Christian, yes. Charity, no.

Outcome, inevitable. Sorry to say it, but it’s true:

A gunman opened fire in a training center dormitory for young Christian missionaries early Sunday after being told he couldn’t spend the night, killing two of the center’s staff members and wounding two others. No arrests had been made by afternoon.

The shooting happened at about 12:30 a.m. at the Youth With a Mission center in this Denver suburb, police spokeswoman Susan Medina said.

A man and a woman were killed and two men were wounded, Medina said. All four were staff members, said Paul Filidis, a Colorado Springs-based spokesman with Youth With a Mission.

The gunman came to the door of the dormitory seeking shelter, asking if he could spend the night, said Peter Warren, director of Youth With a Mission Denver.

When told he couldn’t stay, the man walked inside, opened fire, then left on foot, Warren said.

[…]

Brady White, who attends Faith Bible Chapel, where the center is located, said students he spoke to called the experience “terrifying.”

“They’re just wonderful people,” White said of the center’s students. “Their mission is to know God and to make him known.”

Y’know, Brady…I’m not a Christian theologian, but it seems to me that part and parcel of the job of “knowing God and making him known” would be to do just what Jesus said. Not the part about claiming him as one’s personal lord and savior; that shit’s easy. And not the part about preaching the gospel to everyone; that’s already been done to death. The whole world knows about the Christians’ God by now, and it’s a safe bet that anyone who isn’t sold, is probably either satisfied with the God they got, or else is too busy with other things, like struggling to keep a roof overhead, clothes on one’s back, and food in one’s belly.

It’s strange just how pressing those things can be; they have a funny tendency to drive all thoughts of God right out of one’s head when they are lacking. Conversely, it’s amazing how those who have peace and plenty, and know to cherish it as good Christians (or whatever; one doesn’t have to be a Christian to cherish peace and plenty), feel it isn’t any hardship to share it with others, no questions asked. They, too, may not have a thought of God in their heads at the time, but they are being godlike even in their smallest gesture of random kindness.

But strangely, these Christian missionaries seem to have forgotten all about the teachings of Jesus in their zeal to preach God. They’re too busy learning how to sell God, probably in underdeveloped and IMF-oppressed foreign countries where the people already have a God, maybe several Gods, and really don’t need another one, any more than the Inuit need an ice-cube machine. (They could sure do with better food, clothing and housing, though. Which the IMF isn’t in the business of providing; its mission is aid to the wealthy, who Jesus said would not pass through the eye of a needle.)

I’m not sure why this whole missionary thing requires so much training, anyway. Preaching God is easy. Any fucking idiot can do it. A great many fucking idiots do. Hell, just look at Bill O’Reilly; he’s a fucking idiot, and he does that all the time. In fact, he’s made it his cushy mission in life to declare war on anyone who, in his eyes, has declared War On Christmas. He does it all from a well-appointed studio; he never has to face another living soul to preach the gospel according to Billo.

And any dickweed can SAY “Merry Christmas” (which means about as much as “Unga bunga inga binga bunga” to some people, like Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and us evil, wicked, responsible-for-9/11 pagans). In fact, some dickweeds even go so far as to slap a bumper sticker on their SUV (right next to that little silver fish that is somehow supposed to represent the Baby Jesus) proclaiming that they too, brave martyrs of the faith, have declared war on the War On Christmas, right behind Fearless Leader Loofah Bill. One hundred and ten percent, baby.

But when it comes to an obscure little not-exclusively-Christian trait known as charity, they all fall on their asses. To them, Christianity is not about actually being kind like Jesus; it’s about dabbling their hands in the Blood of the Lamb and thinking that THAT will miraculously excuse in the afterlife whatever they’ve done (or failed to do) in this life. That may be why it never occurred to them that this incident was their on-Earth wake-up call, which they failed to heed. Maybe, just maybe, it was a heaven-sent opportunity to put their faith into practice for a change, instead of preaching. And they failed.

Jesus is not a teacher to these people. He is not even an icon. He is just a commodity to be marketed, and these trainees are the salespeople.

And when they are asked to give shelter to a stranger, they don’t even offer him a stall in the barn.

And then they wonder why a guy like this, desperate but lethally armed, would open fire on some of them. Maybe they think that they, like Cassie Bernall, are being martyred for their faith.

Sorry, folks, but your beliefs have nothing to do with it. Or maybe they do have something to do with it, but not what you thought they did.

I won’t elaborate further; I’ll leave you to meditate on these things and figure it out.