Recently, in a Christian worship context, I heard someone say that the recent mass shooting in a Florida school was “. . . a spiritual issue, not a political one.”

For some reason, that did not ring entirely true to me when I heard it.  I think I may have figured out why I feel that way.

First, let me come clean about my own relationship with guns.

I grew up on a farm in Adams County.  Long before I could drive a car, I had learned to shoot a gun.  Primarily, I shot for pleasure.  A lot of tin and aluminum cans died at my hands.

I also hunted, primarily rabbits.  I was taught that “you eat what you kill.”  Even now, I probably could skin and gut a rabbit without much effort or conscious thought.

Then I met this beautiful girl to whom I am now married.  When I would get ready to go hunting, she would sing this pitiful little song about a rabbit being hunted.  Soon, I went back to just plinking at tin cans.  About the only critter I shot was the occasional clay pigeon.  (For those of you who may not know what a clay pigeon is, let me put your minds at ease: It is not a real pigeon.)

However, my attitude about guns has changed over the years.  I never owned an automatic or semi-automatic rifle, and have come to believe that no one outside of the military needs to have such weapons.  I’ve never heard of any real hunter using such a weapon.  If I did hear of such a person, I would say, “No, you’re not a real hunter.”

My transformation from an enthusiastic shooter to an advocate for stricter gun control was solidified by my grandson’s suicide.  Yes, he used a gun to take his own life.  Yes, he might have taken his own life anyway.  On the other hand, if he had been forced to do it in some other way, it might have slowed him down enough to come to some more rational way of thinking about ending his life.  Maybe.  Of course, there is no way of knowing.  One thing I know for sure: He took his own life with a gun.

So, back to the comment about the gun violence in Florida being a spiritual rather than a political issue.

In a deep sense, this statement was absolutely on target.  The truth is that people were taking their own or one another’s lives long before the invention of gunpowder or automatic weapons.  We are not told precisely how Cain killed his brother Abel.  Was it a stick, a rock, his bare hands?  We are not told.  What we do know is that Cain killed his brother.

The issue is the wickedness, the alienation, envy, hatred, and resentment in the human heart.  No law can hope to deal with this.

However, allowing people to procure and use automatic or semi-automatic weapons is a political issue, and it is one that we could do something about, if we chose to do so.  As with my grandson, we could at least make it more difficult for people to kill themselves or others.

The truth, at least as I see it is this: We cannot compartmentalize human problems into “spiritual” and “political.”  The contents of those compartments tend to eat through every wall we try to construct in order to keep them sealed off from one another.  Spiritual issues have political implications, and political issues have spiritual implications.

It is ironic that often (though of course, not always) those who view gun violence through a “spiritual” lens, do not do so when it comes to abortion.  In other words, they are eager to elect (a political act, if ever there was one) pro-life representatives or presidents.  But is abortion not a spiritual issue too?  Surely it is both spiritual and political.  So is gun violence, I think.

I am not an expert on either guns or politics or spirituality, but it seems to me that we all need to become more informed and less inclined to simply shout slogans at one another.  Neither pro- nor anti-gun slogans will bring back my grandson or the young people who lost their lives in Florida.  Neither will compartmentalizing the issue.