Independence Day weekend is always a bit of a wildcard in evangelical churches. Some churches treat that Sunday as they would any other. Not every church though. Some go all out with a patriotic service full of war hymns, American flags and bunting, and tributes to the American troops. 

One church in Tennessee took it one step further this year and raffled off an AR-15 rifle during their Sunday gathering. Dr. Todd Holmes, senior pastor of The River of Tri-Cities Church in Johnson City, said that he sees the giveaway as part of a broader effort for his church to “be a blessing” to the community.

“This is just one of the many giveaways that we do here at our church,” Holmes told a local news station last week. “And I thought it was appropriate, since it’s about our nation’s independence and part of our Constitution and our Second Amendment rights.”

While he acknowledged that some might be uncomfortable with the giveaway, particularly those who have been affected by gun violence, Holmes seemed to downplay those concerns.

“There’s a lot more opportunity to be killed in vehicular violence, or crash I guess I should say, than there would be a gun,” Holmes said. “And people can get upset about something, but in the end, it’s really not about a gun. It’s about a person’s heart, because a gun in itself is not evil. It’s as good or as evil as the person that’s using it.”

As I watched the church’s service, which was live streamed to Facebook, the thought that kept returning to my mind was that if the Apostle Paul had been watching it with me, he would have absolutely fallen out of his chair. 

After finishing his sermon, Holmes transitioned to the raffle, prefacing it with the fact that “we couldn’t do this” in North Korea, China, or even Canada. 

“And we don’t worship guns,” Holmes said, as the worship keyboardist continued to play altar call music. “That’s the corniest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. But we’re going to give away this rifle here today.”

Soon, Holmes was joined onstage by his wife and co-senior pastor, Katie, who characterized people who would criticize raffling off an AR-15s in church as “small-brained liberals.” Her husband replied with an “amen.”

Again poking fun at those who are uncomfortable with guns, Holmes said, “People say, ‘Do you know that that is a very dangerous weapon and that it breaks bones?’ Well, yeah, if you shoot it right.”

“If I’m going to defend myself,” he continued, “and somebody’s trying to kill me and I’m using this to defend myself, then I do definitely want it to stop the person, okay? I don’t want them to have another opportunity to get up off the floor and to try it again.”

This entire conversation took place from the stage of a church on a Sunday, during the portion of the worship service usually reserved for worshippers to reflect on what they have heard preached from the Word of God.

How should Christians feel about guns? I don’t know that I have a definitive answer, other than this: not like that. 

The more I wrestle with the Scriptures, the more I become convinced that the disposition of Christians should be fundamentally oriented away from violence and instruments of violence. 

That may seem like a hot take, particularly if you’ve ever given the Old Testament a cursory read. But when we take a closer look at the Old Testament law, what we begin to notice is how many statutes are intended to reduce the amount of violence that was generally characteristic of ancient near eastern societies. It put into place systems that protected the vulnerable, the accused, and the foreigner—all groups of people that were most regularly subject to violence. 

When we look to the prophets, we see them routinely condemn kings and rulers for their idolatry, yes. But we also see them call out the things their idolatry had inevitably led to: violence and injustice. Indeed, violence was evidence of idolatry. God never intended Israel to consolidate power through military might.

Isaiah himself prophesied about a time when God would usher in such a great peace that people would “beat their swords into plowshares” (Isaiah 2:4). God’s ideal is that instruments of war and death would be replaced with instruments of cultivation—instruments of life. God’s vision is that battlefields would be turned into farmland. 

This vision was embodied by the Messiah. 

When we look to Jesus, the visible image of the invisible God and the perfect imprint of God’s nature and character, what we see is a man void of violence. In a day and age when a man with a sword claiming to be the Jewish liberator popped up seemingly every couple of years, Jesus constantly preached about loving one’s enemies. He told his followers not to resist the evildoer but to bless him instead. He instructed them to expect persecution and to respond to it with love. 

And Jesus took those words seriously. They weren’t just metaphors. When he faced a cruel and unjust death, he prayed that God would forgive his attackers. He cursed no one. He returned no violence for violence. He willingly laid down his life, enduring shame, pain, and a gruesome death. 

Americans can certainly debate the merits of various proposals for gun legislation and the limits of the Second Amendment. But my question is much more fundamental: Is our attitude toward the use of lethal force compatible with the way of Jesus? Do we long for the day when swords would be beaten into plowshares, or have we cultivated too deep an affection for our swords? 

There are plenty of morally legitimate reasons to own a gun. Perhaps you enjoy shooting for sport; there’s nothing wrong with that. And if you live on a farm or in a rural area, it is likely wise to have some sort of protection against wild animals who may come onto your property and threaten the safety of your family, pets, or cattle.

But when so much of our collective conversation about firearms revolves around putting a bullet into the chest of  “a bad guy with a gun,” I wonder how taking such a pragmatic approach to violence shapes our hearts. 

Serious theologians have long engaged in good faith debates about the proper or permissible use of violence as a means of staving off greater violence or injustice. These debates center on things like Just War theory, the morality of capital punishment, and whether Christians should personally engage in lethal violence—whether for self defense or as part of the military or law enforcement. 

Many would argue that while nonviolence is an ideal, in a world so filled with evil and injustice, violence is sometimes unavoidable—and that to avoid it would be tantamount to vacating our responsibility to protect the vulnerable. 

I don’t have a problem with any of that. I remain uncertain about the measure to which I agree, but I get it. What concerns me greatly is not a reluctant acknowledgement that violence might sometimes be necessary. Rather it is our enthusiasm for violence. Our love for the symbols of violence. Our desire to be fitted with instruments of violence. 

Perhaps we could afford to be slightly less suspicious of “liberals” who want to take our guns away and a little more suspicious of why we have such an affinity for instruments of death. 

That isn’t meant as a partisan statement. Behind gun legislation rhetoric are any number of reasonable policy concerns. It’s just that most of us never get past the rhetoric. We live in the fear, in the anger—not that violence exists, but that someone would limit our ability to participate in it. 

I level no condemnation against the Christian gun enthusiast. It’s not the firearms in our safes but the hatred in our hearts that provokes and perpetuates violence. Nevertheless, our proximity to power often warps our perceptions. And the ability to take a life at the pull of a trigger is a breathtaking power indeed.