DON'T SHOOT GOD IN THE BACK

The campaign against ownership of guns doesn't need another anecdote to exploit for their convoluted arguments, but on this Father's Day, I want to tell a story. I have rarely told this story, and, when you hear it, you will know why. You won't understand if you weren't raised in a culture similar to the one I was in Oklahoma, but I started hunting with a shotgun at age ten. My dad (and grandfather) were not careless in allowing me to use the 20 gauge. They started me off with a sling shot. Then, I carried a pellet gun as they taught me safety. Later, I was taught to hunt squirrels with a .22. When I was ten, I began using a shotgun to hunt rabbit. There is a day I will never forget. We were working our way through a large bramble and brush pile. Much of what I was doing was right. I had the safety on. I was pointing the barrel towards the ground. But, in my eager anticipation of jumping a rabbit, I did some things wrong: I had my thumb on the safety (which is on top on my double barrel), and my index finger curled around the trigger. Dad was slightly ahead of me on my right. I stumbled. When I did, in one motion my thumb pushed the safety forward and I reflexively, trying to catch my balance pulled the trigger. The shot viciously swooshed through the brush waist high just barely to the left of my dad. Had he been a few steps farther away, the widening pattern of the #8 shot would have pulverized his back. Other hunters were with us, and I shivered with a rush of shame for having been so careless. Yet, that was nothing compared to the weight of a question that settled upon me: What if I had shot my own dad in the back and killed him? I have rarely told the story but have often asked myself that question. It would have been horribly tragic to shoot anyone. But, my own dad? In my torment that day, although not articulately formed in my mind, I realized the unique place a dad has in a child's life. Dad is almost godlike in the sphere of the home. He is the strong one. He is the protector. He is the provider. He is the dispenser of wisdom. And, I had almost eliminated mine from my and my siblings' lives. It would have been my fault. To their own eternal and present detriment by willful choices people are eliminating the heavenly Father from their lives. One can't shoot and kill God. But, choices in life, choices of sin, selfishness, and rebellion separate the Father from so many people's lives. Speaking analogously in the terms of my story, by their willful sinning they have shot their Heavenly Father in the back.

DON'T SHOOT GOD IN THE BACK

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