Can Love Be Best Defense Against Continued Violence?

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Forget the Mayan calendar pronouncing humanity’s inevitable doom. It would seem after the Connecticut shootings, along with the Oregon mall shootings and the Colorado Batman shootings, we are doing a pretty good job of bringing the end of the world upon ourselves. No apocalypse needed.

On that Friday morning, before I heard news of tragedy ensuing in Colorado, a co-worker and I were discussing the depravity of mankind. A doctor brutally stabs his two children to death, and after a mere three years in prison, he is a free man, able to practice medicine again and claim he’s ready to start another family. If that doesn’t speakto the demise of sanity, I’m not sure what does. Are we creating our doom by slipping into horrifi c habits?

Will the increasing tragedies drive us into isolation and despair?

While reading various news reports about Connecticut, I was shocked to see interviewees referring to the shooter as “a freak.” It was that very rhetoric that, in part, funneled into Adam Lanza’s actions.

While those words are never appropriate to be used to refer to another person, it is particularly unsettling to hear it used in the very moments after such a tragedy. Clearly, we find it in us necessary to attempt to remove ourselves as much as possible from such a killer. If he was truly “freakish,” we can tell ourselves he was unlike us.

Yet don’t we have a responsibility in all these heartbreaking events? By categorizing someone like that, we are feeding their insecurities, their fears, and ultimately the psyche that motivates their actions. We single people out for their supposed diff erences and jeer at them and then are shocked and hurt and left reeling when someone every so often (ever more often)acts out. It would seem all that diversity acceptance is either falling on deaf ears or is a lot hogwash.

Adam Lanza was described in one news article as a “genius tech geek.” If he’s a genius in the world of technology, shouldn’t that be celebrated instead of derided and branded as a geek? The last few days I have often thought of the several young people who have at various times visited my community group, a part of my church. Too many stories surround these killers who were rejected, so they sunk deeper into depression. If we judged and stereotyped each person who came into our group that others viewed as “questionable,” we would, first, be a very small group;

second, not be living out our faith; and third, cause unspeakable damage and heartache. Instead, we accept and love each person who comes in no matter our first impressions; each person who has committed to our group has become a special friend. People say they cannot believe in a God who allows this to happen.

If we each lived a little more like God, maybe it wouldn’t happen.

Perhaps the only way to ever stall the impending doom of the world is to love people. What a seemingly simple-sounding answer to murder and war and all the other evils we see in our world today. But if loving translates itself into kindness, truly accepting someone for who they are, regardless of how theylook or what their social capabilities are, then it might go a long way toward stopping someone from feeling so rejected they see no future but death.

The media tend to sensationalize these killers.

We are bombarded with news and footage every single moment, and the news doesn’t get any better.

Maybe, we should refl ect just a moment on what our responsibility in a tragedy is. Maybe we should focus a little less on the end of the world and a little more on how us loving can make every day a little less tragic.

ALYSSA PEISER GRADUATED FROM JOHN BROWN UNIVERSITY WITH A DEGREE IN ENGLISH.

SHE IS PURSUING A CAREER IN WRITING WHILE SHE IS WAITING TABLES.

Opinion, Pages 11 on 01/13/2013