March 5, 2014whe

I don't know about you, but one of the many debates raging across our nation the is one that gets head- lines whenever someone shoots up a school or a movie theater or whatever might come next, and is the one that tends to infuriate me.

I am not opposed to people owning guns as long as they have a legitimate, personal reason, to own and to use one, but turning them on our innocent is beyond the pale - in my opinion.

Hiding behind the Second Amendment is not a legitimate excuse.  Problem is, when they taught history in most of our schools - including my beloved Yale HS in Yale, MI, in the early 40's, they failed to make the events, personal.  For example, the Revolutionary War which had to have been in the minds of those authenticating the Second Amendment, where the gallantry of Washington's volunteers would be uppermost in their thoughts, many of those soldiers were carrying weapons they brought from home. The first armed resistance to the British came from our locals, carrying their own weapons.  These men and some insist, their women folk, were so determined that they were not going to live under the reign of a foreign power, they were willing to give their lives as a tribute to the freedoms we have today.

So, as the Second Amendment, came up for a vote, the electors had a vivid picture in their minds and the need to have a well regulated militia was appropriate.  There was no way they could have envisioned a demented person in the 21st century entering a classroom, intent on slaughtering as many children as possible.

Please don't try to argue Second Amendment "rights" with me.

Especially when tomorrow, a foreign power, intent on destroying all of our efforts to live as free people in a nation bent on preserving those freedoms, could loose a thousand drones, each carrying a nuclear bomb into our beloved land and our freedoms would be blown away.  An exaggeration, you say, so let me ask you, prior to the time when slaughtering children in their schoolhouses became almost too common place, would you have believed that we would experience such horror in our nation in your generation?

I vividly remember December 4, 1941, as the only person in the family assembled that day, who knew where Pearl Harbor was and was familiar with the shape of the Japanese aircraft launched to create the horror that happened.  Prior to that day, such an invasion was unthinkable to most of us.

Now, that we have experienced 9/11, we have a corporate fear that it might happen again, so we seem to be intent on arming ourselves to prevent such a recurrence.  What other excuse do we have for our demand that everyone have a gun to protect ourselves?   It is an irrational fear and it occupies the minds of those who appear to be reluctant to protect the innocents among us.

So, what are we doing about it?  Frankly, I do not know, I do not have a clue as to how I might influence the minds of the NRA members who are party to our mania.

This I do know, I can tell you about an incident that happened recently among our neighbors to the North in Kentucky.  It came to me over my computer from www.abpnnews.com.  It involves the Kentucky Baptist Convention's initiative to "lure unchurched men" to worship in one of their churches. It involves. specifically, the Lone Oak First Baptist Church in Paducah and a wild game dinner to be known as a "Second Amendment Celebration and Dinner".  Their Pastor, Dan Summerlin, was formerly the President of the Kentucky Baptist Convention.

What intrigued me was the fact they would be giving away shotguns, rifles and handguns as incentives to attend what they seem to insist is a legitimate Christian activity.  As one person suggested, it was a "hook that draws the unchurched".   I have no problem with the motive, if it really is their motivation, but what ought to be obvious, it is a distorted endorsement of the Second Amendment "right" violations promoted by the NRA.   And it seems to be endorsed by the Southern Baptist Convention.

I know the  Christ of whom they would claim as their motivation for their spiritual endeavors.  I have claimed Him to be my Lord and Savior from the first I really came to know Him.  It was through a very personal encounter almost thirty nine years ago and I vividly recall His first "instruction" to me as a follower.  It can be found in the book of Acts, chapter 1, verses 8: "...you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and YOU shall be MY witness..." as I like to add, "..wherever your feet shall lead you" (which I believe is what He meant when He referred to as "..the remotest pats of the earth.")

I pray that these Christian brothers and sisters will come to their senses and stop attempting to draw the world into their churches and instead, work on drawing their churches into the world where the love of Christ is even more desperately needed.