Guns and the State
I own several weapons. Many of my friends do, too. And we shoot them, and we don’t kill people with them. At least not good people.
There is a difference between good people and bad people; there is a difference between good and bad. There is a difference between love and hate, hot and cold, love and passion, peace and violence. It is that difference manifested through the action or non-action of individuals using judgment that keeps our society and others one step ahead of Darwin.
One step ahead. Think about that. We are all barely one generation away from extinction. Do you remember how to live entirely from your garden? Could you do it? What about making ice? Not the stuff of survival but (in my case, at least) certainly the stuff of civility.
Hmm. Civility. I like to think I’m part of that crowd. I like to think I have grown into someone who can exercise good judgment over weighty matters and arrive at an equitable decision. I pay my taxes (grudgingly), drive within the speed limit, support charity and church with time and tithe and contribute to the national defense with service. I am civil, normally, and as a citizen I demand the same behavior from my countrymen.
In the Boy Scouts I learned to be trustworthy, helpful and ten other good things, as did my friends. In high school civics class (there’s that word again) I learned how the Greeks and Romans founded cultures and schools of thought which carry through to this day in the most basic principles of government: equality before the law, separation of powers, representation and other concepts. My taxes and yours support that government and we have the nearly unique privilege of being able to ‘throw the bums out’ when the don’t live up to our expectations.
College taught me a lot of things, some not so great, but for the most part useful. I remember being told by many that I should choose a good solid technical major like accounting or engineering, in order to better make it in the world. I’m glad I didn’t, for many reasons.
I remember in college sitting in a huge auditorium taking a class you may remember: introduction to humanities. The professor was likely an agnostic; he stood before us and deconstructed the story of the Good Samaritan and trashed the Ten Commandments in favor of the twelve points of the Scout Law. His class left me confused and doubting not just the church but academia as well.
There were many times during and after my college years that I was tested. The army did it physically; sometimes I did ok, sometimes not. But there was always another test. Experiences over several decades have taught me some things a well. Buy low, sell high. Don’t take any wooden nickels; keep a positive attitude; trust, but verify.
Tim Wilson taught me that. Trust, but verify. At first I just chalked it up to the fact that he was, on the surface, a priggish Brit officer with a perceived general contempt for Americans. That was not the case. On more than one occasion Tim’s philosophy kept me alive, literally.
I own several weapons. Many of my friends do. Tim owned one and so did I in Baghdad. We were in a nice hotel in 2003 and attending a birthday dinner with Chinese food, in Iraq, of all places. The food was great. We had highly paid bodyguards throughout the hotel and between several of us only one pistol. I was trusting, but I had not learned to verify.
After the shooting was over the score was good guys twelve, bad guys zero. Tim and I had not fired a shot, but we had indeed drained the color from our faces and the scotch from the bottle, hiding out with our co-workers in the bathroom during the firefight. It turned out that the twelve dead guys were insurgents disguised as Iraqi policemen, and they had been paid to hit the hotel and attempt to take all of us hostage. Nice. In Iraq hostages either are killed right away or tortured with things like cordless drills and electrical current until they die under duress. So it’s good that we had our bodyguards that day.
Of course we had faith. We had faith in the security of our hotel, in the Coalition’s control of Baghdad; in our various God’s. What we lacked was awareness; premonition, control. We lacked verification; we lacked guns.
Our faith let us down. Our faith set us up for our own personal ‘night of the long knives’; for meeting the toothed edge of the meat saw with our exposed necks, staring at the ground as it soaked up our blood until we lost our final physical control and passed away to that house not made with hands.
We lacked verification. We did not feel safe. In that small bathroom, stacked into the tiled shower and tub and porcelain stool we most certainly wanted a very big, bad gun. Several of them, as a matter of fact.
Why is this important to you? Let me explain my jaded point of view. There were eight PSD (personal security detail) personnel guarding us. And fifteen (15!!!) Kurdish Pesh merga soldiers stationed throughout the hotel and on the rood. And all of them, and all their training, guns and bullets meant absolutely nothing when Tim and I were behind the bathroom door wondering if it would be kicked in by someone who meant to kill us.
Unless you have been there, done that and paid for the t-shirt in blood this is something that I cannot make you understand. But you need to understand it, desperately.
You need to understand that it’s ok. It’s ok to be a little suspicious of the new neighbors down the street; it’s ok to wonder why your coworkers are taking home laptops loaded with data. It’s ok to check your bank balance every once in a while just because you want to feel safe. It’s ok to talk to your kids about drugs and it’s ok to lock all the doors and windows in your house at night in Anytown, USA.
And it’s ok to own a gun. You see, you can be trustworthy; you can be trusting. And you can be careful, responsible, and safe. You can trust, but verify. Tim was right. Verification is not doubt, it is a responsible act performed by those in charge of themselves and others in the process of ensuring their safety.
It’s ok to have faith and own a weapon. You want biblical citations? Peter was lauded for carrying a sword. Jesus asked His disciples (you…) to sell their cloaks and purchase arms. It’s ok.
Faith is not blind. God gave us five senses (and maybe others) to use. He gave us intuition, gut instinct, feeling, and yes, judgment. He also gave us talent and resources to construct houses and apartments, office buildings, cars and keys and locks and peep holes and even guns.
Tim Wilson was right. Trust but verify. When someone knocks on you door you and trust, to be sure, that they don’t want to kill you. But usually you look through the peep hole to see who it is; usually you say something like ‘who’s there?’ to the mailman.
Usually.
We are only one step ahead of Darwin. Only one step ahead of chaos, anarchy, animal skin underwear and illiterate, grunting procreation. Think about it. Think about the things you normally tune-out on television. Pedophiles, murderers, insurgents, politicians. How much farther would they all have to push to bring us to the brink? How much food is in your house? How much gasoline in your car? Are you duly and truly prepared? Because I know that you (all of us) are not as well-informed as we think.
I remember a TV commercial from the ‘80’s (the seventies were a blur to me; but I digress…), about a particular line of clothing: “Do you know what you’re wearing tomorrow?’ I do. I’m not sure many others do, however. I’m not sure that other fellow Christians are ready to abandon their creamy-white trusting lifestyles for what is in front of all of us.
Do you know what lurks behind the door of our civilization? Do you know the goals of your adversaries? Do you know who they are? Do you even know your neighbor?
Trust, but verify.
It’s ok to doubt. Doubt, acted on, is awareness. Awareness builds faith through the knowledge that we are not all alike, we do not all wish good on our fellow man. That there is indeed evil in the world. Doubt engages the curious in a quest for truth, and sometimes you don’t get the right answer. Because Satan walks in this world, and God tests us. He tests our judgment. He tests our will, and our faith. He asks and demands for verification.
Tim Wilson was right. Trust.
It’s ok to own a gun. It’s ok to trust.
And it’s just good practice to verify.
-30-
There is a difference between good people and bad people; there is a difference between good and bad. There is a difference between love and hate, hot and cold, love and passion, peace and violence. It is that difference manifested through the action or non-action of individuals using judgment that keeps our society and others one step ahead of Darwin.
One step ahead. Think about that. We are all barely one generation away from extinction. Do you remember how to live entirely from your garden? Could you do it? What about making ice? Not the stuff of survival but (in my case, at least) certainly the stuff of civility.
Hmm. Civility. I like to think I’m part of that crowd. I like to think I have grown into someone who can exercise good judgment over weighty matters and arrive at an equitable decision. I pay my taxes (grudgingly), drive within the speed limit, support charity and church with time and tithe and contribute to the national defense with service. I am civil, normally, and as a citizen I demand the same behavior from my countrymen.
In the Boy Scouts I learned to be trustworthy, helpful and ten other good things, as did my friends. In high school civics class (there’s that word again) I learned how the Greeks and Romans founded cultures and schools of thought which carry through to this day in the most basic principles of government: equality before the law, separation of powers, representation and other concepts. My taxes and yours support that government and we have the nearly unique privilege of being able to ‘throw the bums out’ when the don’t live up to our expectations.
College taught me a lot of things, some not so great, but for the most part useful. I remember being told by many that I should choose a good solid technical major like accounting or engineering, in order to better make it in the world. I’m glad I didn’t, for many reasons.
I remember in college sitting in a huge auditorium taking a class you may remember: introduction to humanities. The professor was likely an agnostic; he stood before us and deconstructed the story of the Good Samaritan and trashed the Ten Commandments in favor of the twelve points of the Scout Law. His class left me confused and doubting not just the church but academia as well.
There were many times during and after my college years that I was tested. The army did it physically; sometimes I did ok, sometimes not. But there was always another test. Experiences over several decades have taught me some things a well. Buy low, sell high. Don’t take any wooden nickels; keep a positive attitude; trust, but verify.
Tim Wilson taught me that. Trust, but verify. At first I just chalked it up to the fact that he was, on the surface, a priggish Brit officer with a perceived general contempt for Americans. That was not the case. On more than one occasion Tim’s philosophy kept me alive, literally.
I own several weapons. Many of my friends do. Tim owned one and so did I in Baghdad. We were in a nice hotel in 2003 and attending a birthday dinner with Chinese food, in Iraq, of all places. The food was great. We had highly paid bodyguards throughout the hotel and between several of us only one pistol. I was trusting, but I had not learned to verify.
After the shooting was over the score was good guys twelve, bad guys zero. Tim and I had not fired a shot, but we had indeed drained the color from our faces and the scotch from the bottle, hiding out with our co-workers in the bathroom during the firefight. It turned out that the twelve dead guys were insurgents disguised as Iraqi policemen, and they had been paid to hit the hotel and attempt to take all of us hostage. Nice. In Iraq hostages either are killed right away or tortured with things like cordless drills and electrical current until they die under duress. So it’s good that we had our bodyguards that day.
Of course we had faith. We had faith in the security of our hotel, in the Coalition’s control of Baghdad; in our various God’s. What we lacked was awareness; premonition, control. We lacked verification; we lacked guns.
Our faith let us down. Our faith set us up for our own personal ‘night of the long knives’; for meeting the toothed edge of the meat saw with our exposed necks, staring at the ground as it soaked up our blood until we lost our final physical control and passed away to that house not made with hands.
We lacked verification. We did not feel safe. In that small bathroom, stacked into the tiled shower and tub and porcelain stool we most certainly wanted a very big, bad gun. Several of them, as a matter of fact.
Why is this important to you? Let me explain my jaded point of view. There were eight PSD (personal security detail) personnel guarding us. And fifteen (15!!!) Kurdish Pesh merga soldiers stationed throughout the hotel and on the rood. And all of them, and all their training, guns and bullets meant absolutely nothing when Tim and I were behind the bathroom door wondering if it would be kicked in by someone who meant to kill us.
Unless you have been there, done that and paid for the t-shirt in blood this is something that I cannot make you understand. But you need to understand it, desperately.
You need to understand that it’s ok. It’s ok to be a little suspicious of the new neighbors down the street; it’s ok to wonder why your coworkers are taking home laptops loaded with data. It’s ok to check your bank balance every once in a while just because you want to feel safe. It’s ok to talk to your kids about drugs and it’s ok to lock all the doors and windows in your house at night in Anytown, USA.
And it’s ok to own a gun. You see, you can be trustworthy; you can be trusting. And you can be careful, responsible, and safe. You can trust, but verify. Tim was right. Verification is not doubt, it is a responsible act performed by those in charge of themselves and others in the process of ensuring their safety.
It’s ok to have faith and own a weapon. You want biblical citations? Peter was lauded for carrying a sword. Jesus asked His disciples (you…) to sell their cloaks and purchase arms. It’s ok.
Faith is not blind. God gave us five senses (and maybe others) to use. He gave us intuition, gut instinct, feeling, and yes, judgment. He also gave us talent and resources to construct houses and apartments, office buildings, cars and keys and locks and peep holes and even guns.
Tim Wilson was right. Trust but verify. When someone knocks on you door you and trust, to be sure, that they don’t want to kill you. But usually you look through the peep hole to see who it is; usually you say something like ‘who’s there?’ to the mailman.
Usually.
We are only one step ahead of Darwin. Only one step ahead of chaos, anarchy, animal skin underwear and illiterate, grunting procreation. Think about it. Think about the things you normally tune-out on television. Pedophiles, murderers, insurgents, politicians. How much farther would they all have to push to bring us to the brink? How much food is in your house? How much gasoline in your car? Are you duly and truly prepared? Because I know that you (all of us) are not as well-informed as we think.
I remember a TV commercial from the ‘80’s (the seventies were a blur to me; but I digress…), about a particular line of clothing: “Do you know what you’re wearing tomorrow?’ I do. I’m not sure many others do, however. I’m not sure that other fellow Christians are ready to abandon their creamy-white trusting lifestyles for what is in front of all of us.
Do you know what lurks behind the door of our civilization? Do you know the goals of your adversaries? Do you know who they are? Do you even know your neighbor?
Trust, but verify.
It’s ok to doubt. Doubt, acted on, is awareness. Awareness builds faith through the knowledge that we are not all alike, we do not all wish good on our fellow man. That there is indeed evil in the world. Doubt engages the curious in a quest for truth, and sometimes you don’t get the right answer. Because Satan walks in this world, and God tests us. He tests our judgment. He tests our will, and our faith. He asks and demands for verification.
Tim Wilson was right. Trust.
It’s ok to own a gun. It’s ok to trust.
And it’s just good practice to verify.
-30-
posted by tomk at 7:27 PM
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