God's Put This One On Us

Editor's note: This post has been updated to include the Oct. 1 shooting in Las Vegas. 

The oh-so-familiar reaction started before we knew what had happened. Posts on social media encouraged us to pray. Tweets went out bearing #prayers.

It’s so damn familiar. Columbine. Aurora. Fort Hood. Sandy Hook. Virginia Tech. San Bernardino. Orlando. Las Vegas. Which place will be next to have a hashtag and infamy attached to its name?

We see the heart-breaking images that are so much like the other heart-breaking images from previous shootings – different people, different place, different massacre, same sick feeling. We dust off our “Pray for the people of (fill in the blank)” and hashtag a prayer their way.

And then we do nothing to change it. Which means we’re really not praying at all.

It's not enough if all we do is feel sad and sorry for the victims of violence, say a prayer, and leave it at that. That’s not how prayer works. Prayer always involves an openness to be God’s answer, God’s agents of change.

This is on us. It’s on you and me. What are we going to do about it?

The words of a prayer are only a starting point. Those words can be empty and have no real effect, or they can become the most powerful thing in the world. It depends upon whether we’re willing to become the answer.

Prayer always involves an answer. It always involves some type of change. It always involves risk – which is why prayer is such radical stuff at its core. It's more than a request; it's a commitment. If we’re not willing to engage our world and challenge it to do better, then we’re the ones falling down on the job – let's leave God out of it.

Saying a little prayer and moving on is not enough. Prayer is powerful and personal and involves taking action.

We pray for the person who is hungry, and then we feed them. We pray for the person who is bleeding by the side of the road, and then we stop to help them. And it doesn’t end there. We work to change our systems so that we have fewer people hungry and fewer people bleeding in our streets and in our schools and in our churches and in our conference centers.

It’s up to you and me.

Look, we have a pretty good idea of what God would like here. What parent would want their children murdering each other on a daily basis? It’s up to us to try to stop it.

And we don’t do that by accepting violence and clinging to our weapons. Nor do we do it by defending the status quo. Or by being indifferent. Or by throwing up our hands and saying the problem is too big.

And it sure doesn’t mean looking up and expecting God to wave some magic wand to make it all go away. That’s not the way it works. We created the problem; God has already given us all that we need to fix it.

You’ve prayed for peace? Good! Now start working for it.

This is on you and me.

Yes, advocating for peace is exasperating and makes us vulnerable, but that’s how it works. We have to be patient and persistent. Love is patient and persistent. We have to have the audacity to respond to hatred and fear not with more hatred and fear, but with an unflinching love. We need to respond to violence not with more violence, but with a firm commitment to find ways to live together more peacefully.

All of those prayers and calls for peace in the past 24 hours? We’ve already received our answer: God wants to use us to change it.

We make the guns. We glorify the violence. We accept the status quo. It’s on you and me to fix this. God has given us all that we need to do it. The rest is up to us. Time to get off our butts and do it. Time to get off our knees and start praying for real.