God's plan..

I process by writing. So today, I will write about gun violence, radiation exposure and God, because I need to process the sadness that I feel when I turn on the news or when I pick up my class reading. I am writing this for myself. These are my opinions. These are my thoughts. These subjects are touchy. If you do not agree with me, please just walk away.

We are on our 74thschool shooting, as of yesterday. Our solution to these school shootings is to create bullet proof blankets to keep our children safe, instead of getting to the bottom of why we keep having school shootings.  Our mental health system needs to be reworked, yes, but so do our gun laws and more importantly, so do our opinions about guns and our dependence on guns.

I cannot wrap my brain around the fact that most of the people who are so determined to keep their guns are the same people you see in church on Sunday mornings. I feel like these two things do not go together. The church rhetoric of “God has a plan,” “our days are numbered and only God knows,” “everything happens for a reason” and “turn the other cheek” run contrary to “let’s carry AK-47’s to restaurants, because we can.” I can’t be the only one who feels this way. I just can’t be.

When bad things happen and guns are involved, we see people scrambling and I hear that same rhetoric “God has a plan and it’s not our job to know his plan.” Um… ok… You go with that answer, but I am quite skeptical that all of this is God’s plan. Instead, I think these deaths are the consequences of our own stupidity and dependence on violence and have little to nothing to do with God. Or maybe a lot to do with God, because if we trusted God, if we believed in his love and protection and all the rhetoric from above, can we really say we need to carry around assault rifles?

I am in the process of reading a book about the radiation exposure that people in Colorado experienced, because of the Rocky Flats Plant that made plutonium triggers for bombs from the 70’s to the 90’s. In one section, a man’s daughter dies from a tumor. His response? Well, God has a plan. Children with testicular cancer, God has a plan. Dead animals, crops that won’t grow, God has a plan.

Ok people… yes, God has a plan (if that’s what you want to believe), but what if God’s plan is for you to wake the heck up and ask questions? What if God’s plan is for you to stand up and do what you know is right and make some changes with gun control? What if God’s plan is to be better stewards of our environment? What if God’s plan is for us to lay down our arms, because that is the BEST WAY TO PROTECT OUR CHILDREN?

Sigh.