Random Acts

The terrified teen calls his mother at work, and pleads to be taken home from school.  A rumor had circulated that a shooting would take place sometime that day.  These are peculiar times.  When I was growing up, folks often left the back door to their homes open so that their kids (or any neighborhood kids) could come and go as they please. When I was growing up, rumors were about Billy Cantwood kissing Millie Smith behind the bleachers in the gym.  A shooting at a school?  Who could come up with a story as fantastic as that?

But times have changed. Columbine, Virginia Tech, and now another random act of gun violence in Arizona over the weekend have shocked us into a strange new world. And as our hearts break for those attacked, and our prayers go out for those still wrestling for life, our breath is snatched from us when we hear that the alleged shooter is another troubled young person.  Questions spurt forth like a dam bursting: A young person? What happened to innocence? What happened to our sense of security?  How could this happen? Where is God? Tough questions without easy answers…

In the wake of the Columbine shootings, Christian Ethicist Glen Stassen of Fuller Theological Seminary was asked how things like this happen?  Stassen consulted with the Hanna Perkins Center for Child and Adolescent Psychology in Cleveland to discover that the thread of continuity in acts of violence of this type is poverty of relationship.¹ Wow! Yes, of course, the answer is so obvious. Look at the descriptions of the alleged Arizona shooter, things like—“strange,” “kept to himself,” “socially awkward,” “scary,” and “obsessed with conspiracies."  Maybe the words, “poverty of relationship” also could have been used?

We live in society permeated by mistrust and venomous innuendo. Turn on any of a number of talk radio shows, or even some network television commentaries, and you will hear about how “they” (as opposed to those who feel similarly to the commentator) are sowing the seeds of destruction in our nation.  “They” might mean the political right, or the political left, people from other nationalities or faiths, the jobless, big business, environmentalists, socialists, you name it…. We perceive “they” or “them” as different, so they must be the cause of our woes.

We are isolating ourselves from each other, dividing ourselves into smaller and smaller groups of “us” versus “them.” For many of us, we’ve isolated ourselves to the extent of not even knowing the names of our neighbors. We are nurturing a culture filled to the brim with poverty of relationship.

What can be done? Where can we go from here?  Can the violence be stopped? Over the next few days, no doubt we will hear answers and explanations—some will be helpful, some may be not so helpful. No quick-fix solution is likely.  I don’t have the solution, but I can affirm a few things, and I offer them here for you:

1.                    God is here.  God is here with us, and God is there with them, too. Yes, God is with the victims, their families, the shooter, his family, us, immigrants, Muslims, big business, environmentalists, you name it…. I heard songwriter Ragan Courtney say once, in reference to those we might not know or like, “Their pictures hang on God’s refrigerator door, too.” We’re all in this together, and like it or not, I believe we all need each other.

2.                    As followers of Christ, we are compelled to lead lives like him—welcoming the stranger (and the strange), reaching out and being accessible to those often over-looked (see the story of the women who touched the edge of the garment of Jesus in Mark 5:25ff.), slow to judge, and quick to forgive.

3.                    Few things make a day better, few things make a person feel better, than a hug and some affirmation. Maybe we can’t change a whole culture, but maybe we can change the part of that culture we engage each day.  Take time to build your relationships.  Take time to “love on” somebody else and let them know how important and vital they are to you. Who can say what troubled individual you may help with a kind word, a knowing smile, or a gentle touch? Work to end the poverty of relationship in your own life, and maybe you will be ending that same sense of poverty in another’s life. Maybe random acts of kindness can win out over random acts of violence?

Real people were hurt, and hurt very seriously, last weekend in Tucson, and these few simplistic words won’t assuage their pain, suffering, or grief.  I pray that the God of healing and peace might comfort them (and us) in the living of the days to come.

Chris Conver, Recruitment and Admissions Coordinator

Assistant Professor of Theology
Campbellsville University - Louisville

¹Glen Stassen, “From an Ethicist,” RELAY: A Quarterly Newsletter for Networking Youth Ministers, Sponsored by PASSPORT, Inc., Volume 6 Number 2, Summer 1999. Pg. 3.