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I nearly walked out on a movie the other day. Not because I didn't like it but because forty-five minutes into the story, I wanted to pack my bags and flee to Canada. Bowling for Columbine, full of grim statistics, examines gun violence in the U.S. Along the way, it lingers for ten agonizing minutes on grainy footage taken from security cameras in the Columbine high school cafeteria. Shadowy figures of the gunmen and students drift across the screen as the 1999 massacre there unfolds.
The movie is not so much antigun as it is antiviolence. Repeatedly, it asks the question: Why do we, unlike citizens of other equally well-armed Western nations, so often use guns to kill one another? Canadians, for example, shot to death fewer than two hundred of their fellow citizens during one recent year; Americans, over 11,000 fellow Americans.
Wading into Our Darkness.
I was trying to come to terms with the disturbing questions raised by the movie when I happened upon In the Land I Have Shown You. I didn’t expect that this book about North American saints and heroes would answer questions about distressing social trends-and it doesn’t. What it does is even better. Through the biographies of sixteen individuals who lived out the gospel in present-day Canada and the U.S., In the Land I Have Shown You…The full article is available to subscribers only
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