In recent weeks, we’ve had enough innocents killed to last us the rest of the year. As Americans, why should 31,000 violent U.S. deaths per year be OK with us? Why should everyone have a gun to maim and kill? What is happening to us that we cannot and will not forgive? Why must we seek revenge by hurting back? Are we bordering on receding into the Stone Age, into the bushes, uncivil and beastly?
I ask myself and wish for all of us to do the same: after Jesus was beaten half to death, and then hung on a cross to die, why could he still have forgiveness for those who hung him there, and also the thief hanging there beside him? Who are we corporately, that we must be avenged? Who have we, as Americans, hung on a cross in recent times? And why should everyone carry their own pistol?
Alvin Fischer
Vancouver
