I'm sure you, like me, had the sinking, awful, scared, not-again feeling in your guts. Maybe you, like me, shed tears of grief and rage. Grief that young people continue to be endangered by their own peers with firearms, grief at the loss of life and devastation to a family, grief for the students and staff traumatized by witnessing this event, and others who will not know how to walk back into this place that has been violated, grief for the hearts of the young persons who turn to lethal violence, and absolute rage at a system and government and nation whose obsession with militarism and individual freedom continues to cause these griefs.
Everything - EVERYTHING - that Jesus taught and lived was an embodied objection to the militaristic and violent practices of empire. He grieved and got angry about it too! And yet he even rejected the violence of those whose anger let them to rebel against their oppressors with force. We, his followers, are called to raise our voices in objection as he did.
It's one of the reasons that I feel like the crash course I'm offering for youth on conscientious object is still relevant, even though it's been literal decades since young people have been called up by military draft. It's all connected. The same individualistic, militaristic culture that spends half its discretionary budget on "defense" is the culture which infects the hearts and minds of people - young and old - such that they wield a gun against a fellow human.
This morning after election day I am absorbing the news with some relief that the "red wave" has not been as overwhelming as some predicted. But democrats are not going to save us from gun violence. They are not going to save us from militarism. We can, though continue to object. To cry out. To learn to articulate our opposition to violence that is rooted in the call of Jesus and modeled on the action of Jesus.
It is extremely unlikely that any of our youth will encounter a draft board, challenging their stance on war and violence. Even so, I want them to be able to articulate their understandings of war and violence and to demonstrate that they come from a community of faith that supports them when they choose peace. That's why one of the concluding activities of the crash course is to complete a "Peacemaker Registration." It asks them how they've come to their beliefs and to "explain what most clearly shows that your beliefs are deeply held. You may wish to include a description of how your beliefs affect the way you live."
In some ways this last question should convict us all, the grown-ups in the room, for how we live should be rooted in our own deeply held beliefs about the image of God in all humans and all of creation and our commitment to follow Jesus in the way of peace. We are the models for our children. So I am even more determined to object. To keep objecting. And to let this little class be one among many ways that I affirm love over death.
