The chicken or the egg..

I recently returned from vacation packed with family time of parents, siblings, kids and grandkids. I saw as people in my life are aging towards the end of theirs, fear begins to set in.  I observed that the more the fear sets in, the more you reach for whatever control you can muster. I spied on my grandkids a bit too and when they first encountered one another, there was fear in their little eyes and immediately there were claims staked out over toys and rooms and parents and grandparents. Things that were familiar to them were the things they reached out to control as much as they could.

And I came away asking myself: what comes first, the fear or the control?

I wondered while watching my family in fearful things grasp for control - did I do the same in the war-time situations? I did. I did everything I could to control the moment each time I was outside the wire in Iraq. I kept an almost superstitious routine in all of my pre-mission movements. I probably even supplanted some of those to my Soldiers too. When we fear, we grasp at control. It is probably natural to do so. 

This whole thing got me thinking about the state of our world right now. My heart has literally felt broken over what has happened in our nation these past few weeks with mass shootings and such, but my mind wonders: did the shootings have their origins in fear? And the way we are attacking each other across the aisle over gun control, does it stem also from fear?  I think it does. People who want guns want the control of the amendment because they fear not having them will put them at risk of being taken over by the government or another attacking nation (see Red Dawn), and the people who don’t want guns want to control this because they fear what some people have been doing to kids and teachers in schools.

Listen, when I was younger, I owned a shotgun. I hunted rabbits and pheasants and ducks and deer. I didn’t do it because I needed the food (though there were times we definitely ate what we shot whether I liked it or not). I have also carried multiple weapons on my person as a police officer and Soldier. So, I do speak from some experience here when I say that there needs to be a change in the gun laws. What I am afraid of is that one side’s fear on this matter will lead to many innocent lives being lost because of it.

We must learn to love in order to control our fears - not learn to shoot more effectively. 

Wisdom teaches us that perfect love cast out all fear. This type of perfect love would allow for people from different races, religions, and political parties to cast aside their fears of others and this would eventually lead to laying down our control of others.  It in fact would end racism, classism, totalitarianism, nationalism, Zionism, and a host of other ism’s that stem from fear. But to love this way, this perfect way, is a very courageous thing to do. It might make you vulnerable and it is not easy. But, I think our nation deserves this kind of bravery right now. Let’s face it, everything else we have tried hasn’t done much good up to this point: no controls (the wild west), too many controls (marshal law).  None of us want either one of these things in the US, but all of us probably want to live in a country that values the lives of our children above the right to shoot the chicken or the egg.