Cooking Lobsters

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Scientists say it's actually a myth that cooking a lobster by placing them in cold water, then very s-l-o-w-l-y increasing the temperature to boiling, kills them without them becoming aware of what is happening to them.

But it works very well for human beings, as to moral temperature.

There was another mass-shooting yesterday.  In our recent history, America has a mass-shooting every few weeks.  So far most Americans still perceive mass-shootings as wrong...though a great many Americans have adapted the political belief that it's a constitutional "right" that virtually everyone can have almost any kind of military firearm they want.

The N.R.A. and its followers go so far as to say everyone should...to protect themselves from mass-shooters.  "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," you know.  Never mind that "good guys" with a gun...and grudges (personal or political), mental problems, anger-issues, or personal problems...are most often the ones who become mass-shooters.

But my point isn't the gun-debate.  The point is that Americans are increasingly coming to accept that a mass-shooting every few weeks is normative.

When Charles Whitman went on a killing-rampage in 1966 (including some military-grade weapons in his arsenal), everyone in America was horrified at the outrage of his murders.   Even when children and teachers at Sandy Hook were massacred (again with military-grade firearms), not quite 5 years ago, most of us could still feel outrage at the evil of their murder.  Today, not really so much: every successive mass-shooting is lamentable...but isn't our attitude that that's just the way it is in our present-day society ?

Nothing better illustrates that political heat increases moral insensibility than the fact that Texas legislators put in place a law making it legal for almost everyone in Texas to own military-assault weapons on August 1st, 2016: the 50th anniversary of Charles Whitman's murderous rampage.  "Conservative" legislators wanted to "strengthen" Texans' "Second Amendment rights."

Under that strong "Second-Amendment rights" law, the most-recent Texas shooter seems to have legally possessed his murder-weapons.

Will the next mass-shooting (and I'm certain there will be one again, soon) shock us as much as the one yesterday ?  Will it be the one after that, or the next, or the one after the next, before it all comes to seem rather boring...or only notable as proof that our constitutional "rights" are secure and strong  ?


                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

Murder as Political Gain

Sunday of this week, 3 people were murdered in broad daylight in a nearby city. The victims were killed entering a local Jewish community-center, and a Jewish nursing-home. They were murdered by a lifelong anti-Semite and white-power activist.

The grandfather and grandson shot at the Jewish Community Center were going to a singing contest in which the grandson was competing. The woman shot at the nursing-home, a wife and mother, was there to visit her own elderly mother. None of the victims were Jewish.

For the past few weeks, our church has suspended Sunday School classes to watch a video series by Adam Hamilton about Jesus' last days. Hamilton is a pastor in a local city, whose solidly-biblical teachings have made his congregation the largest in our Methodist district. He is much-admired in our congregation. (Hamilton was the speaker at a Presidential prayer-breakfast a couple years ago: the same year a video of a violently anti-Obama sermon was filmed in front of a Presidential seal, and circulated by "conservatives" who falsely claimed it was given at that year's prayer-breakfast.)

The grandfather and grandson murdered on Sunday were members of Adam Hamilton's congregation.

The murderer was well-known to state and federal law-enforcement. He'd been discharged from the U.S. Army Special Forces for distributing racist propaganda. He founded The White Patriot Party in North Carolina soon after. He'd run for state and national elective offices, in North Carolina and in Missouri, on anti-Semitic and white-power platforms. His political party was put under court-injunction when it was found to be plotting the assassination of an anti-hate group leader. He'd done time in federal prison when he and 3 like-minded men were subsequently arrested in possession of large quantities of military-level weaponry. He's said to be an Odinist.

On our church' e-mail list, we regularly receive prayer requests: for upcoming church activities, members of the congregation who are ill, the families of local folks who have passed away, etc. There are also prayer requests for victims of various natural disasters and violence, national and international.

We received a request in December 2012, for example, that we pray for the families of the 28 people killed at Sandy Hook, Connecticut. I remember that time vividly, because of the great evil done to children; and because one of our church-members responded to the prayer-request with a forwarded defence of gun-rights by the father of a Columbine High School shooting-victim. He argued that mass-murders happen because of evil in human hearts; so "...you who would point your finger at the NRA...examine your own heart before casting the first stone !"

I was aghast, and rather angry, that the friend who sent that politically-inspired response could be so warped by the N.R.A.'s relentless propaganda that she thought it important for Christians, in the face of Sandy Hook's horror, to not lose sight of the inviolability of gun-rights. I wrote that friend, and cc:ed the mailing-list:

"What spiritual problem of a fallen
society is remedied by having more guns,
and more unrestricted access to guns ?

Romans 13 is clear. One of human
government's mandates from God is to
restrain evil. Murder is evil."


This week so far, the church' e-mail list had had no prayer-request for the families of the folks killed on Sunday: even though two of them were part of a local congregation known to, and admired by, our church' people. I trust there's not a political motive behind that omission: for example, that mention of those murders might seem to favor gun-control.

I sent a prayer-request to the church' list this morning: for the victims' families, and for the murderer and his family. No mention of "gun-rights" one way or the other. There is NO place in our spiritual warfare for grinding any political ax.

Amen.