LOVE OR FEAR?

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. (1 John 4: 18)

Fear involves torment.  The NIV and RSV use the word punishment.  Fear makes you think, “They scare me. How do I hurt them?”  Love has the opposite of effect.  Love makes you think, “They’re my neighbor.  How do I help?”  The two mindsets are mutually exclusive.

Jesus commands us to love our neighbors (Matthew 22: 39; Leviticus 19: 18).  You can’t do that if you’re scared of your neighbors.

Jesus also commands us to love our enemies (Matthew 5: 43, 44).  So even if you see a certain person or a certain group as a threat, as an enemy, you still have to love them.  And if your first impulse in interactions is to reach for your gun, you’re not loving; you’re scared.

There is no fear in love.

Last summer in Dallas, Jason Harris’s mother called police to help her take her schizophrenic, bipolar son to the mental hospital.  When the police arrived, she immediately told the two officers on the scene that her son was bipolar and schizophrenic.  Jason stood in the doorway behind her with a screwdriver in his hand.

As he stepped off the stoop one of the officers shot him repeatedly. The officer stated that he feared for his life. 

I believe him.

I believe that the officer who killed the mentally ill man he’d been called to help genuinely feared for his own life.

But the officer wasn’t supposed to fear Jason.  The officer was supposed to LOVE Jason.

Had the officer loved the man he’d been called to help he would have talked without drawing his gun.  Had the officer loved the sick man whose mother had asked them to help her get to the hospital, he might have reached for the taser on his left side rather than the gloc on his right.  Had the officer felt love he might have reluctantly used his professional training or the two-officers-to-one advantage to wrestle Jason to the ground and take away the screwdriver.

Had the officer loved instead of feared he would have looked at Jason Harris and seen a man who needed help coming out of his own house with a screwdriver, not a crazed attacker confronting him with a shank.

Perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment.

A few years ago, when George Zimmerman fired his gun into the chest of Trayvon Martin, the teenager he’d profiled, pursued, and assaulted, Mr. Zimmerman said that he’d feared for his life.

I believe him.

I believe that when the teen he outweighed by 50% got the better of him and started raining punches down on his head pressed against the sidewalk that Mr. Zimmerman got really scared.

But George Zimmerman was never supposed to fear Trayvon Martin.  He was supposed to LOVE him.

Had he loved the young man walking along the public sidewalk not trespassing on anyone’s property, he wouldn’t have pursued him against police directions.  Had Mr. Zimmerman loved the young man he didn’t know, he might have offered a friendly greeting from his stoop and tried to have a conversation instead jumping out of his car, armed and screaming accusations.

Had George Zimmerman loved Trayvon Martin, he would have seen a child on the sidewalk, not a criminal f****r who gets away with everything and needed to be punished.

Perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment.

“I feared for my life.”

Think about that justification.

They weren’t hurting me.  They weren’t trying to hurt me.  They weren’t even threatening to hurt me.  But they scared me so I killed them.

And we say that’s O.K.

We say it’s O.K. to take the life of your neighbor because he/ she scared you.

They don’t even have to be objectively scary.   You just have to FEEL afraid at that moment.

Think about that.

We have given the power of life and death to fearful people.

We have made fear the ultimate standard for how we relate to our neighbors.  Fear, not love.

That’s legal, but is it right?  Is it godly?  Can we Christians continue to support a legal standard based on fearing our neighbors?

Scripture commands us to fear nobody, except God.

Jesus said, “And I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear Him who, after He has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I say to you, fear Him! (Luke 12: 4-5)

We’re supposed to love our neighbors without fear. We’re supposed to fear God with love.

We do that exactly backwards. 

This is a note to the church, to the followers of Jesus Christ, to the people who for all our social and political differences hold common reverence for the Word of God in Scripture: 

I’m not saying beat your pistols into plowshares.  I support the right to self-defense up to and including the use of lethal force, but when we measure the exercise of that right we have to stop using the legal standard.  The current legal standard is FEAR.  We are called to  a higher standard.

You shall LOVE your neighbor as yourself.

There is no fear in love.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

WHO YOU CALLING A NAZI?

So, I keep seeing these memes about President Obama being a Nazi because he supports gun control.  I thought it was an interesting point, so I looked up information on gun laws in Germany before and after the Nazis took over.

The truth is----- well...In 1919, BEFORE THE NAZIs, in the wake of World War I, the German government passed the Regulations on Weapons Ownership, which declared that "all firearms, as well as all kinds of firearms ammunition, are to be surrendered immediately."    In 1920, the government enacted the Law on the Disarmament of the People which further limited military-type weapons.

The strongest German gun control laws were enacted BEFORE the Nazis came to power.

In 1928, under pressure from the the rising National Socialists (the NAZIs), the conservative majority in the German parliament revoked the 1919 Regulations on Weapons Ownership and relaxed gun restrictions but put into effect a strict firearm licensing scheme.

After Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany the Nazi led parliament passed the German Weapons Act which repealed pre-Nazi restrictions on gun ownership and expanded gun rights for everyone except Jews. 

The Nazis expanded gun rights for citizens.  At the same time they treated the Jews as non-citizens.

On November 11, 1938, the Regulations Against Jews' Possession of Weapons deprived Jews of the right to possess any form of weapons including truncheons, knives, or firearms and ammunition.

In Nazi Germany  more and more citizens had a guns, but a Jew with any weapon was automatically treated as a dangerous criminal.

So Nazi Germany was a powerful nation where ultra-conservative, right-wing interests expanded gun rights .  In that nation, the police serving those same ultra-conservative, right-wing interests treated an ethnic minority with any weapon as an automatic threat.  The police could kill the minority because “I saw a weapon,” or “I thought I saw a weapon,” even though it is legal for “regular” citizens to be armed.

Any of this sounding familiar?

Other things the Nazis did:

• Resegregated schools
• Changed school social studies curriculum by requiring more patriotic versions of  history
•    Effectively outlawed independent labor unioins (by forcing all to them to submit to the    Nazi’s German Labour Front)
• Demanded public support for a mythology of German exceptionalism (Aryanism)
• Promoted suspicion and hatred of immigrants and others who weren't "real" Germans
• Responded to all perceived and imagined threats with military aggression (often to spread “freedom” by “liberating” places like Paris)

If that sounds like any group you know, history encourages you to be real, real, real careful about giving them any more power.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

#Awordtothewise

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

GUNS & GETHSEMANE

Just yesterday, 3 young, law-abiding Muslims were murdered in North Carolina.   Their deaths at the hands of a White shooter will  prompt a new round of debate about guns in America.  Lots of public Christians will speak to the issue.  None of them will say anything new.  They’ll all be reading from the same memos.

So if we could all just take a moment and stop pulling our sermon outlines from the Democratic and Republican talking points of the week and just let the Bible speak, that’d be great.

I present, for your consideration, the words of Jesus from the night before He died. 

Then He said to them, “But now, he who has a money bag, let him take it, and likewise a knapsack; and he who has no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. (Luke 22: 36)

Jesus did not prohibit His disciples from owning weapons.  It’s not un-Christian to be a gun owner.

So they said, “Lord, look, here are two swords.”

And He said to them, “It is enough.”  (Luke 22:36-38)

Jesus did endorse limits on weapons ownership.  It’s not godlessly communist to license and/or limit how heavily citizens can be armed.

But Jesus said to him, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?”

When those around Him saw what was going to happen, they said to Him, “Lord, shall we strike with the sword?”

Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear.

So Jesus said to Peter,  “Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Permit even this.” And He touched his ear and healed him. (Luke 22: 48-51; Matthew 26: 52;  John 18: 10-11 combined )

Jesus permitted the right to bear arms and simultaneously condemned the impulse to use them to solve our problems, even when the problem was somebody attacking our Jesus.

So, yeah, you can carry your .40 cal in one pocket and your New Testament in the other without hypocrisy.  But if your first instinct when you feel angry or threatened is to reach for the pistol instead of the Psalms--- then you are waaaay outta line with God.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus told the disciples that they could not use the very weapons He had just hours before said they had the right to carry.  Then all the disciples forsook Him and fled. (Matthew 26: 56)

And that right there is the problem.

Liberal Christians, conservative Christians, Democrat Christians, and Republican Christians: on guns and pretty much everything else, we’re still running away from the whole truth of what the Bible speaks.  We are regurgitating the same politically polarizing points without considering the possibility that maybe neither side is completely, infallibly right.

Maybe God is an Independent.

Let God be true but every man a liar. (Romans 3:4) 

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

.... A WELL REGULATED MILITIA ---- AND THEN WHAT?

In 1776, a group of citizens armed with military-style weapons decided that they didn’t agree with the existing British government so they fought against that government and created the United States of America.   We remember them as patriots.  That was good.

After the American Civil War, groups of citizens armed with military style weapons and guerilla tactics decided that they so completely disagreed with the U.S. government’s new policies that they banded together to defy the new laws and take back the rights and privileges they and their forefathers had fought for.   We remember those groups collectively as the Ku Klux Klan.  That was/is bad.

In 1975, a group of citizens armed with military-style weapons decided that they didn’t like the existing government so they fought against the Cambodian government and formed Democratic Kampuchea.  That was the Khmer Rouge.  We remember them for xenophobia, genocide, and “The Killing Fields.”  That was bad.

In the mid 1990’s a group of citizens got so angry over the failings of the existing government that they acquired military-style weapons and overthrew the government of Afghanistan.  That was the Taliban. We remember them for atrocities against women, Christian, musicians, and pretty much everybody else.    That was bad.

In the late 80’s and early 90’s a group of deeply religious, ultra-conservative citizens with ties to some of the wealthiest people in their nation began accumulating military-style weapons, “prepping”  in privately built camps, and preaching about a vast liberal conspiracy to undermine the way of life their forefathers intended them to have.   These citizens believed that their philosophy was the only one that should exist in the world and that it was their destiny and duty to conquer, convert, or kill everyone who disagreed with them. 

That group was Al Qaeda.  We remember them for-------Well, we all know what we remember them for.

In the ongoing debate over the 2^nd Amendment and new gun regulations, we are finally facing the reality that the primary reason why citizens stockpile military-style weapons isn’t self-expression or sport; it’s  in case they decide to overthrow the existing government. 

Here is why I and the rest of America have a problem with that:  It isn’t that we really, totally agree with or trust the system we have now.  It’s just that we more really, totally distrust whatever system you guys would set up in its place.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church in Montgomery, Alabama.