I don’t
often go back and read what I’ve written but I felt compelled to go back and
read this recent post. What grieves me
terribly is the events in Newtown compelled me to do so this soon.
Did I want
it to reassure me? Did I want it to ease
the disquiet in my soul? Was I hoping I had somewhere in my rambling jotted
down an answer?
The truth
is I don’t have an answer. A friend of
mine posted a podcast. Phil is a pastor
of a rather non-traditional faith community.
He didn’t have any answers either – just a lament. I was glad to hear his heartfelt honesty. I don't know why people are so convinced
pastors and ministers in particular and we as a society in general needs to
have an answer. Maybe it would make it
all easier to put it away in a little box and move on. If only we knew why… if only there was someone or something we
could blame. Do we think even the most
perfect answer will make moving on possible for the people affected there in
Newtown?
I grieve
for them... I have no answers either, but my heart is broken with them.
I heard
some of a press conference with the governor of Connecticut. Amongst so many heart rending pieces of
information and the grief poured out, one particular statement has really been
gnawing away at me…
“Evil visited this
community today”
What do we
do with that? How do we prevent
that? Is it true that it is always there
– latent – malevolent – waiting to be unleashed upon unsuspecting and
undeserving people? And whether it is
there under the surface all the time – or just pops up at the most inopportune
moments – where is God in all this?
Less than
five months ago, one day after the tragic theater shootings in nearby Aurora I
wrote:
Yes – yesterday there
was a hole in the world. Today is a new
day – and while that does not mean something like this will never happen again
(although I hope and pray that it does not), I will move forward in my life,
believing that forgiveness and love has the capacity to overcome fear and evil.
Can I still
believe this? Is forgiveness and love
enough? Five months ago perhaps is was
cathartic to write that – it almost seems trite now. Perhaps it was easier to say last time
writing a day after the tragedy – when my emotions were less raw. It’s like these words were at best a Band-Aid
that has been ripped away.
The
Band-Aid gets ripped away again when I read what to me is unconscionable
nonsense from recent presidential primary candidate Mike Huckabee – suggesting
that the violence was no surprise because we have "systematically removed
God" from public schools.
Seriously? What is he saying –
that God repays evil (at least Huckabee’s vision of evil) with evil? Again in the words of my friend Jimmy, “If you think God allowed 20 children to die because some
folks turned their back on him I don't know what to say to that... I choose not
to believe God is that petty? If he is
we are ALL in trouble.” Me personally –
I don’t think we are in trouble – God’s heart broke over this much faster than
any of ours.
The
Band-Aid gets ripped away again when I hear
people advocating for our teachers to carry handguns and be trained to use
them. Again – seriously? My wife is a teacher and I asked her. She didn’t think you could convince many
teachers to do it. But even if you could
– is this an answer? It seems over and
over to be one of the preferred answers here – answer violence with violence. Personally I find the notion of armed teachers
horrific - and we would be outraged soon enough over the shooting of a child by
a teacher that turned out to be unjustified - even more so than we are when this
happens at the hands of our armed law enforcement.
The
Band-Aid get ripped away again when I hear nonsense like “guns don’t kill
people – bad people with guns kill people”, or “we have all the laws we need to
prevent this – we just need to enforce them”, or directly attributable to a
leader of the NRA “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy
with a gun” (Wayne LaPierre). I’m sorry;
I grew up on a farm. I’m not opposed to
guns. I get the need as we had in
Australia for control of animals threatening your livestock. I get the utility as we did in Australia of
using them to hunt for food. I never
contemplated and can think of no plausible reason why handguns or assault style
weapons are needed for either of these purposes, both of which I consider
legitimate.
But the
truth remains - I still don’t have an answer.
Yesterday at least for me was not the day for answers. I don’t know how to overcome evil, but I
think a part of me will continue to hold out for forgiveness and love as a
strong undercurrent. Some of the most significant
and transformative social change we have seen in this last hundred years came through
adoption of largely nonviolent approaches.
But we do
need answers soon. Tomorrow there will
still be a hole in the world for many. Tomorrow
more than today, there will be for some as my friend Brandon wrote, “an endless
deafening silence”. Love and forgiveness
will help – but we cannot just put this behind us and forge on stoically. We can’t just say this is not us – because while
there is unquestionably far more good than evil, the father of a student
murdered in a school shooting 20 years ago makes an challenging statement which
I think of more as a proposition:
“I came to realize that, in essence, this is the way we in America want
things to be.”
The horror
of this proposition is of course unacceptable today of all days, and yet are we
willing to really go deep into darkest places of our souls and answer
this. Fundamentally I would say the
answer to that proposition is no – this is NOT the way we want things to be,
but then the challenge remains - what are we willing to do to change it?
I don’t
have the answers for how this evil came among us, the nature of evil or how
evil generally comes about. Edmund Burke
has been quoted perhaps uncountable times for saying:
“All that is necessary
for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
The obvious
extension of this is saying nothing is the same as doing nothing. If the endless deafening silence is not only
that in the homes of the victims in Newtown, then the blame for the next
tragedy like this falls at our feet.