Christianity and Guns | Rev. Adam Hamilton | Church of the Resurrection

2:18 I'd like to invite you to take out of your bulletin, your GPS, your grow, pray, and study guide, and there's a place for you to take notes. I'd love for you to do that. On the back side, you'll find daily scripture readings that tie back into today's message, and I'd like to encourage you to take the time to read your Bible on your own each day this week. I think you'll be blessed as you do. So today we come to the end of our sermon series on the issues that divide, and some of you are saying, thank God it's over. And I totally understand. I'm actually saying that myself. I took a lot of energy and time in preparing and researching for each of these subjects, but I believe they've been important, and they've been important for us as we begin this election season where there's so much conflict and so much animosity in our country, so polarized that we might be instruments of healing, that we might be bridge builders and not wall builders, as we try to understand both sides of these important issues, as we understand that you can't solve them in 30-second sound bites, and as we try to be informed as we're thinking about how does our faith speak to these key issues. Now, there's a lot of issues we could have talked about, but what's interesting is the one issue that got the most attention from people was guns and how our faith speaks to attempts to regulate guns or the desire not to have or have as little regulation as possible, and really bigger than that, how we deal with gun violence in our world today. So I've spent hours looking at both sides on this debate. I watched multiple videos by Wayne LaPierre, who's the CEO of the NRA. I had a chance to watch gun control advocates videos. I've read dozens of articles. I've read studies. I've interviewed a gun shop owner, interviewed the president of Grandparents Against Gun Violence, and a whole host of others that allowed me to understand something of where different people are coming from. We also conducted a survey this last week, and nearly 5,200 of you participated in the survey, and I thought you'd be interested in hearing some of that data as well, so I'm going to be sharing that with you. But before we begin, I thought I'd introduce you to Tony Corcoran. Tony's father, Dr. Bill Corcoran, was killed at Jewish Community Center two years ago, along with his grandson, Reed. And Tony, reflecting upon the debate that we have in our country about guns, said something that really captures, you know, where I find our country is on so many issues, and how most of us, I think, find ourselves somewhere

4:26 in the middle. Take a listen. What I have observed in reading and listening to people talk about gun rights on the one hand and gun control on the other hand, is that there is a healthy or maybe unhealthy fear of the other side. And I think you find it in more debates than just gun control. I think it's just one of many debates where we are so divided as a nation between people who staunchly believe in gun control and people who staunchly believe in gun rights and are fearful of federal government overreach, that there's really no ability or willingness of those people to meet in the middle. And the majority of us are in the middle. It just happens to be that we're hearing the far left or the far right in terms of the spectrum of debate. But I do know that there is a reasonableness quotient to gun rights. There is a reasonableness quotient to regulation, and part of that reasonableness quotient is sensible regulation. But the other part of that reasonableness quotient is responsible gun ownership and enforcing the laws on the books.

5:46 What he captured is what I'm hoping to do in this sermon, and that is to at least open the door, open the questions about reasonableness when it comes to gun ownership and gun rights, and also when it comes to regulation, and see if there's not some place we can meet in the middle. And based upon the surveys we did with you as a congregation, it seems like there's some common ground that we might be able to say, yes, I can stand with that, I believe that, regardless of which side of the gun debate you often find yourself on. So I thought I might just begin by introducing you to the statistics we received in the survey. So the Congregational Survey on Guns, 5,147 respondents when we put these slides together. More have come in since then. And here's the age breakdown. The largest category were those who were 50 to 64, 35%, 65 and above, 26%. And this ties in with what we learned about when people start buying guns. Typically, they're around age 50 or older. I mean, we're not talking hunting now, but now people are buying guns for protection. It's often in the 40s or more often even still in the 50s or 60s.

6:41 Now, we found that in the survey, 47% who took the survey were male, 53% were female. We asked, do you own a gun? 34% said, I do own a gun. 39% I do not own a gun and have no plans to buy one. That was part of the question. 14% someone else in the household owns a gun. And 13% said I do not own a gun but have thought about purchasing one. And then we asked why do you have a gun? And the number one answer was 41% said for personal safety. 33% said for hunting or sport. 11% said it was passed down by a family member. And the rest of the answers were very, very small compared to these. Now it might be helpful for us to clarify the issues that we're talking about when we're talking about guns. So there are a few issues that I think are most important, and I want to raise those things up, and then we're going to look to see where we might meet in the middle on some of these things. Let's begin by recognizing that the two primary questions are, how do we keep, if possible, how do we keep people from inadvertently or accidentally harming themselves as they're utilizing guns?

7:40 So this has to do with gun storage and gun safety, or harming themselves with a gun that happens to be in the home. The second question, the bigger question is, how do we keep guns from getting in the wrong hands so that criminals are not having access to guns or minimizing the possibility for them to have access to guns? So these are the questions that we're really going to be solving for, or at least raising possible ways of enhancing our ability to address these two things in today's sermon. So as we're thinking about these, I want to begin by recognizing something I hadn't really thought of. There are 30,000 deaths with handguns or rifles or shotguns every year. 30,000, two-thirds of those, 20,000 of them, are self-inflicted. These are suicides. And so I hadn't really thought about the connection between gun violence and suicide, but the connection is that many times when people are contemplating suicide, if there's a gun in the house and they use a gun, they're much more likely to actually succeed at taking their own lives than if they use some other means. So a study that came out from Harvard several years ago indicated that people who tried to take their lives by taking pills, only 2% effectively took their own lives.

8:42 People who take a gun and use that as a means of self-harm or suicide, 85% were successful. And so those who are suggesting that maybe safety is an important thing that we talk about recognize that when 17% of all teenagers think about suicide somewhere during their high school years, that maybe having a gun that they don't have access to in the house that's under lock and key and the kids don't know how to get to it might just save their life. And so these kinds of things are important when it comes to thinking about suicide. More often, the tragic mishaps we hear about when it comes to guns are children who have found a gun that belonged to a parent and were playing with it, showed it to somebody else, ended up firing it, even if they didn't know what it was or how it was supposed to work, and harming themselves or someone else. This happened just last Saturday. There was a four-year-old in Baltimore who found her mommy's handgun and ended up shooting herself. And we often think these must be people who don't really know anything about guns, but in this case, the mother was a police officer.

9:38 And it wasn't her service unit. It was another that was in the house, and the child found it. And so we learn about this. We find out that there are, on average, one to two children every week, 60 to 100 children every year, who take their own lives or the life of another child inadvertently when they're playing with a gun they found. And so as I was speaking with Judy Sherry, who is the president of Grandparents Against Gun Violence, I asked her about this and what's important to know about this. And she had a program that she was suggesting and that their organization is really advocating for in making sure that you're keeping your kids safe when they're playing at somebody else's house who might have a gun or when they're around your own home. And so I wanted to hear that. And then at the end of that, she's going to mention some of the other things that her group advocates for. Take a listen. In terms of gun safety, because we stand for gun safety, we work with the Brady campaign on a program called ASK, which is Asking Saves Kids. And it's really encouraging people when their child is going somewhere to play. You know, when they're little, you know where they're going, not always, but you at least know it's a neighbor, asking somebody, do you have guns in the home? And if so, do you store them properly? And some people might opt to say, you know what, I'm not comfortable sending my child to a home with a gun. Kids are very inquisitive. And the data has shown over and over again for parents who think that the child has no idea where the gun is.

10:59 Most of the kids can tell you exactly where the gun is. And they're curious, and they want to show it. So to me, being very, very careful about what you do with your gun, to me, is very important. I mean, it's one thing to be trained, and I certainly believe in it, and I applaud everybody who offers training and or goes through training. But training is one thing, storage is another, and they're equally important. As I say, we are for people, law-abiding citizens who know how to handle a gun. We're all for it, but we don't want domestic violence abusers. We don't want convicted felons. We don't want people with serious mental health issues. That's a touchy one. That's hard. And also people who are in a very short time might be in danger of hurting themselves or someone else. So we'll talk more about that second category of concerns related to guns in just a moment. But this idea of making sure that people know how to safely store their guns, that they're keeping them out of the hands of people who could harm themselves is really important. It's not only one to two children every week, and by the way, Missouri led the nation last year in the number of children who killed themselves or another child when they found a handgun. But it's also, you know, adults. So there are 15 teenagers and adults who take their own lives or someone else's life accidentally when they find a gun or are mishandling a gun every week in the United States. And so this is a concern, and part of the question is, how do we have more gun safety? What do we do to make sure that people are safely handling their guns. Last week I had a chance to visit at Centerfire Sports Shooting Range, and I went there because Bill and Gene Besore, the owners of the establishment, they started it, are longtime members of Resurrection, people that I care about deeply, and I thought, well, I want to hear from them about guns, about gun safety, and this is a really high priority at Centerfire. And so as I went to visit with them, I began to ask them, you know, why it is that people are buying guns, and then they began to explain why it's important that people have a certain knowledge of how to handle those guns, take a listen.

13:02 We have had members of the church come in here and literally have had incredible threats against their lives. And they are not gun people, they have no means of personal protection, they just got, they have nothing. And they come in here and they go, what can we do, I need to buy a gun. And we've told them that just buying a gun is not going to make you safer. Quite frankly, if anything, you have no knowledge, no knowledge of safety, it's actually going to make you less safe. If you get the proper training, get the proper safety, then you have an opportunity to possibly use that firearm in a personal defense situation. But here's people that didn't want anything to do with guns, don't like guns. As far as they were concerned, they could be outlawed for all they cared. All of a sudden, a critical incident in their life totally changed 180 degrees.

13:59 First thing they want to do is they want to buy a guy. I am all about training and I think if people are going to have firearms, they should know how to use them and store them properly. Just like if you're going to have a car, you should know how to use it properly. We encourage all the people that purchase firearms from us to store them properly, to keep them locked properly. You know, unlock a gun in your car where someone could break into it and steal it. So I think that's important for all gun owners to keep things really locked up and protected. We found such an inherently dangerous tool that takes special precautions to secure it. I thought this was interesting. As Gene pointed out, the parallel between having a gun and having a driver's license. You know, that before we turn somebody loose on the streets, you know, we make sure that they've had driver's ed, they've been trained properly, they've got X amount of hours of experience, and then we give them a driver's license and allow them to drive on the streets on their own. And yet, you know, in many places, somebody can walk in, and as long as they pass the background test check, they're able to buy a gun, walk out, and have no basic course in safety.

15:02 And as Bill noted, it's possible that this person is coming in to be more safe with a handgun, and they actually end up being less safe because they walk out without having appropriate safety training. I was thinking about this in conjunction with another conversation that we are having across the country, and that has to do with concealed carry, the ability to carry a weapon in your purse, on your purse, and wherever you're going. And I wasn't really sure how that worked in Kansas, so I asked Bill, I said, tell me about concealed carry permits. And he went on to tell me what it takes to get a concealed carry permit in Kansas. This is what he said. Take a listen. In order to get a concealed carry permit in the state of Kansas, one would have to have a very clean background, meaning a criminal history. They would need to take an eight-hour course, which would cover basic firearm safety, proper firearm storage.

15:56 It would include a shooting qualification. It would also cover the laws of use of force, when you can and can't use lethal force. It would include a written test. One of the big takeaways that we try to give our students that come to Centerfire for a concealed carry course is that lethal force is always the means of last resort.

16:24 Now, when I finished hearing him talk about what it takes to get a concealed carry permit, I felt pretty good about that. I thought, you know, that sounds like what you'd want to have for a basic requirement for people to be able to get a gun, period. And as I was thinking about, you know, what would be required, maybe the NRA, you know, they've got all these gun safety classes. Maybe they're saying, okay, here's what the standard should be. for somebody to walk out the door and safely be able to handle a gun. Some basic, like a driver's license that's nationally, you know, here's what we do as a nation, or here's what we do in the states. But then I was thinking about this concealed carry permit, and he tells me this, and I said, so that's what I have to have to carry a concealed weapon in the state of Kansas. He said, well, no, actually. Last July, the Kansas legislature voted to allow people to carry concealed weapons without having to get a permit. So I said, let me get this straight. I can go in and I can buy a gun, never having handled one before. If I'm a woman, I can put it in my purse. as a guy, I can put it in a holster in my back pocket, I can carry it around anywhere I'm going, and I don't need a permit, I don't need any kind of training at all. And he said, well, we wouldn't let you do that here. But yes, you can buy a gun and walk out that day and carry it with you wherever you're going in the state of Kansas without needing any kind of training. In Missouri, you still need a permit, which is why a Kansas permit is required for people taking their guns into Missouri. And I was thinking about that, and I was thinking, you know, there's a trick to actually handling guns. So we went out on the range, and Bill had me fire a couple of different guns. And as I'm firing them, you know, it's like, okay, put your fingers right here. Now, whenever you're done shooting, take your finger off. And, you know, I pulled the hand down on a semi-automatic gun, you know, and I left my finger on the trigger, and I thought, my gosh, this is, you know, I caught myself, and I thought, this is how people shoot themselves in the foot, or shoot somebody else. Because in that moment, I wasn't really paying attention.

18:01 I hadn't really had formal training before in how to do this. And so it seemed like to me, that this is one of those very basic things that we ought to be able to agree upon. And one of the things he said was, if you're standing six feet away from somebody and you're going to fire a gun, you're not a marksman, you're not trained in this, and maybe you feel like your life is threatened and somebody's coming at you and you get your gun out and you're going to shoot. He said there's an 11% to 17% chance that you'll actually hit the person from six feet away. I thought, you've got to be kidding me. Even there's an 83% chance I'm not going to hit that person when they're coming at me. So who am I going to hit when I take my gun out and I shoot, when I have no training and have no skills at actually firing a gun? Who might I hit that I didn't mean to hit in that moment when I'm using my gun to protect myself? I mean, this just points to an important need for having some kind of training if you're going to have a gun, a lethal weapon. Now, I began asking, well, what does it take to be able to buy a gun?

18:55 And of course, this is where we begin getting into how do we keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them? And there's a national background check that's done. So there's a phone number that's called, you fill out a form, it's called Form 4473, it's from the ATF. You fill that out and you certify that you are not in one of these categories of people that's not supposed to have a gun. And so you fill out the form, you give them your driver's license, then they call in to check on this national database if, in fact, you are on the database or if you're not. If you're not on the database, then you're free to buy the gun. If they're not sure, maybe they've got you confused with somebody else, they say, give us a few more days, just wait. And if after three days they haven't given the all clear, you're allowed to buy the gun anyway. But they might say, no, you can't buy a gun because you're on this list. So we've got this national registry and this background check. But a lot of the debate that's going on, so that's meant to keep the bad guys from going into a gun shop or Walmart or somewhere else and buying a gun. A lot of the debate has to do with guns that are not sold through licensed dealers. And so if you're not buying a gun through a licensed dealer but you're buying from an individual, it doesn't matter if you're on that list.

19:51 It's illegal for you to buy a gun, but if you don't tell somebody you're on the list, they aren't checking to see if you're on the list. And so somebody can sell you a gun. A guy's got an extra gun, it's time for him to sell, he's short on change, he wants to sell his guns, and you come and buy and there's no check that happens there. Now that's true in 32 states. In 18 states, individual sales still require a background check. You've got to call the number and you've got to get the information that this person is okay to sell to. And if you sell to them when you know that they shouldn't be sold to, there's a penalty for that. That's illegal as well. But in many states, including the state of Kansas, you can buy a gun from an individual and not have a background check done on you. So this week I went to a website that's, I think one of the leading websites for buying guns, it's called Arms List, kind of like Craigslist. And on Arms List, you can search in the state of Kansas, because you've got to buy that gun within the state that you live, you can search in the state of Kansas for guns for sale by individuals. That's a key that they don't have to do a background check.

20:45 And there were 750 guns that I had access to and could buy from $250 and up, almost any kind of gun you could want, without any kind of background check I can buy right now. And there's thousands of them available for sale across the country today. And so for many people, the question is why in the world would we not regulate that? Why would we not just at least require a background check any time a lethal weapon is changing hands? Why would we not do that unless it was a family that was involved? Last year, David Ray Conley, who had been barred from legally acquiring a gun because he was a domestic abuser, bought a 9mm handgun through the Internet in a private cell in his state, just like I described to you a moment ago, and then he proceeded to use it shortly after that to murder his former girlfriend, her boyfriend, and her six children. If 18 states can require this, why not the other 32? And this is one of the questions I asked you as a congregation in the survey is, you know, would you support the idea that for individual sales there needs to be a required check, you know, a required background check? And this is what you said. 66% of gun owners said we support the idea that there'd be a required background check for person-to-person of gun sales. 88% of spouses who own a gun said, yes, there ought to be the background check. 76% of those thinking about buying a gun. 92% of non-gun owners said there ought to be some basic background check. By the way, I meant to mention this to you a moment ago, but one of the other slides we had is people who support the idea of a basic safety course for concealed carry.

22:13 85% of all gun owners said, yes, we should have a basic safety course for people who are concealed carry 97% of non-gun owners. So these are places where we can find a meeting ground in the middle where we can both say those who are gun advocates and those who are advocating greater gun control, these are things we can both agree upon are important safety measures or important ways of keeping guns out of the wrong hands. Now I want to mention one more area where it feels like things, it feels like the laws need to be strengthened. And then this has to do with the ability for somebody to go buy a gun on behalf of someone else. So this is illegal, It's called a straw man purchase, and you're not to go and buy a gun for somebody and fill out the paperwork and then turn around and sell it to someone else. But it happens quite a lot. San Bernardino, the killings in San Bernardino, the guns that were used were purchased by a friend of the people who did the killing. They couldn't have acquired the guns themselves. This is a straw man purchase.

23:05 In our own community, we saw this happen. So with the killings at the Jewish Community Center where Terry Lomano and Reed Underwood and Bill Corcoran were killed, The man who shot these persons, who took their lives, could not buy a gun. But he had a friend buy him a gun at Walmart. I spoke to Tony Corcoran this last week, and I asked him, what happened with this man who purchased the gun for the man who took the lives of your father and your nephew? And this is what he had to say. I will say that the gun that killed my father and that killed Reed and that killed Terry Lomano was illegally purchased. by a person in Missouri and then given to Mr. Miller. And it was purchased at a Walmart, and the gentleman who purchased it illegally falsified the government form you're required to fill out when you purchase a firearm.

24:01 And the piece of the form that he falsified was that he was buying the firearm for himself and not for someone else. Mr. Miller himself would not have been able to purchase that firearm as a felon. And so he knew that in order to purchase a firearm, he would need a straw man or someone to purchase it on his behalf. So that shotgun was actually purchased illegally in the state of Missouri a few days before Dad and Reet were killed. The gentleman who purchased the gun in Missouri was indicted in 2014 and then was most recently convicted under a plea bargain with the United States Attorney's Office. He will receive two years probation and a $100 fine. Two years probation and a $100 fine for buying a gun for someone who was a convicted felon and having it be used in another crime. So here's one of the things that almost everybody agrees upon.

24:56 85% of gun owners, 87% of gun owners who took our survey, 94% of non-gun owners say there should be mandatory penalties for people who are buying guns in a straw man purchase. So big signs, clear on the documents. I mean, it's clear on the documents. You can't do it, and it's illegal. But here's the thing, you're going to jail for five years if you buy a gun for somebody knowingly and give it to them, and they're going to commit a crime with it. And so we can all say, yes, there ought to be something more than a $100 fine and two years probation for somebody who buys a gun for a felon who's going to take it and kill someone else. These are all places where we can find common ground in looking for a better way forward when it comes to guns. But here's the question. And so, you know, I asked Tony, I asked Brian Beach, one of our members whose son was killed with a handgun several years ago. I said, you know, did the loss of the loved ones that you care so deeply about at the hands of gun violence, did this change your views on guns?

25:55 And of course, both of them felt, you know, the concern about other people inflicting pain on others with guns. But they said, you know, in Tony's case, he said, my dad loved guns. He loved to hunt. He loved to be in the outdoors. This was a part of his life. and I know that it wasn't guns that took my dad's life or my nephew's life. I knew it was people who misused those guns. And Brian Beach felt much the same way, that guns rightly maintained, rightly used, can be used for protection or for hunting, but the problem is with the people who end up using the guns. We hear this a lot, but at least these two persons who'd been the victims of gun violence had lost loved ones to gun violence. This was their perspective when it came to guns. so well the things that we just described the handful of things that you know making sure that there's some kind of basic safety class making sure that we're clear about how to store our weapons making sure you know do a better job of making sure that children don't have access to guns we ask them questions about where our kids are staying spending the night you know looking at some of these basic things when it comes to when it comes to regulating and trying to eliminate the loopholes for people to buy guns will that make a difference yeah I think it will make a difference. That will change. That will affect some things, but it's not going to solve the problem. I mean, these things we should do because they will make a difference. They will save people's lives, but it's not going to ultimately solve the entire problem, right?

27:16 The problem is bigger than that. Ultimately, the problem of violence in America and the use of guns or misuse of guns in America has to do with something that's going on in here. Now, so far, this is an interesting lecture. I want to end by really focusing on the Scriptures. What do the Scriptures say? And of course, there are no verses that mention guns in the Bible. You know that. But there are 466 that mention swords, and there are another 75 or so that mention spears, javelins, slingshots, and rocks. Actually, more than that that mention rocks. And so, you know, people were not, you know, they were not without their means of self-defense or of hunting or of fighting. They had these things. And in fact, what you read, I tried to read all 466 passages in the Bible related to swords. You're going to find the Bible, especially its first 10 or 15 books, is a bloody book. There's a lot of violence going on there. There's a lot of use of swords and ways and spears and javelins and slingshots and people killing one another.

28:10 And in fact, if you look in the book of Genesis chapter 6, you find that God is grieved because human beings are violent all the time. And this is why God said, enough, I don't want this to go on anymore, and brought the flood, was because he saw the violence of human beings inflicting on one another all the time. So this has been a perpetual problem. You know, our use of weapons, and you can find and create weapons out of almost anything. Our use of weapons is a problem down here. There's something broken, something inside of us. Now, Jesus at one point, even Jesus, now you're going to find most of the things he says are love your neighbor, love your enemy, turn the other cheek. But we do find there's one passage that's rather interesting in Luke's gospel just before Jesus is going to be arrested, and he tells the disciples to make sure they have a sword. What an odd thing for Jesus to say, but even them, you know, and that sword was for self-protection. And they said, well, Master, we have two swords. And so going into the Last Supper and going into the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples actually had two swords with them. We can't make the case that Jesus says you shouldn't have guns at all, and nobody's making that case across America.

29:03 Nobody's saying you shouldn't have any guns. But certainly we can't say, well, the Bible says we should never have any weapons. Self-defense, hunting, all of those things would seem to be very legitimate things that we do as human beings. But it's interesting, when the apostle Peter, so Jesus is being arrested, the apostle Peter pulls out his sword and lops off the ear of Malchus, the high priest's servant. What does Jesus do? He heals the man's ear, and then he turns to Peter and says, put it away. and then he says this, he says, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword, or as you probably heard it more frequently, for those who live by the sword will die by the sword. He sort of gives this final dominical saying, look, it's not going to be by lopping off the ear of those who are trying to harm you that you're going to find the way forward. He doesn't say we can't have self-defense, he doesn't say that we can't have guns for hunting, but he does give an interesting statement, have a sword for safety. Now, don't use it. Don't lop off the ear of the high priest's servant. Now, we read in the Scriptures, you know, there's all this violence in the Old Testament, but when we get to the prophets, we find the 8th century prophets have a different vision. They see war all around them. They see violence and bloodshed, but they have a different picture of what would happen when the Messiah would come. And this is the picture that you have. It's found in both Isaiah and in Micah. We read, they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. This continues to be a vision for us as Christians. It's found in our stained glass window that we're building here at the Leawood campus, a picture of somebody beating a sword into a plowshare. The idea that the day would come when we won't make war anymore, when we won't use violence anymore. We don't live in that day yet, but at least this is our vision and our dream, that there would come a day where we would not need guns, we wouldn't need swords anymore.

30:43 Now what's clear is that both the prophets and Jesus had a different picture of what the world should look like than what you find in the first 15 books of the Hebrew Bible. And again, they didn't forbid weapons for self-defense or for hunting, but they had a different picture of how you treat your enemy. Now again, I'm just going to say it a third time now, there's nothing wrong with hunting, sports shooting, or even having guns for self-defense. If you own them, store them properly, learn how to handle them well, obey the laws, never use your weapons in an aggressive way to threaten other people, no matter how angry you become. But I temper all of that with three ideas from Scripture. The first is from Psalm 27. Psalm 20, verse 7. And here we read these words, some trust in chariots and some in horses. These were, you know, used in battle. Chariots and horses. Some trust in chariots, some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.

31:33 You know, one of the reasons why many people don't ever buy guns is they say, you know, I don't want to feel like I'm only safe when I have my gun. Now, there are people who own guns and they don't feel that way. But there are some people who say, I don't want to have a gun. I don't want to feel like I'm not safe unless I have it. And part of what we trust in, you know, we wake up every morning. I wake up, I encourage you to do this. I wake up every morning and say, Lord, here I am. My life belongs to you. Use me however you will. Do with me whatever you will. I've gone to pretty unsafe places at times, not really sure whether I would come out or not. And I'm not sure it would have been any safer. I had a gun in my possession in those places. But part of what I did is, Lord, Lord, I'm walking with you, and you're walking with me, and whatever happens, I know violence is not your will, but if something happens to me, I pray you would use it for your honor and glory. But here's the thing, for many people, they're saying, I don't want to feel like my security is wrapped up in my gun. Other people, again, have guns, they wouldn't say that. They'd say, well, no, that's not really how it works. But for you, at least, I would say this, don't let your peace be the result of a Smith & Wesson. Today, when I look around at the gun debate in America and the way we're talking about guns, the amount of guns we have, the amount of guns we buy, it seems like in America there's an underlying issue of fear and paranoia. And the fear and paranoia is in part that the government is going to somehow come and take our guns, the government is going to somehow, you know, turn bad and we're going to need our guns to, you know, lead a revolution. And I listen and I think, really? I mean, there are a couple of candidates running for president right now, and I'm thinking, it's hard for me to imagine what life would be like if they got elected.

33:06 And yet, even them, I don't think they're going to turn on the American population and they're going to come and take our guns and we need to be afraid of them. They might make a mess of things, or they might not. But I don't worry that somehow America's going to go so bad I'm going to need my guns to fight against other Americans to put it all right again.

33:27 I read that in America, the military station in America and law enforcement total have four million guns. The American civilians in America, 310 million guns. We have almost 80 times more guns than all of the police officers and all of the military in the United States combined. How much more do we need?

33:50 Now, it's not just the government that we're afraid of. We're, of course, afraid of the bad guys, that they're going to try to kill us. How many violent acts are committed with guns every year? How many people die at the hands of somebody with a gun every year? 10,000. 10,000 people are killed by criminals every year. Do you know how many people die from a medical mistake at a hospital or a clinic or a doctor's office every year? 440,000. 44 times, you're 44 times more likely to die as a result of a medical mistake than you are somebody shooting you with a gun, but we don't stay away from the doctor's offices or the hospitals because of that. I mean, somehow this has become something that there's a fear that seems to take over for many people. I feel it myself in our world. So here's one of the things I'd say, neither more guns nor more gun laws will ultimately bring you peace, nor will they solve the problems of violence in America. Both are band-aid solutions and often made political solutions, I mean political ways of dividing us as a nation.

34:49 Do you want to curb urban violence? Then invest in inner city schools, like we're doing with our elementary school partners here in the Kansas City area. Make sure those kids have books, they learn how to read, and they grow up feeling love, and they have a chance to get out of poverty. You really want to make a difference? That's what we're going to do. Do you want to address the propensity of some for becoming violent as they grow up? Then think about how we glorify and glamorize violence in the movies that we entertain ourselves with and the video games that we play. Do you want to stop the mentally ill from committing atrocious crimes? Then let's put more money into addressing mental illness in the United States. Do we want to defeat hate and violence? then live and share the love of Christ with the people around you. Make sure that people know that there's a different way and help them to understand and experience from us the love of Christ that has the power to transform people's hearts to change them from the inside out. And if you want to know peace I mean have a gun for self-protection if you want.

35:47 But if you want to know peace trust in Christ every day. That he is your redeemer your savior your Lord give your life to him every day and you'll know his peace. So here's where I want to wrap up the sermon series and today's sermon. This series was about the polarization in America, and I want to encourage you to be part of the answer and not the problem. I want to encourage you to be careful about the words that you speak about people on the other side of the aisle, the emails that you send, to be careful about assuming you know everything about the other person's position. What I've tried to show in this series is that when we have information, we find that there's truth on both sides of those things, and if we work together, we find better solutions than if either of us on either side or either party are promoting our own solutions and bashing the other solutions. I've challenged you to live by the golden rule in this sermon series, to do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. I've asked you to remember that the most powerful weapon you have is not a gun, but is the love that you show for other people.

36:41 I've challenged you to be people who overcome evil with good. And today I want to challenge you to be authentic followers of Jesus. I know we like our parties and our candidates, but you know it's far more important that you're a follower of Jesus and that this is the most important allegiance you have and the way that you seek to follow whichever candidate you're seeking to follow. I want you to be followers of Jesus Christ who daily seek to be his instruments to build bridges, to tear down walls, to reflect his love as the instrument that can change the world. That's my hope and prayer for us. Let's be a part of the solution and not the problem. Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much for your love and grace for us. You are the God of the second chance, the God who changes hearts and lives, the God who is our strength and our peace. Lord, we pray that you would help us as Christians to look for reasonable solutions, for ways to move forward as a country that allows us to minimize the chance for people to have guns who shouldn't have them, to handle the guns that we do have with safety and to not be confused by thinking that our guns are the source of our true peace.

37:58 We trust you, Jesus. Help us to follow you. Make us instruments of your peace in this hyper-polarized world.