Uvalde and Guns:
A Biblical Perspective
By Rabbi Cary Kozberg. May 27, 2022
JPFO Rabbinic Director
Scripture tells us that the first homicide was committed by Cain. Abel, his brother, was the victim. It was the result of the first sibling rivalry:
Time passed, and Cain brought of the earth’s produce as an offering to the LORD. And Abel also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. But the LORD favored Abel his offering; but Cain and his offering He did not favor. And Cain was very upset, and his face downcast. The LORD said to Cain: “Why are you upset and why is your face downcast? If you do well, will you not be lifted up? But if you don’t do well, sin is crouching at the door. It longs to have you, but you must overcome it.” (Genesis 4:3-7)
G-d warned Cain about giving in to his inclination, but Cain chose not to listen and killed his brother:
Cain spoke to Abel his brother…Then it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and killed him. (4:8)
A salient question that is usually not asked: at this time in human history, was homicide wrong? Most of us assume the answer is self-evident: of course, it was! But was it? Homicide had never occurred before, and one reading of the text renders that even God was surprised and shocked. Moreover, it may be understood that Cain’s question about his responsibility to his brother was not rhetorical but genuine:
The LORD said unto Cain: “Where is Abel your brother?” He said: “I don’t know; am I my brother’s keeper?” He said: “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground.“ (4:9-10)
God’s immediate response was to banish Cain from further contact with human beings. But significantly, G-d did not require Cain to forfeit his own life, nor did God decree that, as a consequence of Cain’s act, the intentional taking of innocent life would be from now on categorically prohibited.
But why not? Why didn’t God decree that murder was now a reprehensible “no-no”? Did He fervently hope that Cain’s act was an isolated incident, an aberration, and that human beings would never do anything like that again?
Perhaps…but human beings disappointed him. Fast forward several generations. Scripture tells us that by Noah’s time, the world was filled with human wickedness. God saw how every plan devised by human beings were nothing but evil all the time. Consequently, God regretted creating human beings in the first place. (Genesis 6:5-6).
In other words, left to their own devices and without rules or guidance, human beings did what came naturally—their behavior was no better than animals, and the world became filled with violence and corruption (6:11).
The next part of the story is well-known. God sent a flood to cleanse the earth of its corruption and evil. Only Noah, his family, and the animals with them on the ark survived.
Saving Noah and those aboard the ark, God decided to start over. His original plan to give humans free will while expecting that they would behave themselves (“Plan A”) didn’t work. So, God went to “Plan B”. Plan B was to make an agreement, a covenant, between God and Noah’s descendants. Despite God’s acknowledging that human beings have a natural inclination to do evil, He nevertheless promised never again to destroy the earth:
“Never again will I doom the earth because of humanity, since the devisings of the human mind are evil from its youth…“ (8:21)
Notably, rather than remove our penchant to do evil and thus also take away our free will—which is the very mark of our being created in the Divine image—God’s way of dealing with our evil inclination was to impose rules so that human beings would be able to control that inclination to do evil. God created an orderly world out of chaos. God imposed law and order upon human beings, so that they would not take the world back to chaos. From the biblical perspective, acknowledging the creator God to also be the ultimate Moral Arbiter, human beings would learn to not automatically follow their evil inclinations, but would learn how to channel them, thus learning the difference between good/right and evil/wrong.
That was the Plan. Has it succeeded? Yes and no. Throughout human history some have chosen to be faithful covenant partners and maintain the “good and right” in the world. Others have chosen to ignore the covenant, selfishly ignore God’s wishes and promote what is “evil and wrong”. One might say Plan B has been a mixed blessing: free will not only allows people to choose righteous behavior, but it also allows people to choose to be sociopaths.
After seeing that Cain’s act was not at all an aberration, but instead an all-too-common occurrence, G-d stipulated in this covenant that society—not God! -was to be responsible for dealing with the sociopaths:
“Whoever sheds the blood of a human being, by human beings shall his blood be shed, for in His image did God make humanity.” (Genesis 9:6)
Dear reader, lest you think you’ve been taken down a Scriptural rabbit hole, I would emphasize that these are the narratives that helped shape our Western notions of morality, free will and “law and order”. For those of us who still believe in the Judeo-Christian tradition, they continue to emphasize that God has made us free moral agents, but our moral choices have consequences, and one of them is being accountable for those choices and actions.
In the wake of the tragic and awful event in Uvalde, Texas several days ago, we are hearing once again the predictable screeching from those with broken moral compasses—those who refuse to confront the many causes of contemporary sociopathic behavior, opting to focus solely on one way that the sociopathy is manifested. Moreover, they fault not just the inanimate tool, but also those who own them and manufacture them. However, as we have seen, the biblical tradition sees the situation quite differently. It teaches that:
--Evil does not exist within a gun. It exists in the minds and hearts of those who pull the gun’s trigger for evil purposes. Guns don’t self-animate. People do.
--Scripture teaches that when His children are wantonly killed, God holds the killer responsible and accountable, not the method used. After Cain killed Abel, God didn’t ban the use of rocks or any other object that Cain might have used as his weapon. Moreover, Scripture teaches that “the devisings of the human heart are evil from its youth”. It does not teach that “the mechanisms of a gun are evil from the factory”. Thus, perhaps we don’t need “gun control” as much as we need “heart and soul” control.
As of the week of the Uvalde tragedy, a man in New York City was randomly shot on the subway by a criminal who had 19 arrests on his rap sheet. 218 people have been killed in Chicago alone since January 1 of this year. A homeless man who was sleeping was doused with a flammable liquid and set on fire. Our generation seems to be well on its way back to the times of Noah, with one difference: that generation didn’t know from rules and laws. Ours does, but they are too often ignored.
Those who would ignore our rules and laws put the rest of us in the position of having to choose whether to do nothing when the evil sociopaths act out (and hope that we’re not devoured) or actively resist them. Those of us who don’t want to be taken back to a time when moral chaos ruled, may indeed need to use various methods to resist. Please God, education and kindness would succeed in changing the hearts of those who would do harm! But sadly, we know that armed force will at times be the only effective response. In those times, our efforts should not be to celebrate taking a human life, however depraved, but rather to use force--however regrettably-- to effectively stop the threat that such depravity presents to our lives and wellbeing.
May God grant us the courage and the wisdom to responsibly prepare for those times. May we echo the words of the Psalmist:
Blessed is the Lord, My Rock, who trains my hands for battle and my fingers for war. (Psalm 144:1)
