I'm so saddened by the loss of life in Connecticut last Friday. It's a tragedy, committed by a sick and/or evil man. I pray for the victims, the living, the dead, the emotionally wounded, the physically traumatized. But, not just those in that small New England town. But those victimized by violence rooted in what seems to me to be an ever increasing lack of respect for human life.
It is a tragedy. It was an awful, hateful, cowardly act. It breaks my heart. But the response troubles me.
First, the arguing about gun control or the place of God or how the media should respond or the stories of the heroes. The non-stop coverage of this tragedy, bickering, and general non-productive response that seems to me to completely miss the real problem. That seems to shine a light on how messed up our perspective is in this country.
I feel for the families of the children lost in the Connecticut shooting. I feel for them the same way I felt for the families of the children lost to American bombs when we invaded Iraq. I feel for them the same way I feel for the parents of the children lost to drone attacks in Afghanistan. I feel for them the same way I feel for those that lost family members in Benghazi. Every life is sacred. Every life has dignity and is deserving of equal love, consideration, and prayer. But, that's the hypocrisy of our culture. We're enraged that some man decided to walk into a school and without thought of the families take the lives of their children. We want to unite our hearts and minds with those parents, because it could have been our child and we can't fathom being the victim of another's decision to value our child's life less than any other person's life. We can't sit calmly while innocent children are killed due to another's disordered valuation of life.
Except when it's our tax dollars being used to kill. When it's our elected leaders determining who deserves to live and who deserves to die.
A young man with a gun making the choice to walk into a school with handguns deciding who lives and who dies, that's something we despise. A man that won a popular vote ordering a young man with a joystick to fire a missile into a civilian neighborhood to kill a terrorist, knowing full well that elderly, sick, innocent men, women and children will also be killed and deciding that one life is worth more than another? We don't want to know the names, the numbers, or unite our feelings with the grieving of those families.
And when a man or woman decides that the new life in the woman's womb is inconvenient, we don't want to say, "No, that's a human being, we can't simply choose who deserves to live and who deserves to die based on convenience or personal pleasure."
Because if we say it's OK for individuals to make a personal pleasure, desire or convenience based choice on who lives and who dies, well, how do you judge a school shooter as evil?
As a society, we selectively value life. Who gets to decide the value of life? Well, sometimes we give that power to an elected official, to use the weapons we purchase to kill people on the other side of the globe. And sometimes we give that power to appointed officials to issue death penalities sought in the name of "justice" though maybe it's more a sense of vengeance? And sometimes we give that right to a mother or father or grandparent when the life is the most innocent and defenseless newly conceived human.
But, in everyone of those cases we say, "Arbitrary political, legal or personal motives can entitle one human being to take another's life without having to answer to anyone." Then we wonder why shootings like this happen?
We are so callous towards the life of children when they are in Afghanistan living near supposed terrorists. We are so callous towards the lives of children that had the misfortune of being born into an oppressed nation like Iraq, where we'll judge bombing and "accidentally" killing thousands of them is preferable to letting them live in an oppressed state. We are callous when the life of the child might "inconvenience" a young adult.
We justify the "collateral damage" in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere with the excuse that we were going after terrorists and unfortunately those sorts of things sometimes get messy. But, the killer in Connecticut, the killer at Virginia Tech, the Oklahoma City bomber, the shooters at Columbine, they were all terrorists too. Look at the news in the wake of those events, see the terror they caused a nation. That should justify drones circling our cities bombing our neighborhoods, killing our children to take out those isolated mad men. Right?
Or do we see how preposterous that justification is when it means pointing missiles at our own towns and cities to take out mad men?
I'm not arguing pacifism. I recognize that sometimes evil comes at you with guns blazing and can only be stopped by returning fire. The point I am trying to make is this: As a society we are very inconsistent in valuing human life. When it is close to us, we recognize how sacred life is and how wrong it is for anyone to decide to take the life of another. But, at the same time we say that sometimes it is OK but offer no meaningful standard for that permissiveness. Then we wonder why there are so many people going around killing others.
It all starts with how a society values and teaches the value of human life.
Human life is sacred.
All men are created equal.
Every life is deserving of the same valuation, treatment and respect.
If you don't want individuals to think they can make the choice of who lives and who dies, we must set a very high standard and teach a very clear model for valuing all human life as the most important thing on Earth. I mourn the loss of life in Connecticut, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in every place in the world where one man's or one culture's valuation of life deems another's life as being of lesser consequence than their own. I pray that we will all learn to value the life of every human being as being every bit as valuable as our own and as the loved ones closest to us.
When we can truly learn to value the life of the man on the other side of the globe as much as the life of our own child, then we will know true peace. Until then, violence in our neighborhoods, schools, malls, and around the globe will continue.
