Thoughts on a Violent Ellipses

Last week was a week of pain and suffering – another unspeakable horror that we are forced to talk about. The intentional murder of the most innocent of God’s people – children.

On Tuesday, May 24, an 18-year-old gunman shot his grandmother in the face and then, allegedly in a Facebook chat, said he was going to target an elementary school. He then made his way to Robb Elementary School where he seemingly entered the school with little to no resistance and then entered a classroom where he executed 19 elementary school children and the 2 teachers who were trying to protect them.

Eventually he was killed by police.

In the wake of this tragedy, a tragedy that is, unfortunately, all too familiar in our country, folks immediately went to their corners and began the condemnation, denial, deflection, indignation, and self-aggrandizing game that we have perfected in the United States. It is a game of perpetual stalemate where nobody gains or loses ground as they hatefully stare at each other across a no man’s land that is saturated with blood and tears.

Politicians, who I guarantee don’t have anything that resembles a prayer or spiritual life, were quick to offer their thoughts and prayers for the victims of this tragedy. This was immediately met with the cynical response, both in traditional and social media, that thoughts and prayers are worthless. People posted, offered commentaries, attended religious services in memory of the lives lost. Statements were drafted and plans of action and talking points were implemented to weather the questions that would inevitably come. The political machine went into full gear and once more into the breach we all went – our ideological weapons raised.

Some will shout. Some will cry. Others will scream and curse. Insults will be freely thrown, and hearts will harden. Cynicism will grow and the Evil One will laugh. I say this because there is only one word for events like this and the behavior that follows – demonic. I’m just going to call it for what it is.

Now, I’m not a politician or social activist. I don’t shape public policy or have any influence, outside of voting, on the body politic. I am a priest in God’s holy, catholic, and apostolic church. I do, though, have a wife who is an elementary school teacher and a child who is getting ready to start kindergarten. I have children who were in elementary school when 20 children and 6 adults were executed at Sandy Hook elementary school in 2012; they were in middle and high school when 14 students and 3 staff members were executed at Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018.

And in each case, like in every mass shooting, we stared in disbelief, reeled, protested, asked questions, offered and condemned solutions, and moved on. Ellipses not period. Because no mass shooting event is the last one…We just wait until the next one inevitably happens…

What I’m not going to do here is offer any secular solutions, because solutions are only as valuable as peoples’ ability, or desire, to implement them. What I am going to offer is a religious indictment based solely on scripture.

In the Bible God doesn’t only weep for but finds the idea of the death of innocent children repulsive and worthy of judgement. In the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, God condemns the people of Jerusalem because they have adopted the gruesome Canaanite practice of child sacrifice to idols (7.31). To which Jeremiah makes the deeply troubling and, well, very unpopular prophecy that God is coming in judgement of Israel. God will destroy God’s own temple and force God’s own people into exile using the invading Babylonian army.

In the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, God, through Isaiah, tells the people of Jerusalem, “When you extend your hands, I’ll hide my eyes from you. Even when you pray for a long time, I won’t listen” (1.15). Why is he doing this? Because the people of Jerusalem no longer do good, seek justice, help the oppressed, defend the orphan; or plead for the widow (1.17). So, in this case, God does turn God’s back on prayers when the world turns its back on God and God’s people. All the thoughts and prayers offered in hypocrisy and insincerity fall on deaf ears.

Jesus himself tells his disciples that whoever welcomes a child welcomes him (Mt. 18.5). He then tells his disciples to let children come to him because the Kingdom of God belongs to “such as these” (Mt. 19.14). But Jesus is equally clear that if one puts a stumbling block before a little child, meaning that they hinder a child’s relationship with God, it would be “better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Mt. 18.6). Imagine what God thinks when innocent children are killed and we do little to nothing to prevent further bloodshed? Worse, what does God think when we embolden our commitment to the idol of a manmade idea on a manmade document that has caused unimaginable suffering throughout the history of this manmade nation? Scripture is very clear…When we choose our own desires over the desires of God nothing good comes from it.

I imagine that we will do nothing in the wake of Uvalde just as we did nothing in the wake of Sandy Hook and the myriad other mass shootings that are simply part of the American landscape. I imagine we will remain a people caught in a perpetual state of chaos, confusion, rage, fear, sorrow, and animosity. My worry is that no nation can sustain that kind of dissociative identity for long. We will tear ourselves apart.

We live in a nation that craves vitriolic commentary not productive dialogue; lusts after venomous partisanship rather than political compromise; and looks for new ways to hate one another in the name of convenient ideologies that align with our own desires. This is destructive and we can see the fruits of that destruction in not only our body politic but also in our culture and religious institutions. Part of me believes that God is deconstructing this nation, and, through it all, God is trying to speak to us, teach us, help us through the deconstruction. but, like the people of Jeremiah’s day, it appears we have eyes that see not and ears that hear not (Jer. 5.21).

So, we have a choice. Do we want to accept that another tragedy will come, and we’ll repeat the blood-soaked cycle? Or do we want to affect change? I’m afraid we will choose the former rather than the latter. And what does that say about us? It says we either don’t care when things like this happen or we are willing to accept the death of innocence to sustain our way of life. Both are horrible, but the latter implies we have created a new idol – an idol that is sustained with the shedding of blood. The thing, though, about the shed blood of innocence is that it cries out to God (Gen 4.10), but unlike the thoughts and prayers of politicians God always hears that cry. And, God help us, God always responds…