Man on man violence has been recorded for as long as mankind has been keeping a recorded history. Violence didn’t start with guns, and stricter gun laws will not fix the issue. The old saying that making guns illegal will mean only outlaws will have guns is a bit naive. The people enforcing the law will have guns, so will the people coming to take away your liberties (even if both are not the same). I would say that outlawing gun ownership will make more good citizens outlaws. There are some who will react with violence to protect their right to bear arms that would not, except if needed to protect life.

The reality is, there is one who comes but to steal, kill, and destroy, and no gun law will change that reality. You cannot legislate love, kindness, and morality. There is never enough “do not” laws to make someone do what is right (even if they know what is right). If so the fact that inflicting bodily harm and murder are illegal would have already stopped the violence. A country that uses a military and weapons that discourage a direct attack, will never solve the issue of violence by denying its citizen the right to have weapons that discourages would be attackers.

If people who believe, and allow their belief to make a difference in their life, would admit their frailties and turn to the Creator of all things, repent and ask for forgiveness for pretending to live right by their own works, then God would hear them from heaven and heal their lands. If the salt of the earth would season the earth and the light of the world would shine for the world, and not their own glory, then maybe the blind would see, the death hear, and the lame walk. The true light of the world shined for all of creation and set aside His glory until the work of the Father was finished. If we cared more for the man in the pew than the money in his pocket, maybe we would preach the gospel of grace. If we trusted the provisions of God more than the sweat of a man’s back we would have enough, and so would he. Jesus came to change things, so why do they seem the same?

We were given an answer, but it appeared too simple. Believe unto salvation and love one another. We would rather work for nothing and hate anyone not like us; and we started with the Rabbi who taught us to forgive and to serve to be great. After killing Him we hung a symbol of His death around our necks, and went back to excusing ourselves and hating anything that showed us our own errors. We hate our enemy because he is doing to us what we would do to him and the whole time saying it is because he is right, when we know we are the ones with a right to hate. Our goodness gives us the right to hate, while his evil only affords him the right to die, and we call it righteousness. No wonder it is the sight and stench of filthy rags to the One who is our righteousness.

We have been given an answer, and a Savior. We have been clothed in He who is our righteousness, and we the righteousness of God in Him. The Father stays the husbandman’s tool and affords another chance to produce the fruit of love (joy, peace, kindness, meekness, self-control) to the unrighteous in Christ. On those producing He carefully applies the tool to assure a greater harvest. So that no man has anything to say of himself that will cause his head to be lifted, God lifts our head and shines His glory upon us. It is not while we are perfect in ourselves that God sends His own Son, but while we are unrighteous without Him, so we may be the righteousness of Him sending in the One sent. We killed our righteousness and God resurrected Him, leaving our unrighteous clothed in rags and dead.