So I found out today because my mom did some looking up on Facebook that one of my churches deacons sells Firearms. In fact he is a huge gun nut, I never knew this I mostly only talked to the guy about budgeting and he's been helping my wife and I out financially because we're quite poor and can't afford the hike in gas prices. It's been getting quite costly to go to church every week.
"God's work, done God's way, will never lack God's supply." - Hudson Taylor, Founder of the China Inland Mission.
Among other things, it is the "work of God" to use the spiritual gifts He's given you to edify and strengthen the Body of Believers, the Church. (
1 Corinthians 12) You can't do that well when you are physically isolated from the Body of Believers. God calls all of His children to be "members one of another," intimately linked to each other in Christ, loving and serving God, each other and the World. Though it will cost you to love as He's called you to do, He will see to it that you are able to do so.
In any case, I don't see at all how this brother-in-Christ's interest in guns is a problem, if he's a responsible gun-owner and seller.
In fact he even sells military weaponry. My mom is Catholic with odd views but she told me one of God's commandments were to not kill.
Not to
murder, actually. There are plenty of instances in Scripture where God commands people to kill other people. For example, the Israelites were commanded by God to stone to death adulterers, sexual perverts, idolaters, even willfully rebellious children. God repeatedly used his Chosen People to enact His punishment upon various wicked, pagan nations through violent military action. So, the seventh commandment is, actually, not a prohibition against killing, but against
murder.
And she's saying that nobody with a position in the church should sell high powered rifles to 18 year olds. I hate to say it but I agree with her and I'm getting a little reluctant on going to church tomorrow or ever attending church again.
??? If the 18-year-old is using the guns to hunt, or to target shoot, or as a means of self-defense, or the defense of others, what's the problem? There are literally
millions of gun owners in America who are perfectly responsible in their ownership of all sorts of guns. As every mass shooting has demonstrated, the police aren't going to protect people from nutballs bent on murder. No, the cops always arrive
after the murdering has begun; basically, they are the crime clean-up crew. What are good, law-abiding folks to do, then, when some crazed sociopath begins to murder them? How are they to defend themselves and others effectively against being shot to death? Making them utterly defenseless against a serial killer with a gun is, obviously, not the answer.
Anyway, your life is far from perfect. There are things in your life God wants to remove, things that you love but He despises. This is true of us all. And yet, God commands us to move into community with one another, flawed and nasty though we are. He doesn't give His children the freedom to despise and isolate from each other on the sort of basis you've laid out in your OP. The man you've mentioned is a deacon in the church, and his interest in guns violates none of God's commands, so you have no legitimate reason that I can see for abandoning the community of believers to which you've attached yourself.
If you do abandon the church,
you are the one who will pay a spiritual price for doing so. Isolated from the Body of Believers, you will be far more vulnerable to spiritual deception, far more susceptible to temptation and secret vice, far more unstable in your understanding of your own faith. The support, and instruction, and exhortation of the Body is removed from your life by your isolation from it. (
Ephesians 4:11-16)
It's just... I'm so used to talking to Matt. He always says hi to my wife and I every Sunday and he's not a bad guy. I just feel uncomfortable that he is putting high powered rifles that should be for our police force and military and not in the hands of some psychotic eighteen year old. What should I do?
??? How do you know Matt is selling guns to psychotic teenagers? Does he sell guns on the black market? If so, how do you know that he does? If not, federal laws are such that he cannot sell to people who have a demonstrated and/or a diagnosed psychopathy. Regardless, God calls His children to associate with each other - to love each other
sacrificially - even when they may not like particular aspects of the other person's life. Doing so is actually a mark of genuine salvation. (
1 John 3:14; 1 John 4:7-11) There are things about you that doubtless put off fellow believers but they, too, are commanded by their Heavenly Father not only to tolerate you but to love you at expense of themselves.
