Sunday, December 16, 2012

An Evil Both Ancient and Modern

"The Spirit always connects, reconciles, forgives, heals and makes two into one.  It moves beyond human-made boundaries to utterly realign and renew that which is separated and alienated.  The "diabolical" (from two Greek words, dia balein, that mean 'to throw apart'), by contrast, always divides and separates that which could be united and at peace.  Just as the Spirit always makes one out of two, so the evil one invariably makes two out of one!  The evil one tears the fabric of life apart, while the Spirit comes to mend, soften and heal."
--Fr. Richard Rohr, Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent

The nation continues to reel in the aftermath of the Newtown school shooting.  We grieve and try to direct our anger toward a meaningful and helpful response.  As we always do in our modern, secular society, our first reaction is to figure out some legal, technical fix for our problems.  Profoundly simplistic (and, frankly, simple-minded) solutions blare out from across the political spectrum, from banning handguns to returning state-sanction prayer into public schools.  But there is something far more complex and perplexing going on here than new legislation can correct.  The Newtown Massacre reveals an evil among us that is at once both ancient and commonplace, and also new and modern.

Today's polite intelligentsia shy away from using the term "evil."  The moral relativism that dominates our public and private discourse prefers to see all ethical questions as being culturally conditioned and open to broad interpretation.  Tolerance is our highest value. 

And yet, the slaughter of small children seems to shock even the most hardened secularist into moral indignation.  Something horrible has happened, and it must be accounted for.

Evil of this scale is not new, of course.  Since biblical times, children have been victimized and brutalized.  Consider that the Church even has a feast day in memory of the Holy Innocents murdered by Herod in his attempt to prevent the Messiah from reaching adulthood.

But even Herod's evil had a motive.  Terrorists and tyrants have claimed innocent lives throughout history, but typically with some political rationale, however twisted.  The kind of senseless, directionless violence of the Newtown Massacre leaves us deeply bewildered and shaken.  In terms of its context, there is no historical reference point.

And this is why we must view this tragic show of evil from a broader, more theological lens than pundits and politicians will prefer. 
One hundred years ago, Americans had easier access to firearms than they do today.  They also had the full range of mental illnesses and familial hostilities we're familiar with today.  But people simply did not walk into schoolhouses and murder children.

Something has happened to us Americans.  I'm not prophetic enough to parse it out, and trying to link societal changes that may be relevant to the specific situation in Newtown would be foolhardy and futile.  But it's worth pondering how we are different now.  What role does the demise of the family, the decline of religious practice, the disintegration of a common moral tradition, the breakdown of civic society, play in all this?  What has happened to us that such evil, once inconceivable, is now a reality we must live with on a daily basis?

These questions don't preclude considerations of public policy, but defy any straightforward policy solution. 

It occurs to me, for example, that our horror over the Newtown Massacre does not extend to a widespread public concern for the abortion of several hundred thousand babies each  year, whose fate differs only from the children in Newtown in the fact that they are even smaller and more vulnerable, and were actually killed by their parents, rather than some random stranger.  But I don't for a second think that a public policy solution (outlawing or restricting abortion) would suddenly bring an end to that tragic loss of life any more than gun control laws would eliminate school violence.

Whatever has happened to us is more complex than just what was going on in the sick, diabolical mind of Adam Lanza.

Whatever our political response to these events, they will be incomplete (and thus ineffective) without a serious consideration of the collective spiritual sources and solutions to our condition.  Let us pray for clarity as a people, and the courage to confront our own brokenness and sin.

"O God, whom the Holy Innocents confessed
and proclaimed on this day,
not by speaking but by dying,
grant, we pray,
that the faith in you which we confess with our lips
may also speak through our manner of life.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity
   of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.  Amen."
--Collect prayer from the Feast of the Holy Innocents, Martyrs




No comments: