Death, Guns, and God

I was in 10th grade when Columbine happened.  Less than a week after the shootings there, we spent an entire morning sitting on the bleachers of the football field because someone had called in a bomb threat at my high school.

I've since lost count, though someone had posted the number yesterday, of how many school shootings have taken place since April 20, 1999, but it's been far too many.  Even one school shooting is one school shooting too many.

I grew up with the understanding that, for the most part, school was a safe place.  I cannot imagine that this is the case any more.  Now there are schools that require students to pass through a metal detector to get in.  Now there is a greater police presence in schools that I ever remember seeing when I was in school.  Now, places of learning are just as likely to be places of violence (physical and non-physical) and death.  And I grieve over this.

When I heard the news about the shooting in Newtown, CT yesterday, I was waiting for my coffee and food at Dunkin Donuts. I just happened to glance up at the television to see images of the children being escorted from Sandy Hook Elementary school.  And my heart sank as I watched little innocent faces being rescued from what is likely to be the worst day of their lives.  These children are the age of a good chunk of the kiddos that I work with at Trinity...20 of them now robbed of their futures.  And I heard the words of Christ from the cross, crying out in the words of Psalm 22, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"

But then I felt a little nudge from the inside...from my unborn child who began a little dance inside my belly.  At 24 weeks of gestation, Jellybean is my constant reminder that death never has the final say, Christ's victory over death and God's wish for us to have life abundant do.  And the words in my head turned from the lament in Psalm 22 to the plea of the song "E'en So, Lord Jesus," by Paul Manz.
       "E'en so, Lord Jesus, quickly come, and night will be no more.  They need no light, nor lamp, nor sun,  
        for Christ will be their all."

In the Christian tradition, our Advent hymns cry out for Christ to come and reconcile us to one another.  "O Come, O Come, Emanuel, and ransom captive Israel, who mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appears.  Rejoice, Rejoice, Emanuel shall come to you, O Israel."  And we cry out to God on behalf of the fallen in Newtown, CT with tears and words of anger, with tears and words of pain and sorrow, with tears and words of lament.  But we do so knowing that though God is always present among us.  God held those who were killed in his arms and comforted them in their last moments. God was with all of those students who huddled in corners and their teachers who calmed their fears by reading them stories, ready to protect them at a moments notice.  God was with the first responders who came to the aid of  Sandy Hook Elementary school.  And God's mercy rests now over the victims and their families, and over the shooter.

And so the question becomes "what now?"  What do we do when innocents are slaughtered by someone who, himself was just a child who suffered from mental illness?  Well first, we keep on praying, we keep on lamenting and mourning.

But we also need to start talking.  We need to have reasonable conversations about ways in which this nation can become safer through gun control laws (Note: I grew up around guns, my husband and I own a gun, I am an admirer of guns, and I respect 2nd amendment rights, to a point).  We need to have healthy conversations about ways in which we can, as a nation, better care for those who suffer from mental illnesses but for whom services have not been as readily available since the 1980's.

There are also somethings that we shouldn't do.  Turning the shooter, a young man with a mental illness, into an evil villain is not helpful. Saying guns don't kill people, people kill people is also not helpful in this incident...there would be 28 people still alive today if Adam Lanza hadn't had access to multiple weapons. Saying God allowed the shooting to happen because we have taken prayer out of schools is probably the least helpful and most harmful thing that could be said in the aftermath of this horrific tragedy (Shame on you, Mike Huckabee).

It is my prayer in these coming days and weeks that we can come together as a nation, forget the labels that divide us, and work to make this nation a safer place for our children.  And I pray that there will be an end to gun violence...an end to all violence in this country and in this world.

May God have mercy upon all of us.