Weapons. Shooting. Kindergarten. Wounded. 26 Dead.
Words which should never be grouped together in a sentence.
“Evil visited this community today.” CT Governor Dan Malloy said yesterday in a post tragedy press conference.
Regardless of your personal religious beliefs, can there be any doubt that indeed evil manifested today in Newtown, CT?
In the final book of Ephesians, the apostle Paul writes, “For we are not fighting against people made of flesh and blood but against the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against those mighty powers of darkness who rule this world.”
It’s much more acceptable for Twenty-first century Americans to vilify the gunman, or the politicians, or the Muslim extremist, or the fill-in-the-blank-with-whatever-noun-is-not-you than to admit that there are invisible forces roaming the earth.
As we lean away from all things religious, as we post-modernists are want to do, are we losing the capacity to believe in this unseen world? And if lose our capacity to believe, how can hope to press back against these dark powers?
Glenn Beck tweeted today, “It’s not the gun. It’s the soul.” I would slightly adjust his comment to read, “It’s not the gun. It’s the soul influenced by forces of evil.
People are not evil. Political parties are not evil. Religious movements are not evil. Evil is a force. A dark and malevolent force. Personified perhaps by Tolkien’s Sméagol and the ring to rule all rings. None of us are immune to the pull of evil. If we are honest, we will admit that we struggle from time to time with murderous thoughts, with greed, with lust, with lying, with abusing power.
I doubt today’s shooter, twenty year-old Adam Lanza, harbored murderous plans for years. I imagine just as with Sméagol, there was a gradual, perhaps barely discernible gravitation towards evil. Un-repentant anger, morphing into bitterness, which if left unchecked is indeed capable of untold horrors. Evil will take any matrix we offer it.
After such a frightening and destabilizing day, might we all consider metaphorically tossing the ring? Might we honestly and vulnerably confess our sins one to another: the lies, the hatred, the unwillingness to be wrong, the judgment, the greed, the hunger for power, etc. Perhaps if we all were willing to explore our own depravity and acknowledge that indeed, we all need a savior to hold us back from causing carnage, we would take the first step in bringing God’s kingdom to the earth.
Ironically, it is often in response to evil that we catch glimpses of this kingdom: a goodness, a purity, which transcends our mortal flesh. Just as we have the capacity for harm when under the influence of evil, when connected to God, each one of us is the capacity for tremendous acts of love, mercy, sacrifice, and grace. We all know and recognize when someone in our midst reaches beyond their human potential—when we access what God offers us. We witnessed it a hundred times over on 9/11. We will hear similar stories from Newtown in the coming days. We will weep—in appreciation, in awe, in amazement. And we will not discount the unseen reality because the events of this day make denial impossible.