A Kansas church gave away a weapon of war

And then they set out to explain themselves -- badly

On Father’s Day, The River Church of Kansas City (Kan.) gave away an AR-15 (see that gun’s handiwork here), and the rest of the congregation got a snootful from Pastor Chris Zehner on “standing our ground in faith” — with the afore-mentioned weapon of war, I suppose.

The above Facebook post garnered the flock quite a lot of attention, and very little of it was good (and so the church eventually removed the post but they did not take back the gun).

In their defense, Chris Zehner’s co-pastor and wife, Briana, suggested that churches give away things all the time, like fishing poles, and the world continues to turn. I’m going to call a false equivalence on that one. I have yet to see a fishing pole used in a school massacre but maybe I live on a different plane from the Zehners.

In fact, I’m sure I do live on a different plane than the Zehners.

Because I’ve had it (forgive me) to the tits and higher (Missourism for “I’m fed up”) with people twisting perfectly good Scripture into something ugly and hate-centric, I weighed in online. And rather quickly, a man named Mark responded with a verse from Luke, where Jesus suggests that as they set out to spread the gospel, his followers take a purse, a pack, and if the follower doesn’t have a sword, to sell their clothes, buy one and add it to their traveling kit.

So I quoted Ephesians, where “sword” is a euphemism the word of God. Jesus was telling followers to be prepared to explain the faith.

You cannot have it both ways, and the notion that Jesus would suggest followers stab people who don’t accept his words runs absolutely counter to good sense and even the thinnest of theologies. In fact, Peter later took Jesus literally. When Jesus was about to be arrested, Peter cut off the right ear of Malchus, a high priest’s servant. Jesus did not pick up his own sword and finish Malchus off. Instead, Jesus told Peter to put his sword away, and Jesus reattached Malchus’ ear.

I can almost predict the next verse Mark was going to share because this kind of argument taps into my Inner Fundamentalist. Oh, it’s on, sinner — and I girded my loins to prepare to lob verses back and forth. I started down into the rabbit hole when I realized any linking of weaponry and Jesus ignores the spirit of the law — and rabbit holes are for rabbits.

There is the letter of the law, and there is the spirit of the law, which is love. It’s all love, and AR-15s do not belong anywhere near that world. I told Mark I would shake the dust off my sandals and move on because if you are twisting the Word into something that allows a church to hand out a gun as a prize, no, thank you. Thank you. But no.