Holy Toast!
July 14, 2008
As if theme parks encouraging gun use isn’t bad enough, now we have churches giving guns to minors. I swear, America is trying to self-destruct as fast as possible. In Oklahoma City, Windsor Hills Baptist Church wanted to give away a semiautomatic assault rifle as fun prizes for teens. Riiiiiight. I am thanking God that they didn’t succeed. Apparently the church was having a young adult retreat weekend, complete with preaching, praying, and … dun, dun, dun …rifles. Now what part of that statement sounds wrong?? The pastor, Bob Ross, justifies the churches decision by reasoning:
“I don’t want people thinking ‘My goodness, we’re putting a weapon in the hand of somebody that doesn’t respect it who are then going to go out and kill,’” … “That’s not at all what we’re trying to do.”
Ross must have missed out on the past year’s news of school shootings. There have been 10 major school shootings, and that is not counting any false alarms, students being caught with a gun in school, and recreational shootings. No one sane gives someone a gun expecting them or wanting them to “go out and kill”, obviously. I don’t suspect or accuse Ross that that is what Windsor Hills is trying to do. But, come on, let’s use that bright, religious noggin of yours, Ross. There is a good chance that giving away a gun to a religious youngster won’t result in human deaths, but then there is still a chance. Look at Charles Manson – he was very religious and because of his religion, he felt the compulsion to murder. I mean, he was a freak, but nonetheless, religious. Need I say more? I think not.
Ross also wants people to know that the retreat for teenagers at Windsor Hills is a weekend of faith. So then why the heck do you need a gun? or shooting contests? The two don’t go hand in hand at all, unless your faith is in the power of weaponry. Why not give out Bibles or rosaries or funny t-shirts that have Jesus on them or something. Basically, you can put Jesus’ face on anything and make it holy – toast, for instance. If you want to play fun activities take the kids to a theme park. Oh wait, there will be guns there, too. Hmm… Better try going to Chuck ‘E’ Cheese, I don’t think they allow guns there …yet.
Actually, they did still give away a gun, but they only gave away a shotgun. And praise God we live in America where it is still legal to own guns to defend ourselves!
I think there’s something else at play here as well.
In watching KOCO’s coverage of this story I couldn’t help but think to myself how the typical reaction might be a wee bit different if they were doing a report on a different religious group.