ADVERTISEMENT
Faithfully Magazine
  • News
    • All
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • World
    David Wenwei Chou

    FBI Probes Attack on Taiwanese American Churchgoers in California as Hate Crime

    Ruth Whitfield

    God-Loving Matriarch and Devoted Church Deacon Among Buffalo Shooting Victims

    Crystal Mason provisional ballot

    Texas Court Must Reconsider Illegal Voting Conviction of Black Woman Sentenced to 5 Years

    Kelly Neidert UNT

    ‘The Most Hated Conservative College Student in the State’: How a Texas Student Embroiled Her Campus in a Culture War

  • Clippings
    Dr. John Cheng, 52, was fatally shot by David Chou

    Dr. John Cheng Hailed as Hero for Stopping Laguna Woods Church Gunman

    The May 13, 2022, funeral procession of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh in Jerusalem

    Israeli Police Attack Christian Journalist’s Funeral Procession, Beat Mourners

    cellphone

    Nigerian Student Beaten to Death, Set on Fire for Critical WhatsApp Post of Prophet Muhammad

    Indian Boarding School Students

    Christians Likely Helped Run Half of U.S. Indian Boarding Schools

  • Features
    children in a classroom getting education

    On Race and Schools, Here’s What Americans Agree and Disagree On

    Kelly Neidert UNT

    ‘The Most Hated Conservative College Student in the State’: How a Texas Student Embroiled Her Campus in a Culture War

    Stop Asian Hate sign

    ‘We Are Being Hunted’ — Asian Americans Say They Are More Scared Now Than Ever

    Ida B. Wells Doll Barbie

    Ida B. Wells Barbie Doll Faces an Uphill Battle Against Anti-Blackness

  • Inspiration
    • All
    • Bible
    • First-Person Essay
    • Poetry
    Everything Everywhere All At Once. (A24 Films)

    ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ & the Absurdity of Love as Resistance

    God Speaks Through Wombs: Poems on God's Unexpected Coming

    The Gospels Give Birth to Poetry (‘God Speaks Through Wombs’ Excerpt)

    two women talk

    100 Proverbs That Teach Us How to Speak, Listen, and Respectfully Disagree

    Rapper J Cole and a hanging tree

    J. Cole’s ‘Javari,’ the Cross, and the Lynching Tree

  • Members
  • About Us
    • Staff and Advisors
    • Write for Us
    • Advertise With Us
SUBSCRIBE
No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • All
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • World
    David Wenwei Chou

    FBI Probes Attack on Taiwanese American Churchgoers in California as Hate Crime

    Ruth Whitfield

    God-Loving Matriarch and Devoted Church Deacon Among Buffalo Shooting Victims

    Crystal Mason provisional ballot

    Texas Court Must Reconsider Illegal Voting Conviction of Black Woman Sentenced to 5 Years

    Kelly Neidert UNT

    ‘The Most Hated Conservative College Student in the State’: How a Texas Student Embroiled Her Campus in a Culture War

  • Clippings
    Dr. John Cheng, 52, was fatally shot by David Chou

    Dr. John Cheng Hailed as Hero for Stopping Laguna Woods Church Gunman

    The May 13, 2022, funeral procession of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh in Jerusalem

    Israeli Police Attack Christian Journalist’s Funeral Procession, Beat Mourners

    cellphone

    Nigerian Student Beaten to Death, Set on Fire for Critical WhatsApp Post of Prophet Muhammad

    Indian Boarding School Students

    Christians Likely Helped Run Half of U.S. Indian Boarding Schools

  • Features
    children in a classroom getting education

    On Race and Schools, Here’s What Americans Agree and Disagree On

    Kelly Neidert UNT

    ‘The Most Hated Conservative College Student in the State’: How a Texas Student Embroiled Her Campus in a Culture War

    Stop Asian Hate sign

    ‘We Are Being Hunted’ — Asian Americans Say They Are More Scared Now Than Ever

    Ida B. Wells Doll Barbie

    Ida B. Wells Barbie Doll Faces an Uphill Battle Against Anti-Blackness

  • Inspiration
    • All
    • Bible
    • First-Person Essay
    • Poetry
    Everything Everywhere All At Once. (A24 Films)

    ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ & the Absurdity of Love as Resistance

    God Speaks Through Wombs: Poems on God's Unexpected Coming

    The Gospels Give Birth to Poetry (‘God Speaks Through Wombs’ Excerpt)

    two women talk

    100 Proverbs That Teach Us How to Speak, Listen, and Respectfully Disagree

    Rapper J Cole and a hanging tree

    J. Cole’s ‘Javari,’ the Cross, and the Lynching Tree

  • Members
  • About Us
    • Staff and Advisors
    • Write for Us
    • Advertise With Us
No Result
View All Result
Faithfully Magazine
No Result
View All Result

When a Killer Comes to Church: A Pacifist Wrestles With the Texas Church Shooting

Eric J. Miller by Eric J. Miller
December 31, 2019
in Inspiration
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
smashed glass
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on RedditShare on LinkedInEmail This
23
SHARES
ShareTweetPin It

Four seconds.

In the lapse of a mere four seconds, two souls were blasted violently into eternity in the sanctuary of a Texas church, with another victim succumbing later in the hospital.

Mosaic Coffee

We spend our whole lives becoming the people we are, only for death to come in a moment, often without warning, reminding us we are indeed the most fragile of creatures, dust.

RELATED STORIES

FBI Probes Attack on Taiwanese American Churchgoers in California as Hate Crime

God-Loving Matriarch and Devoted Church Deacon Among Buffalo Shooting Victims

What we know is a man walked into the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, with a firearm and killed two congregants, members of the church’s security team, before another security person, a church member and former police officer, fired a single shot, killing the intruder.

The silence of communion, celebrated weekly in the Church of Christ, was chased away by the peals of gunfire, shocking us out of our security and bringing to memory similar attacks on churches and houses of worship in recent years.

Nine killed at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston (2015).
Eleven killed at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh (2018).
Six killed at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin (2012).

The December 29th attack has renewed the awkward conversation around armed security at churches, with people eager to share their opinions.

Before wading into those murky waters, let me out myself: I am a Christian pacifist.

This means I believe Christians are to wage peace over and against violence on both personal and corporate levels.

Nonetheless, responses from fellow pacifist and nonviolent colleagues in light of this tragedy have rang uncharacteristically hollow to my ears.

My Anabaptist friends from Amish, Mennonite, and Brethren traditions love to tell stories of the 16th century heroes of the Radical Reformation who offered no resistance as they marched toward martyrdom singing songs of praise.

Yet they tell these tales from the safety of their country and suburban homes where they live, marry, raise their children, and plant their churches, insular and removed communities that ensure their commitment to Christian non-violence will remain largely theoretical.

Hulu

And even in the case of pacifists who live out in the wild with the rest of us, carefully selected verses (Matthew 5:39 and Romans 12:21, for example) are weaponized to club those taught differently, an unseemly irony, not reckoning with the slightest ethical difference between suffering for the cause of faith and ending the life of a rando with a rifle ready to waste a church full of people for no apparent reason.

I fully believe the moral arc of the Bible, from the peaceful Garden to the arrival of the Prince of Peace himself, bends towards active peacemaking and non-violence, but this broad theological equation does not always reduce simply into a prescription for what to do in highly specific situations.

Still, in all my frustration, I cannot deny that a human life, even an exceptionally wicked one, purposely taken at the hands of a Christian stunts our ability to imagine creative, albeit costly, faithful non-violent solutions to the evil at our doorsteps and in our pews.

A robust Christian faithfulness is found outside passive resignation versus shoot-to-kill binaries.

Neither sitting idly or sword-wielding characterize the way of Christ.

A few years ago, while being attacked by three muggers, I chose to belt the Lord’s Prayer at the top of my lungs.

While it is impossible to say what I would have done had I been in the White Settlement church, I think I would have tried to tackle or disarm the assailant, if not strike back in some way to stun or incapacitate him, some action short of intentional lethal harm to signal that no life is expendable.

But I wasn’t there. And I didn’t have to make that choice. And I do not judge the brother who did.

All I know is that the chief lie of the American Gospel is that serving God need not cost you anything, be it money, time, leisure, or life.

And it is not lost on me that this attack occurred during the silent observance of the Lord’s Supper, in which we reverence the ultimate sacrifice of Christ made on behalf of unworthy sinners.

If we truly suppose Jesus looked into the eyes of evil ones and saw lives worth dying to save, does his example not serve as a relevant challenge to us when a killer comes to church?

Editor’s note: This article was first published at therrav.com.

Leave your vote

0 Points
Upvote Downvote

Browse and manage your votes from your Member Profile Page

What's Your Reaction?

  • AngryAngry
    0
    Angry
  • CuteCute
    0
    Cute
  • CryCry
    0
    Cry
  • LOLLOL
    0
    LOL
  • LoveLove
    0
    Love
  • OMGOMG
    0
    OMG

REPRINT REQUESTS | MEMBERSHIPS | GIVE



Share This Post

Share via

Share This Post

  • Digg
  • Tumblr
  • Flipboard
  • SMS
More
  • Report
23
SHARES
ShareTweetPin It

Related Posts

Everything Everywhere All At Once. (A24 Films)

‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ & the Absurdity of Love as Resistance

God Speaks Through Wombs: Poems on God's Unexpected Coming

The Gospels Give Birth to Poetry (‘God Speaks Through Wombs’ Excerpt)

Upcoming Live Events

There are no upcoming Events at this time.

Recently Published

  • Dr. John Cheng Hailed as Hero for Stopping Laguna Woods Church Gunman
  • FBI Probes Attack on Taiwanese American Churchgoers in California as Hate Crime
  • God-Loving Matriarch and Devoted Church Deacon Among Buffalo Shooting Victims
  • Israeli Police Attack Christian Journalist’s Funeral Procession, Beat Mourners
  • Nigerian Student Beaten to Death, Set on Fire for Critical WhatsApp Post of Prophet Muhammad
Mosaic Coffee
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact Us
  • Shop
  • Newsletter

© 2022 Faithfully Media LLC, owner and operator. All rights reserved. This site participates in the Amazon Associates program, and other affiliate programs, and may earn a commission from your purchases.

No Result
View All Result
  • News
  • Clippings
  • Features
  • Spotlight
  • Inspiration
  • Log In
    • Your Profile
Share via

Share This Post

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Copy Link
  • Tumblr
  • Digg
  • Flipboard
  • SMS
close

Log In

Sign In

Login with Facebook
Login with Twitter
Forgot password?

Don't have an account? Register

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Back to Login

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Accept

Add to Collection

  • Public collection title

  • Private collection title

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.
Send this to a friend