Just last week, I read about how Maine is second only to one other state (also in New England) in how few murders occur each year.
Just last night, I learned of a mass-shooting event in multiple locations that claimed the lives of over a dozen people, with many more wounded, in my neighboring town.
In response, I want to offer answers to some questions from a pastoral perspective.
What Just happened?
Evil happened. The same evil that rebelled against God in the beginning was last night wearing a hoodie and holding a rifle. Before that, it took the form of a needle in someone’s vein, or a pastor using the Bible to justify abuse. Before that, it was a sword used by a Viking sailor to pillage a village on the coast of Norway, or a whip in the hand of an angry taskmaster and he whipped other humans into submission.
It’s here that I began to type (and was several paragraphs into) a section on the nature of evil, its Hebrew etymology, the different kinds of evil, as well as the Ancient Near East perception of evil as being something not necessarily morally deficient in itself. But all of it was lost on even me right now. In the end, there’s simply a very specific, penetrating dread that accompanies human evility as opposed to natural happenstances, such as a hurricane or a flood, however harmful those may be. It’s a darkness, a malice, an unstable anomaly that rocks us, pursues our thoughts, and grips our minds. It is conscious, cold, calculating, carnal, and therefore is terrifying in a way that a natural disaster, however awful, simply cannot be. My loved ones are noting that they’re “safe” on social media, but this time it’s not a weather-related event. It’s a person. This kind of evil harms on a deeper, more psychologically devastating way than any other kind of evil can.
And that’s what happened. What’s more — as of this writing, the shooter is still at large, leaving my community in a frightened lockdown, everyone holding their collective breath waiting for news that they either anxiously dread or eagerly anticipate, depending on what happens next. What happened last night is exactly what is meant by a tragedy. This leads to the next question.
How should we feel?
When something like his happens, how should we feel? Particularly those of us who are not as directly impacted as those who were there or even those who have loved ones who were there? Of course, we’re all going to process this differently depending on a whole host of factors, but there are bound to be a variety of ways we all will and should feel as a result of what’s happened. In fact, it’s part of our very design.
We should feel shock and even denial. This isn’t something that happens in our community often. This is something that should never happen, in fact, so when it does — well, we’re fazed. Stunned. We aren’t used to processing this, and we should never have to get used to processing this. I’m sure Adam and Eve were shocked they learned of Abel’s slaughter at the hands of his jealous brother. I remember when I learned of my own brother’s death as a result of gun violence. I stood up, bent forward, and couldn’t really move. I was shocked. I couldn’t imagine it had happened, and part of my brain refused to accept it. It’s okay to be shocked. And don’t feel like you’ve got to rush past this phase. It’s there for a reason.
We should feel sorrow and compassion. I grieve for these victims, and for the ones — especially the children, who’ve yet to learn to cope with the evils of this world as well as some of us adults — who witnessed this sickening series of attacks that left so many dead and wounded. I am so sorrowful for my community. I sympathize and weep with those involved that extends to a spirit of compassion and desire to help borne of my sorrow for the terrible event that transpired. It is normal for us to feel sorrow and compassion.
We should feel anger and indignation. It is normal to feel anger toward those who hurt innocent people. This is not ungodly; this is, in fact, quite the opposite — it is a very godly thing to feel angry and indignant toward people who do others harm. It would be very improper and inhumane of us to see evil being perpetrated on others and not be moved with anger on behalf of those being victimized and oppressed. This is a good way to feel. It makes you more human, not less. But is there a limit to our anger, especially as Christians? Where do we draw the line?
It’s here that I’ll move to how we should respond to these feelings, where we’ll tackle that question and others.
How should we respond to these feelings?
We should respond to the shock and denial that we feel by slowly, honestly, coming to terms with what happened. This isn’t always an overnight thing. We need to let it sink in, settle in, that a man, for whatever reason, chose to violate God’s good world in a very evil way and hurt others. He disregarded the most basic elements of humanity when he took the lives of other people. This did happen, and it was tragic. It is okay and good to let the reality of this reform your view of the world as you process it. That’s not necessarily becoming calloused — it’s becoming aware. This is, in part, what it means to grow and mature — to capture a view of the world previously unseen due to naiveté.
We should respond to our sorrow and compassion by embracing and moving toward these feelings rather than pushing them down or away. It is good and okay to be sad. It is healthy to cry. It is normal to feel compassion. I remember about ten years ago, I once watched a very short video clip of a child with cancer and wept deeply — more deeply than I perhaps have since — along with my wife. It wasn’t my child. But it was someone’s child. And it was a human. I felt sad because something sad was happening. This is good and normal and human.
As far as compassion goes, I’d like to note that I have found that when a tragedy like this happens, those of us with no power to act directly within the situation will typically initially respond with offering prayers (or “sending thoughts to the universe” for those less inclined to invoke God) for the families of the afflicted, those who are first responders, and sometimes even for the deceased themselves. This is a normal response to the feelings of sorrow and compassion. We want to do something and it is good to respond this way.
For what it’s worth, there will always be those who mock “thoughts and prayers,” especially as cries for gun reform increase in our nation. But I believe there is a reason we intuitively turn to petitions to God, even sometimes among unbelievers, that transcends mere sentimentality. I think it’s more than a cultural inculcation or vestigial reflex. I think it’s a meaningful natural expression of a deeply-held, long-engrained belief that there is a just God who hates violence and injustice as much as we do. And it’s a cry for Him to make things right. This is what Jesus meant when he described “hungering and thirsting for righteousness.” This is that very cry of the heart for rightness and justice to be brought into this world and abide here.
This is what Jesus meant when he talked about “hungering and thirsting for righteousness.” This is that cry of the heart for rightness and justice to be consistently carried out in this world.
Sometimes our sorrow leads to hard questions, such as “how could this happen?” Or, in the words of one 10-year old victim as she was interviewed today, “why do people do this?” We also might ask, “where is God in all of this?” This is a good way to respond to our sorrow. Instead of arbitrarily ascribing meaning to something tragic (“God must have wanted more angels in heaven” or “it was just their time” or some other banal tripe), we should lean into this opportunity to wrestle with these questions in our grief and answer them with deep and meaningful lamentation. While some well-intentioned people may offer the comforting suggestion to simply “look for the helpers”1 during times of tragedy, this all-too-quickly becomes an empty platitude for those desiring an answer more satisfactory than what ultimately amounts to desiccated sound bytes, emaciated morsels of hope. It’s okay to ask questions. The Psalms are full of them.
And how do we respond to the anger and indignation we feel toward the shooter? Do we curse him? Do we rage and seethe and foam at the mouth? How far do we go? Didn’t David ask God to wipe out evildoers? In short, is there a limit to our imprecations during a time like this? I discuss this in a recent podcast episode so I won’t go too deeply into it here, but I do believe that as Christians, we should strive to find the balance between “break the teeth in their mouths, God!” (Psalm 58) and “Father, forgive them — they don’t know what they’re doing” (Luke 23).
Should we respond with hatred and vitriol, calling this man names and wishing for him to be tortured or things like this? I know that’s understandable, but the answer is still “no.” Because then we ourselves would be doing what he has done: degrading and dehumanizing the Image of God that rests on us all, even upon the shooter himself. We are called to love our enemies and bless those who curse us. We even die for the ones who kill us, if you take Jesus’ actions and Paul’s writings seriously. We should not respond to our anger by taking vengeance into our own hands, or spewing hatred. Yes, we should be angry. We should be indignant. Very much so. But we should not become murderers along with the shooter (Matthew 5).
Nonetheless, on balance, there remains an obligation as a society to properly punish the evildoer with a punishment befitting of this crime. Though vengeance is not the primary goal of Capital Punishment, it is nonetheless accomplished in it, and I believe rightfully so. And there are God-ordained instruments to carry this out (Romans 13). Let us pray for and trust them and the God who instilled them.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Forward. We go forward. We process what’s happened. We ask the hard questions. We shed our tears. We offer our help as the hands and feet of Jesus. We come to grips with the nature of the world, forever changed with each sin that’s committed, including this heinous murder spree. We channel the anger by turning this person over to God and say “vengeance is yours, not mine.” And then we do the hardest thing of all. We love the shooter. Even in wishing for justice to be carried out, we still love the murderer. Because Christ first loved us.
I hope this is a help. I wish peace upon us and our surrounding neighborhoods so deeply wounded by this tragedy. And I pray that Christians everywhere will take this opportunity to show the light of Christ and the Gospel in the midst of this ever-darkening world.
- “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping. ‘” -Fred Rogers ↩︎
