Guns are a pretty quick litmus test to see how faithfully many Christians are actually following the teachings of Jesus.
Because the anxiety people feel at the thought of not having a gun usually isn’t about “wisdom” or “preparedness.” It’s fear. It’s our demand for control. It’s the mind running endless what if scenarios, wild, exaggerated situations it manufactures in order to justify holding onto power. And that “what if” mindset is the giveaway. It’s proof you haven’t fully released our obsession with controlling the future. It means you’re still trapped in anxious and fearful projection, still trying to account for every possible threat, still refusing to trust anything beyond yourself.
That fear of losing control is exactly what needs to be surrendered.
So surrender it. Let it go. This is where you consciously declare that you yield all control to the Father, the Source, and release fear completely.
In this example, I am using guns but there are numerous other ways our egos demonstrate anxieties about the future and attempting to control everything. Let it all go and ask the Holy Spirit and our source to take the wheel. As impossible as it may seem to let go of control, it’s simply your ego resisting.
If you don’t feel like you could live or survive without a gun, that is, objectively speaking, a proclamation of fear, and the goal of genuine spiritual practice is letting go of all fears.
If your identity is fiercely tied to guns and gun culture, there’s a good chance this may trigger or upset you. If it does, that’s actually a sign that your ego has been touched. The human ego doesn’t like its identity being challenged in any way. A true dissolution of your ego and all the identities you’ve attached to it would result in no reaction when reading something like the article here. You simply wouldn’t be fazed.
“Sorry you feel that way, you haven’t attacked any real part of me”
– say this to yourself whenever you feel your ego attacked.
But far too often, people construct their entire identity around gun culture, or any other subculture for that matter. When that happens, any claim that challenges that identity automatically puts them on the defensive, because they feel like their sense of self is being attacked. The reaction is always the same: jump into defense mode, because the thing they’ve built themselves around is being threatened.
This isn’t unique to gun culture. It applies to any subculture you’ve deeply identified with. If someone insults your favorite musical genre and you feel genuinely angry, upset or defensive, that’s the same phenomenon at work. It’s a sign that you’ve fused that piece of your life with your core identity, and your goal, spiritually speaking, is to let that identification go completely. Not because these things don’t have value, but because the moment they become the foundation of who you are, they become a cage. And anything that threatens that cage will feel like a threat to you personally, every single time.
Be conscious of what you have identified with, what you feel is you. This can even be religion, nationality, a sports team, a lifestyle, or a particular fashion style. The ego is always searching for ways to establish a unique identity in order to feel separate from others, even though the deeper truth is that we are not separate at all, we are one.
This is why spiritual teachers, including Jesus, emphasized letting go of attachment to money and material possessions. The issue was never money itself. The danger lies in the way it can slowly become a person’s identity. For someone with great wealth or an accumulation of possessions, it is easy for those things to feel like an extension of who they are rather than something they simply have. Seen this way, Jesus’ warnings about wealth are not moral condemnations but psychological insights. Attachment turns external objects into internal identity. The same principle applies far beyond money—to status symbols, collections, hobbies, and subcultures of all kinds.
This includes guns, just as it includes any material object or collection that provides a dopamine reward and begins to define a person’s sense of self. When something external becomes the foundation of identity, it reinforces separation and ego. The spiritual task is not to demonize objects, but to loosen the attachment, to recognize that who you are is not defined by what you own, collect, or identify with.
Guns are our modern day weapon of choice, whereas swords were the weapon of choice during the lifetime of Jesus. With that mind,
Matthew 26:52 – “Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will perish by the sword.”
Matthew 5:39 – “Do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”
Matthew 5:44 – “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
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