Anastasia Basil:

Yes, I am a Godless American and a devoted mother of two who believes that the highest form of love doesn’t come from a supernatural being but from human beings. I make ethical decisions based on empathy and a deep appeal for fairness. So if you’ve ever wondered what a Godless American might be like, here’s an opportunity to know one. I like to bake birthday cakes from scratch and take in stray dogs. I am a Girl Scout leader.

As citizens, you openly prize two things: Jesus and the Second Amendment. Your cries for more God and more guns ring from sea to shining sea. We hear you. Believe me. But here’s the thing: As an American citizen of equal value, I can’t let you claim this country as a gun-loving Christian nation. I live a life of moral decency, as I’m sure you do too. But I do it gunless. This makes me indisputably more Christ-like than you.

In response, you will say I’m stifling your right to religion. Quite the opposite: I’m encouraging you to pick up your Bibles and live more in accordance with your religion. I’m asking you to choose between the right to bear arms and the right to quote Jesus. If you won’t give up your guns, then give up your identity as a Christian. Be disciples of Wayne LaPierre. Make your mantra “From My Cold, Dead Hands,” not “Turn the Other Cheek.”

Personally, I would love to stifle your right to the Second Amendment … I’m going to pray to Christian pro-gun senators like Tim Scott — a man with real power to intervene.

Dear Anastasia,

None of this works like you think it does.  I know what you’re thinking.  You think that Jesus was some long haired hippie peacenik who traveled Israel waving peace signs and singing Kumbaya.  The reality is much more complex and difficult for people like you to deal with.  Passages like this one:

Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law” Matthew 10:34-35

Make no more sense to you than the notion that Jesus told his disciples to get swords for their self defense.  You say that “As an American citizen of equal value, I can’t let you claim this country as a gun-loving Christian nation.”  But see, you cannot stop me.  I can claim what I wish, and the real test of endurance is whether I am telling the truth.

God doesn’t regard your prayer since you don’t believe in Him (Proverbs 28:9, Psalm 66:18, Isaiah 59:2, and so many other passages).  And as for your prayer to Mr. Scott, he doesn’t hear you either.  And Mr. Scott isn’t omniscient.  But God says:

Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, ‘My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’ (Isaiah 46:10).

But since you don’t believe in God, you have no means to effect anything.  God doesn’t hear you, and Mr. Scott doesn’t control anything.  It wouldn’t matter.  You wouldn’t change God’s law with your prayers anyway, you would only be asking God to change your own heart.  It seems to me that you don’t want your views to be changed, so your heart is hardened.  You’re at a dead end, Anastasia.

As for me, you cannot possibly do anything to my views of the Bible and guns.  I see things through the eyes of the holy Scriptures.  I’ve pointed out that God’s law requires me to be able to defend the children and helpless.  “Relying on Matthew Henry, John Calvin and the Westminster standards, we’ve observed that all Biblical law forbids the contrary of what it enjoins, and enjoins the contrary of what it forbids.”  I’ve tried to put this in the most visceral terms I can find.

God has laid the expectations at the feet of heads of families that they protect, provide for and defend their families and protect and defend their countries.  Little ones cannot do so, and rely solely on those who bore them.  God no more loves the willing neglect of their safety than He loves child abuse.  He no more appreciates the willingness to ignore the sanctity of our own lives than He approves of the abuse of our own bodies and souls.  God hasn’t called us to save the society by sacrificing our children or ourselves to robbers, home invaders, rapists or murderers. Self defense – and defense of the little ones – goes well beyond a right.  It is a duty based on the idea that man is made in God’s image.  It is His expectation that we do the utmost to preserve and defend ourselves when in danger, for it is He who is sovereign and who gives life, and He doesn’t expect us to be dismissive or cavalier about its loss.

So while you claim to be a lover of the children, you actually advocate abuse of children because you would disarm the very people with the sworn duty to protect, nurture and provide for them.

I know, Anastasia, this is difficult to hear.  It’s a world view to which you aren’t accustomed because, as we’ve discussed, you think Jesus was a hippie peacenik rather than the Son of the living God.  But the truth scatters the darkness, and if I must be the one to purvey the truth so that it can trouble your soul, then so be it.

Oh, there is one final thing for you to ponder.  As for Christians and their guns, you were never taught this in your schools because public schools are incubators of communism who specialize in telling lies.  But the war for American independence would never have been fought had it not been for the sermons preached by preachers in pulpits who taught the folk about covenant theology in the best tradition of continental and Scottish Calvinism.

America would never have been America had it not been for Christians and their guns.  Now, it may be that you would rather be a subject of the Queen.  I hear that gun laws are stringent in her country.  But be careful.  If you move there, you might have to convert to Islam and wear a burqa, and your husband might beat you for the slightest thing.  If anyone ever tries to do that to my women or children, I’ll shoot them.  Because as a Christian, I care about women and children.