What will it take to stop the carnage?
Years ago, I worked as a cabinet maker at a retirement community in California’s Orange County. On certain mornings, De, the maintenance supervisor, and I would go for a stroll around the twenty-two-acre campus in order to note any need for repairs. Those walks provided fond memories of the beautifully kept, flower laden lawns and commons, which I much preferred to the dusty confines of the wood shop. Those hikes around the estate also provided a glimpse of my friend’s love for living things. If the grounds keepers had recently watered the lawn or it happened to have rained the night before, De would often reach down and remove a struggling worm from the sidewalk to the grass so it would not dehydrate and die in the hot sun. Such an insignificant deed of thoughtfulness might not have made the local newspaper, but thirty years later, I still remember those kind-hearted acts as windows into my friend’s gentle soul. He cherished life wherever he found it.
Since those days in the California sun, I have thought many times about events I have seen play out in our society, events that contrast so vividly with De’s respect for life, even the life of a lowly earthworm. The latest rash of mass shootings has stimulated these memories yet again.
On the night of the Florida shootings, I lay in bed thinking about the merciless, horrible agony that had engulfed still more parents, relatives and friends. There is no medication that can take away the pain which tortures them. They will find no escape but to writhe in anguish of soul until time mercifully wears away some of their awful heartache. I wonder how anyone can be so heartless as to cause innocent people such sorrow. A sickness has spread throughout our society, a contagion like an impenetrable, gray fog creeping in from the sea and seeping into our cities where dozens of people are shot, stabbed, and bludgeoned to death each night. How is it that we can simply pull a trigger or thrust a knife without feeling the pain we are causing the pain of victims and their loved ones? What has robbed us of what we used to call humanity? Where is our concern for the happiness and welfare of others?
With each mass shooting, politicians, law enforcement, the NRA, the media, and other interested parties rise up and trumpet the same calls to arms (or disarm) we heard the last time such a disaster was perpetrated. But soon, too soon, as if yelling about the problem for a few days solves something, everyone returns to what they were doing and all is quiet until another heartless person plots and executes yet another horrendous atrocity. Who is to blame for this toxic fog of disdain for life and happiness in which we find ourselves? Regarding the last shooting, blame has been showered in all directions: inadequate firearms laws, ineffective background checks, health care inadequacies, breakdown of local law, FBI ineptitude, lax school security, coupled with the shooter’s hurtful school experience and family life. No doubt some, if not all, of these issues bear a part in last week’s shooting and should be considered seriously with corrections made where necessary.
Even if all these matters are corrected, however, something remains-the sickening, toxic fog of selfishness and lack of concern for others’ welfare that embraces our society like a London fog. Unending legislation will never keep one man from hurting another if malice occupies his heart. In the New Testament, Romans 1:20-32 tells what happens to a society that gives God the boot. We kicked God out of home and school. We think ourselves too smart to have God hanging around our progressive universities because he is so old fashioned with that, “Love thy neighbor” stuffiness. We know how to get our way by rioting in the street and how to silence others by shouting them down. What more could we possibly need to know? Perhaps, we should add to our great store of progressive knowledge this one thing: how to care enough to stoop down and pick up a wiggly little worm and place it safely in the grass.
Clinton DeWitt is a resident of Dunbar