Wake Up, Look Up

Hello, everyone. Thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch. And in today's episode, we are throwing it back. This is something fun we're doing this summer where WULU is now a year old, and we're looking back at some of our most popular episodes.

And by popular, I mean episodes that, got a lot of views and upset a lot of people. And we're returning back to the opinion that I took and asking, would I still say the same things? And in this episode, we're looking at one we did on guns. We called it don't start with guns. And, basically, the idea was this.

Gun violence is often a part of the American landscape. Time and time again, we see different instances in schools, in public gatherings where someone uses a gun to murder a large group of people. And every time that happens, the national disagreement or debate over guns kicks back up with one side saying guns don't kill people, people kill people, and with the other side saying that guns are the problem. And so we were asking as Christians, how should we think about this? Well, I said two things in the episode that I wanna remind you of.

And I hate to say it this way, but even though this episode is not anchored to any instance of gun violence in the news right now, this is a little bit of an evergreen episode because a future instance of gun violence is coming, unfortunately. And when it does, I want you to think about two things. One is it is worth having a conversation about guns in America. Christians know the whole law of God boils down to this. Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Anytime someone wants to make an argument that a law needs to change because it is unloving to our neighbors, we need to listen. We may not agree, but we need to listen. It's worth talking about gun safety, gun access, all of those things. But I have to say that talking about guns is a little bit of a misdirection. Now I don't mean it's an intentional misdirection.

I believe that a big part of loving our neighbors is believing the best about them. And so for the group of people out there who really do believe that taking away guns would fix the problem of gun violence, I wanna believe that they really believe that and that they have good reasons for doing that. But every time in the news, as someone who reads a lot of news for this podcast, there's an instance of gun violence, I find one common thread always that is there. And that common thread, by the way, is much easier to talk about and deal with if we were trying than the issue of guns. And that is in every instance of gun violence, what you'll find is a broken family.

Time and time again, as they unpack the story of the shooter's life, what you'll find is a person who is estranged from their family, which is not surprising because twenty seven percent of Americans will say that they're estranged from at least one family member, or you'll find a young person whose parents weren't paying attention, probably had issues of addiction or mental health on their own, and was left to navigate life entirely independently in an environment that was not suited for them. Now I say this because long before that troubled person picks up a gun, they were on a road to destruction, their own, or potentially the destruction of other people. What what you take eighteen years to break is hard to put back together in eighteen months, and it isn't as simple as saying, well, just don't give them a gun. Broken families break people, and broken people break our world. The church has to realize that taking away guns or defending guns, either view you take, is not our work.

I'm not a politician. I'm certainly not a a censor of other people's perceived rights. But what I am is a missionary for Jesus Christ, a missionary for the god who created the idea of the family. The gospel has a lot to say about how to take unhealthy marriages and make them healthy. The gospel has a lot to say about what parenting looks like, about how forgiveness can shape a home, about what care and love and affection and time should and can look like in the American family.

And I just wonder if churches were taking that work more seriously, if churches were advancing that work, not just to their own people, but to their neighbors. If if we began to have hearts that were broken for broken families, if we began to invite those outside of our circle to come in and hear the good news of what God can do in a family, if the chain reaction of that would be less gun violence, if that troubled teenager found adults in a local church who cared for them, if their parents experienced the transforming power of the gospel, if that estranged young adult found reconciliation and healing with their family, I wonder if they'd ever even care to pick up a gun in the first place. Guns may or may not be a problem, but broken families are definitely a problem. And whether they lead to gun violence or not, they lead to one form of violence or another. And that is something we can help with and we should be helping with if we'd stop distracting ourselves with the wrong debate.

Hey. Thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up, Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it. And while you're here, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get further content or even download the CCC app where you'll find even more resources to help you grow in your faith and relationship with Jesus Christ.

Have an article you’d like Pastor Zach to discuss? Email us at wakeup@ccchapel.com!