Martyrs

 

The news is full of it.  ‘Nine dead in Charleston church.’  I face this with a terrible sense of fatigue.  The grim words that form sound bites, ‘Racism, violence, guns, mass murder,…’ seem worn by use.  The kid accused of it, isolated, shy, given a gift of a weapon by a well-meaning relative, seems a great subject for a clinical study of alienation and desperation.  And now they speak of the death penalty.  Hasn’t there been enough death?

The pastor seems to have been a laborer in the vineyard.  I heard a recording of him, confidently and without the awful emphasis of so many who know they’re being listened to, speaking of his church.  He sounded proud of the history and the heritage that the congregation was seeking to represent.  He was conducting a Bible study, sowing seed, telling the old, old story.  Perhaps I’m projecting, but there seemed a bit of joy in his speaking. 

People speak of the horror of having such violence in a place where they come for solace and peace.  I wonder if they’re really paying attention to the history of the church, of the price that the church has paid to preach peace, of the example the church’s Lord set so long ago?

It is a horror.  Evil is that way.  The pope came out with an encyclical demanding we pay attention to the horror we are perpetrating upon our home planet.  Good for him.  It was so exhaustingly predictable how many shook their heads and said the pope should stay out of politics.  Politics?  When our consumer society does exactly that to the planet we live on for the sake of economic gain, we have left politics and entered the world that pushed that young man to kill nine people because of the color of their skin.  The pope, and anybody with a shred of sanity, let alone morality, let alone faith needs to do more than speak out.  Something more than continuing to consume.

We are a family, bonded by our genetic makeup and very simply because we share a home.  There is no debate in that.  It’s our job to act like it rather than acting like horribly competent four year olds, ready and willing to try out our mobility and newly discovered motor skills by destroying our environment for the heck of it.  Whether we use guns or profit margins we’re still nuts.

 But our responses are so exhaustingly predictable.  I think it was Dostoyevsky who said that good families are good in simple and similar ways, while those who are not good are bad with infinite variations.  Something like that.  I disagree.  I think good is beautifully diverse, while evil is sadly and terribly consistent. 

Let’s stop being predictable.  Let’s listen to the pope.  Let’s listen to the martyrs.  Let’s listen to the voices for hope.  And let’s do something new.  Who knows, maybe we’ll grow up.