The Heroism and the Horror
Over the past few months, I find myself more mindful of acts of horror than ever before. As I age, I find that these things weigh on me to a degree I would have never thought possible.
Newtown was jarring.
There was a confluence of factors about this tragedy that shook me. I just can’t get past the ages of the children murdered. Secondly, Newtown is basically every affluent suburb across America; these things are simply not supposed to happen there. Tragedies like this remove the illusion of safety that we all have to one degree or another. Finally, the heroism and the horror of the events of that day stick in my memory. Teachers laying down their lives to save children juxtaposed with a man who murdered his own mother in bed and then proceeded to seek out children to gun down creates a type of cognitive dissonance I have trouble rectifying in my mind.
Then, much closer to my home and my heart, another horror occurred on New Years Eve. Two young men, ages 26 and 21 from a martial arts gym associated with my own “allegedly” raped a 20-year-old teammate. A video camera captured the events and I found myself angry, shocked and dismayed. (for the record the gym I attend has nothing to do with these two criminals)
It is hard to comprehend how a community as tight-knit as an mma gym could be so violated. The kinship developed in challenging physical circumstances is very real and something that I value so highly. My teammates as Beta Academy are my good friends.
So to witness such a betrayal of these bonds of community was utterly shocking.
But what do we do with such horrors? Watching the media try to make sense of evil was particularly interesting. Our popular culture simply doesn’t have categories to respond appropriately to evil. And that is what these events are, evil.
And that’s the question I want to pose ‘How do we explain evil and evil actions?’
I don’t mean to minimize issues like mental health, those are real, but they are illnesses that create evil (or evil creates these illnesses depending on your point of view.) Regardless, creating a label, “mental illness” for evil actions does not explain said actions. Perhaps the day is coming when we can single out brain functions and DNA strands that can give us the root cause. But we haven’t seen that yet.
The gun control debate is sort of missing the point. The legality of these assault rifles does not explain why a man chooses to use rifles to kill children. Now, I’m not saying gun control shouldn’t be a topic of debate, of course it should be, as should anything that might mitigate such disasters. But these aren’t the root causes of evil.
Natural selection explains a lot of things, but I’m not sure it explains evil. How does a homicidal/suicidal trait survive the process of evolution?
So I find myself left with the metaphysical.
Those of you that know me know my Christian perspective. With events such as these, I am grateful for it. Something in this world has gone wrong. Something cosmic broke and the world has been in a state of decay since. Christians call this sin or in other words, any departure from the order that God intended for the world and us. Thankfully, he sent us a perfect sacrifice in his son to reconcile us and this world to him. Only God himself could rectify the cosmic shattering of sin.
Therefore in my understanding, evil is the result of the human fracturing of the divine, perfect order established by God.
But what is the world’s answer? I don’t find a satisfactory one and more depressingly, I think the world has already largely moved on because looking into such an abyss is just too unsettling. Instead we’re left with policy debates that explain nothing.