Seeking Truth in Today's Troubled World

Dear Representative Jones,

First, grief. On Wednesday, August 27, during a school Mass at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, two children—Harper Moyski (10) and Fletcher Merkel (8)—were killed, and many others were wounded. The alleged shooter, 23-year-old born Robert Westman, died by suicide at the scene. City and national reports place the number of injured at eighteen, most of them children. MinneapolisABC NewsCBS NewsStar Tribune

The facts contain their own indictment. Windows shattered while a sanctuary full of children prayed. Some reports say the attacker’s weapons bore antisemitic slurs – evidence of a mind at war with God and neighbor. Even if that detail proves uneven across outlets, the malice is not in question. Whatever else we call it, this is wickedness, and the human heart is not neutral ground. The Times of IsraelJewish Herald-Voice

You said on television that offering “thoughts and prayers” after a mass shooting is “theological malpractice,” and you likened our national stance toward the gun industry to idolatry. I hear what you’re reaching for: a refusal of pious slogans that soothe the conscience while nothing changes. That frustration is understandable, and the charge of idolatry is a biblical category; anything we trust to save us more than God becomes a golden calf, whether it’s profit or power. But I believe you’ve misnamed prayer, not idolatry. MediaiteYahoo

In Scripture, prayer is not the final excuse; it is the opening bell. The Psalms teach us to lament, not to launder our pain. The apostles urge “supplications… for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions,” not because words replace work but because they align our work with God’s will (1 Tim. 2:1–2). And James says faith without works is dead, which is precisely why real prayer makes cowards brave and the passive useful (Jas. 2:14–17). Calling sham prayer “malpractice” is fair; calling prayer itself malpractice confuses the medicine with the quack.

There is a simple test. If prayer leaves us stationary, it wasn’t prayer; it was performance. True prayer breaks the spine of self-righteousness, then sends us to bind wounds, to pass just laws, to guard schools, to strengthen families, to confront hatred, to treat the sick in mind and body, and to restrain the violent. Prayer is not a substitute for a shovel; it’s the grip that steadies the hands that hold it.

On idolatry: yes – when a society treats the tools of violence as sacred and their profits as untouchable, we have lost the plot. But idolatry wears many faces. We can bow to weapons, and we can also bow to the thrill of outrage, to the theater of politics, to the false comfort that if only our side triumphed, evil would be house-trained. The living God is no one’s mascot. He judges every altar, left and right.

What then shall we do – those who mourn, and you who legislate?

1. Start where the children started: in prayer, but the kind that costs something. Lament with the families by name; intercede for the injured; repent where we have loved our preferences more than our neighbors; ask for wisdom, then act on the answer (Ps. 34:18; Rom. 12:12).
2. Name the evil fully. If antisemitic venom touched this crime, say so. Condemn it without hedging. Teach our children that every person bears the image of God, and that contempt for a people is contempt for their Maker (Gen. 1:27; Rom. 3:29–30). The Times of IsraelJewish Herald-Voice
3. Do the proximate good in front of us. That includes the unglamorous work of governance: crafting and enforcing prudent measures that reduce access for those bent on harm, strengthening early-warning and intervention systems, funding treatment for those in crisis, and hardening the targets we actually expect to be safe. Decent people can argue details; only the indifferent argue for stasis (Prov. 24:11–12).
4. Guard the unseen front. We wrestle “not against flesh and blood” alone (Eph. 6:12). A culture cannot be legislated into virtue, but it can be discipled: fathers present, churches watchful, schools alert, neighbors known, online rabbit holes interrupted by human eyes and inconvenient love.

You and I may disagree on several particulars; that is permitted. What isn’t permitted – not by reality, not by God – is to pretend that prayer and action are competitors. Prayer without obedience is a lie; action without prayer becomes its own idol. Hold them together and you get repentance that moves its feet.

For Harper. For Fletcher. For the wounded whose healing will take years. For the officers and teachers who will keep waking at 3 a.m. For a city that dared to begin the year at the altar and was met with bullets. Let’s pray in the way Scripture means it – and then prove we prayed.

I will keep your office, the families, and Minneapolis before the Lord. May He grant you wisdom, courage, and a clean heart to do good. And may He teach all of us never to use His name to avoid our duty, nor our duty to avoid His name.

Respectfully,
A fellow American who refuses the false choice between folded hands and ready hands.