The Spiral of Violence. The Call to Peace.

I’ve been reflecting a lot this week on how we respond, as people of faith, to yet another act of gun violence. It feels like these moments are never far from our headlines.

​Over the years, I’ve grown cautious about reshaping worship every time tragedy strikes. If I did, we’d find ourselves changing the liturgy nearly every week. Gun violence has become that frequent. That routine. That expected. And yet, even when I don’t rewrite the bulletin or throw out the sermon draft, I still carry the grief.

I lament every killing, because I believe that every single person carries within them the spark of the divine.

I lament every act of violence, because every act is a wound to our shared humanity. Not only the loss of life, but the way violence multiplies fear and anxiety in a nation already stretched thin with mistrust.

I lament that our symbols of national mourning—flags at half staff, for example—are no longer offered equally. Lowered for a political pundit of one party, but not for an assassinated politician of another. Lowered for a shooting at a private Christian school, but not for the massacres occurring at public schools. Even our grief has been politicized. It's a clear statement from elected leaders that some lives are worth our mourning more than others.

And I lament something in myself, too. I find myself quieter after yet another school shooting. Less interested, somehow, in speaking out or offering a pastoral word.

It isn’t because I don’t grieve for the children and families. God knows I pray every single day when my child boards the school bus. If I’m being honest, it’s because after the tragedies of Sandy Hook and Uvalde, I realized how little political will there seems to be for change. If a room full of murdered first graders doesn’t stir us to action, nothing will. (And it’s not the will of the people that’s lacking—common sense gun reform is overwhelmingly popular across the political spectrum. What we lack is the courage to break free from the power of lobbyists and the stranglehold of campaign finance abuses). The silence and inaction that follows those massacres has numbed me. I wish it hasn’t. But it has.

And I also notice that I’m more likely to feel compelled to write a pastoral statement after certain moments... especially those of a political nature. The attempted assassination of the (now) president last year. The death of a prominent political commentator this week. Two things can be true at once: I can name the real harm caused by the words of these individuals, who’ve spread great amounts of hatred toward those deemed to be “others.” AND, I can still lament that violence will almost certainly beget more violence.

And yet I know I cannot allow numbness or bitterness to have the final word. As it relates to the news of this week, I don’t extend empathy or prayers for peace because I admired this man. I didn’t. I extend them because my faith calls me to be different. Because violence and hate do not get the last word in God’s kingdom. The way of Christ is the way of peace, even when peace feels impossible. The commitment to nonviolence is not passivity, but the most courageous refusal to give in to the temptation to answer hate with hate. Empathy is not weakness; it is resistance to the spiral of cruelty.

And not only that, but violence that is explicitly political in nature is different, because it threatens to beget more violence. When leaders and influencers are targeted, when anger fuels retribution, the spiral deepens. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us, “The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.”

I wish I could say I’m hopeful. Some days, that hope is harder to find. And yet, I believe the call of faith is to keep clinging to it, however fragile it feels. To insist that two things can remain true: that violence dehumanizes us all, and that love still calls us back to our humanity. To stubbornly hold onto the ways of compassion, justice, and love. To believe that peace is possible, that violence will not have the last word, and that even in the midst of our despair, God calls us to live as people of light and love.

But lest we believe "thoughts and prayers" are all that's required of us, faith also demands action. Enough is enough. It’s long past time for honest, courageous conversations about guns.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.

Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.

So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

-Martin Luther King Jr.