about us individually and the human can't function that way. Until then we will continue to see an increase of shootings.
I'm not saying we need more gun laws or give teachers guns; I'm not trying to say one side is right or wrong. We know the issue is us. And I know everything I wrote is very opinionated and maybe very wrong, but my heart in this post is nothing more than to start a conversation. I just want to see Christians and the church talk about this problem as christians and the church, not just from our own personal/political opinion; I'm a little disappointed that we the American church, specifically in the Bible Belt, would choose to idolize and staunchly side with American history instead of Jesus, being open to facilitate the conversation so we can be an example of not only worrying about our own interests, but also the interest of others: the very thing society is looking for.