How to respond?

Yet another one. Perhaps one of the most complex ones, at that. A mass shooting that involves religio-political rhetoric and the LGBTQ community - guns, religion, politics, and sexual orientation. The issues are so turned into each other that the tired, knee-jerk, simplistic rhetoric we're accustomed to now morphs old friends into foes and forges old foes into collaborators. The traditional slogans are exposed as hollow because they suddenly become self-defeating. Politicians didn't know what to say without angering half of their base. The game changed. No longer can you be pro-this without now being pro-that ... but you used to be anti-that.

So how should we respond as followers of Christ? Which axis of the four do we navigate to find our position?

A follower of Christ follows by doing as Christ would do. So our primary axis must be the one he would choose. We can have a secondary axis to defend respectfully, but the primary, controlling axis should be what he would choose. That's what it means to follow him.

I think it's clear he would not choose guns or politics as the primary axis. It's a pretty good argument, too, that sexual orientation would not be his primary one, based on how grace-filled he was when dealing with people whose sexual practices did not match his teachings. So, would he choose religion as his primary axis? In his Jewish context, they were surrounded by, ruled by, and subjected to pagan religion (polytheism and imperial worship, most dominantly). But we don't see Jesus picking fights about religion (except in-house debates among the Jews). So, that doesn't seem to be his primary axis, either.

Where does that leave his followers in the wake of Orlando's tragedy?

The primary things Jesus cared about were the image of God (imago Dei) that gives us value, the mission of God (missio Dei) that drove his purpose, and the greater story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. He was never not about these things, because all these things lead to his Father's glorification.

Things as horrible as what happened in Orlando happened in and around him, too. And more importantly, they happened to him. And yet, he never hated. He never feared. He never deterred from his path, and in fact, his path took him directly into his own massacre - a massacre filled with weapons (whips, not guns), religion (false charges of blasphemy), politics (Pilate as representative of Rome), and bigotry. The Cross event was worse than Orlando's events, as horrible as they were, because of the weight he bore. And just as it was about to reach its worst, he cried out for his Father to forgive them, because they really didn't understand the significance of what they were doing. That's his axis.

Our primary axis must be that of the crucified and risen Christ. Everyone, which means people on both ends of each axis, the victims, their friends and families, even the shooter's family ... even the shooter ... is someone Jesus endured the Cross for - because of the imago Dei in them and because of the missio Dei given to him. He endured this in order to give us the story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration.

When our reactions to these events are controlled by this axis, we continue to tell that same story.