Mission Yearbook: Webinar explores Scripture as a response to suffering and gun violence

Educator, author and activist Parker Palmer says that violence is what happens when we don’t know what else to do with our suffering. A recent webinar offered by the Office of Public Witness on gun violence and Christian ethics sought to explore, in the words of presenter the Rev. Dr. Brent A. Strawn, “how Scripture gives us something to do with our suffering.”

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The Rev. Dr. Brent A. Strawn

Strawn is the D. Moody Smith Distinguished Professor of Old Testament at Duke Divinity School, with a secondary appointment at the Duke University School of Law. The webinar was part of a series lamenting gun violence and giving Presbyterians tools to advocate for an end to it. In 2022, the 225th General Assembly declared 2022–32 the Decade to End Gun Violence.”

“The best questions can’t be answered, but they have to be asked,” Strawn told those on the call. “Denial is not an option and despair is not inevitable.”

Strawn identified mass shootings in recent years that are etched in his memory, including the 1984 mass murder at a McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro, California, near where the then-13-year-old Strawn was living. Following the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Strawn appeared on CNN the following day to offer commentary from a perspective of faith. “I remember the heaviness of it, thinking about the gravity of the young victims,” he said. “Even that wasn’t enough to catalyze a massive overhaul” in the nation’s gun control laws.

Among the data surrounding guns in the United States, as Strawn pointed out:

• 44% of Americans, and 57% of African Americans, know of someone who has been shot.
• Guns are 11 times more likely to be used in a suicide attempt than in self-defense.
• 85% of suicide attempts by gun are successful; 5% of other methods are successful.
• A person stands a 244% increased risk of suicide if they have a gun.
• More Americans die by a shooting as by an auto accident.
• The nation has 60 million more guns than people.
• 4.6 million children and teens live in homes with unsecured loaded guns.

Strawn offered some insights on violence that he teaches his students:

• We are violent and war-like. “Our violence is more graphic, more brutal and more effective than biblical violence. The biblical world had no long-range missiles or satellites,” he said. “If you were fast enough, you could run away to fight another day.” Today we “send enormous amounts of time and money entertaining ourselves with graphic, gruesome, extensive violence. We say we are shocked by biblical violence, but we project our violence on others, including the Bible, especially the Old Testament.”
• The unity of the Bible’s two testaments. “I wish it were the case that the New Testament solved the problems of violence, but it is not so,” he said. The New Testament “has its fair share of violence, unparalleled in the Book of Revelation.”
• The Old Testament also contains strategies of containment and therapeutic aspects, Strawn said. One is the account of Rahab shielding the spies ahead of the taking of Jericho. A few chapters later, the Gibeonites trick the Israelites into making a treaty, which God says must be honored. “Violence in the Old Testament is not as realistically achieved as it might seem. It is limited and limitable,” Strawn said. As for therapeutic aspects, Strawn pointed to some of the Bible’s “brutal cursing songs” such as Psalm 139 (“I hate them with a perfect hatred”) which allow “ancient Israelites and us to unburden ourselves of these violent sentiments and give them over to the Lord,” Strawn said. “This honesty about violence is crucial to recovery from violence. Writing it down helps.”
• Expertise and wisdom are required, and transforming violence via prayer “is something else to do with our violence,” including “being candid about our ill wishes.” He noted that “our enemies’ bodies can’t handle those blows, but God’s body can.”

“We need religious solutions, not just political ones,” Strawn said. “The church can be another way of being in the world.”

“Imagine a world with less gun violence,” Strawn said. “Is that a pipe dream, or is it the church’s alternative witness?”

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)

Let us join in prayer for:

Amalia Cottrell, Archives Technician, Presbyterian Historical Society, Interim Unified Agency
Emily Cowser, Apprentice, 1001 New Worshiping Communities, Interim Unified Agency          

Let us pray:

Our Father, we offer you praise that you reveal our true capacities for speech, leadership, and service to our families, church and community. We ask that you enable us all to find our voice to love the poor, advocate for justice and lead in righteousness. In Jesus’ name. Amen.