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The Second Commandment

The Rev. Dr. Jennifer Copeland, Executive Director · April 16, 2018 · 3 Comments

When the news broke about the North Carolina Council of Churches billboard suggesting a connection between guns and idolatry, responses ran from, “Thank you for naming the truth,” to “How dare you claim owning a gun means worshiping an idol.” And everything in between, not always in language you would print where children might see it…

I read the 2nd Commandment to mean there are a lot of distractions that keep us from focusing on the God who promises us abundant life. Clearly, God recognized this potential when Commanding us not to worship idols. Rather than thinking of idols only as graven images (monuments or statues), we might more correctly think of idols as those things that are more important to us than God. Consider the encounter between Jesus and the rich person (Mark 10:17-31). Jesus names the last six commandments for him, though not in Exodus order, and the rich person claims to have followed them all. Then Jesus, “looking at him, loved him,” and proceeds to tell him to give everything away and come follow him. We know how this story ends; the rich person “went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”

The possessions in and of themselves are not the problem; it is the esteem with which he held them, raising them to a rank higher than God–idolizing them. Jesus could see this about his life, how those possessions owned him and kept him from flourishing into the abundant life God offers. It’s also important to note that Jesus “loved him.” That’s the way of Jesus, to see those things so clearly in our lives that are keeping us from having abundant life and pointing those things out to us in the hope that we will make a different choice. Jesus wants that for us–abundant life. But we have to choose it.

Another way to consider our idols is to confess that while we worship only God (adhering to the 1st Commandment), we sometimes feel the need to hedge our bets in case God doesn’t provide all the insurance and safety we think we need. So, we keep our weapons on stand-by–nuclear arms stored by our nation for national defense as well as concealed weapons we can draw for personal defense. Either way, this shows we don’t really have confidence in the God who promises abundant life. In another place, Jesus suggests that those of us who obsess over saving our lives have already lost them (Matt 16:25, Mark 8:35, Luke 9:24). We can understand what Jesus means when we consider how much energy and angst we expend worrying about security.

Our billboard suggests that the discussion about guns in this country skirts dangerously close to idolatry and occasionally crosses over. At times, the “right to bear arms” is more important than any other right–Constitutionally protected or God-given. In fact, many comments we received about the billboard seemed to conflate Constitutional protection with God-given rights. But God is not an American, even if a lot of Americans have faith in God. They are different, Constitutional rights and God-given rights–that’s why we have the First Amendment. Those of us who profess faith in God are expected to place our God-given rights before the Constitution. So, if the Constitution gives us the right to bear arms, we must bear them and legislate about them in ways that always honor God. If we don’t, the guns are an idol.

Filed Under: Blog, Homepage Featured Tagged With: Gun Violence

About The Rev. Dr. Jennifer Copeland, Executive Director

Jennifer is a native of South Carolina and an ordained minister in The United Methodist Church. She loves South Carolina, but has managed to spend all but ten years of her adult life in North Carolina. Those ten years were spent pastoring United Methodist churches across the Upstate. She attended Duke University several times and in the process earned a BA, double majoring in English and Religion, a Master of Divinity, a PhD in religion, and a Graduate Certificate in Women’s Studies. Prior to coming to the Council, she spent 16 years as the United Methodist Chaplain at Duke University, where she also taught undergraduate and divinity school classes, served on committees and task forces, and attended lots of basketball games. Jennifer has two children, Nathan, a software developer who lives in Durham, and Hannah, a student at the University of Tampa.

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Comments

  1. Marilyn Taplin says

    September 18, 2020 at 5:43 pm

    Nice post Jennifer. “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above,
    or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” Exodus 20: 4 In the story of creation God made the fowls, animals, beasts and all creeping things before he made humans. Birds inhabit the heavens. Animals, and creeping things, walk on this earth. Fish live in the waters. None are made in the image of God. Animals are not like God.

    Reply
  2. Pete Crow says

    April 16, 2018 at 5:55 pm

    I have never thought before of the Second Commandment in relation to the Second Amendment. Or of the 10 Commandments in relation to the Bill of Rights, especially the 1st two of each. Thanks for suggesting a new way to think about this issue, even more, an important way to think about being Christian.

    Reply
  3. Brian Barrier says

    April 16, 2018 at 2:16 pm

    “Another way to consider our idols is to confess that while we worship only God (adhering to the 1st Commandment), we sometimes feel the need to hedge our bets in case God doesn’t provide all the insurance and safety we think we need.”

    Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. As it turns out, it is pretty difficult to have a mustard seed’s quantity of faith.

    Reply

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