In the blaring refrains of polarized worldviews on guns in America, a new note is being heard. Corporate giants cut their ties to the NRA. Dick’s Sporting Goods refused to carry AR-15’s and to sell guns to anyone under 21. High school students speak convicting words to the powerful.
That such a note can be heard between the bass-thumping woofers of the NRA and the less wattage tweeters of gun control advocates is something of a miracle. Although fragile, it exists. More and more are hearing it.
What might generate such a note? I suggest a tuning fork, an instrument producing notes of such perfect pitch that we use it to tune our pianos. One strikes the fork so that its two tines vibrate in unison. Dampen either side, even a little, and the note disappears. Neither tine produces the note by itself; it is created by the vibrations between them.
Danish physicist Nils Bohr wrote: “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may be another profound truth.” For example, light exists within the opposition of two truths, behaving at times like quantum particles and at other times like electromagnetic waves. In fact, recognizing this paradoxical nature of light gave birth to quantum mechanics. In Christian thinking, God exists as Three yet also One, a paradox that has had theologians scratching their heads for 2,000 years.
Critical truths in many fields are similarly paradoxical, notes created only within the tension of opposite ideas vibrating together.
Defining guns as unambiguously good or evil misses this note of truth. True believers on one side assume even tiny steps towards sensible gun control throws open the door to government overreach and black helicopters. Zealots on the other side view guns themselves as the problem, thus tarring all gun enthusiasts as sick or cultish. Demonizing the opposition turns up the volume at either extreme. Nothing in the middle can be heard.
But now we are hearing a new note. It is born out of the struggle to do something, anything, to address the issue, even though whatever is done will always sound small and inadequate or a compromising sell-out to true believers on both extremes. More and more people are choosing to live within the paradoxical uncertainty, which is actually the most creative place to be.
Living in such creative tensions can be life-giving. Marriage partners live within the tension of both serving and being served. Good friends live within the tension voicing their own stuff and deeply listening to their friend.
Yes, a tuning fork forged of metal is easy to hear the note compared to a tuning fork forged of ideas, especially in a highly fraught political environment fueled by money, political ambition, and human weakness. But it is happening.
Perhaps the crushing reality of doing nothing for so long is moving more of us to risk living in the paradox about guns in America, where both sides have some of the truth, but neither has all of it.
Yet, the “Critical Truth” is really none of the above. As you well know the moral decline of our society as it runs away from God and into a broken, self absorbed “I am god” mindset has devalued life. Our society will eventually look and act like the societies all over the world before Christ conquered the hearts of many populations and made the changes that we wish still existed. Making new laws is like closing a small gate while the whole fence has fallen down.
Hi Ron,
Thanks for taking time to offer your thoughts. I certainly agree that no human laws are enough to change peoples’ hearts or bring lasting redemption. Only Jesus does that. And yet, I would argue that our Reformed and evangelical heritage does not see the world as negatively as you express it–“making new laws is like closing the gate after the fence has fallen down.”
Having taught Reformed theology now at two universities, I can affirm that Presbyterian guiding light John Calvin certainly believed Christ was the only final answer, yet was actively involved in politics and law-making in Geneva as part of his vocation as a spiritual leader in the city. Many evangelical leaders throughout history have done God’s work by changing laws, including William Wilberforce who led a spiritually-motivated movement that outlawed slavery in the British empire and impacted millions of lives.