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On a spring day in 2013, Taylor S. Schumann sat at her reception desk while daydreaming about her upcoming bridal shower. Just before lunchtime, an active shooter entered her building and randomly shot her from two feet away. She was one of 36,000 Americans injured or killed with a gun that year.
In the aftermath of her shooting, Schumann’s faith was challenged and stretched. Her rehabilitation was slow and painful, and the emotional trauma was deep. She also discovered a painful truth: the church community is far too silent and uninformed about the crisis of gun violence. Even worse, a large segment of the church is deeply entrenched in its commitment to easy access to weapons, even though the price America pays for saturating our society with weapons is the deaths of thousands of men, women, and children each year. In her new book, When Thoughts and Prayer Aren’t Enough (InterVarsity Press), Schumann shares her story in hopes that it will motivate readers to reconsider the issue from a Christian perspective. Point by point, Schumann dismantles some of the common myths and arguments Christians often believe about gun ownership and violence. She encourages the church to not only offer faithful prayers but to also do the work Christ has called us to. If something within our culture kills, steals, and destroys, then it must be repudiated and rejected by all those who profess an allegiance to Jesus.
Hear Schumann’s exhortation to the people of God: “Jesus said no one can serve two masters. We can make masters of anything. When we choose to remain silent and complicit in the deaths of our neighbors every year to gun violence, all in the name of individual rights – that’s a master. That’s not Jesus…I want Christians to take their rightful place in this fight. I want us to stop enabling violence and instead seek peace…We’ve tried desperately for decades to hold a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other and we have no hands left to serve each other, or Jesus. We have to choose. We have to lay one down. So I ask, who will you serve this day?”
-Darrel Holcombe, Owner
Sanctuary Christian Books and Gifts
Colonial Promenade, Alabaster
www.sanctuarychristianbooksandgifts.com
205-663-2370
