by Steven Lefebvre
First let me apologize if you find
this opportunistic or inappropriate and forgive me for adding to the
noise…
Friday morning I took a dozen of my
youth to see the The Dark Knight Rises, but not before I was awoken
by a phone call from a concerned parent. She asked if I was still
planning on taking the youth to see the film in light of the attack
that morning in Aurora. I think she ultimately called me to think
out loud, so I quietly ‘uh-hu-ed’ along as she pontificated that
it’s probably safe because we were going to a morning viewing.
Safe.
I was thoroughly entertained and
satisfied by the film except for the scene where the antagonist,
Bane, holds up the Gotham Stock Exchange Hostage. In this scene, he
and his henchmen murder about a thirty people in cold blood. With the
events of last night swirling around in my brain, I found it
disturbing and terrifying. I caught myself looking around the theater
a few times both imagining what it must have been like for those
souls in Colorado and feeling afraid and unsafe myself. Safe.
Who promised us this safety that, every
time a tragedy shatters our feelings of security, prompts us to
demand answers? Why do we think that watching 24-hour news cycles and
finding out what kind of parents the killer had will put the pieces
back together? Why is it so important that things go back to normal?
Wake up my friends.
Evil exists in this world. If we
learned anything from Nolan’s last Batman movie it’s that some
people “just like to watch the world burn.” Sometimes bad things
happen and there is no rhyme or reason, no plot or motive, no way to
prevent it from happening, no way to promise it won’t happen again.
It just simply exists.
This is the way it is for most people
in this world. Whether its people dying and being mutilated by war
lords and militias or epidemic diseases without cures or hurricanes
or tornadoes or psychopaths or alcoholism or pedophilia or drought or
starvation. Evil exists in this world. As long as there are varying
levels of hate, greed, jealousy, inequality, prejudice, pollution,
exploitation, bitterness, lust, disease, and sloth, it is here to
stay.
Some people get the benefit of going
longer periods of time being ignorant to evil’s presence, but
sooner or later a tragedy will strike and it will find you. But the
damned thing is, somebody in this modern world promised us safety.
They told us suffering is bad and the quicker we can alleviate the
discomfort the better. So when tragedy strikes we look at the talking
heads like they're the crew on a sinking ship directing us to the
lifeboats. Perhaps we tweet about demanding better gun laws, or we
tell everyone to carry their own guns so that when it comes we
can be ready.
But deep down we all know what the
truth is: no amount of government, wealth or artillery will protect
us from tragedy, suffering, and our inevitable deaths. The one thing
that we all have in common is our suffering and its aim is to teach
us compassion and tolerance. You cannot fix suffering, you can only
run from it or turn and face it, embrace it and begin the process of
grieving, which is the way we heal.
Please stop watching television. Please
stop demanding answers. Please stop trying to go back to the way
things were.
We have become a society of numb and
lonely people. We complain about being enslaved by Facebook, our
smart phones, and our individualized busyness. We complain that our
kids are too addicted to video games and have become increasingly
desensitized to violence. So why do we want things to go back to
“normal?” Why is this uneasiness we feel so bad and our feeling
of apathetic numbness so good (or maybe it’s the blinding stress
and busyness)?
Sure, to be aware of the world’s
suffering is to be full of tension and it causes us to reevaluate our
values and our priorities. But I believe, as I watched people be
murdered on screen today, Friday’s events put me back in touch with
reality: Violence is evil. I should be uncomfortable with it. This
doesn’t mean that there is some silver lining to the attack, that
it was good that it happened because now we can all appreciate what
we have, blah blah blah, etc etc etc. No, that morning’s event was
senseless and unexplainable.
However, what we are today is
conscious. So the question I wish to pose is: How are you going to
respond? Are you hoping that something else will come along and
trick you into believing you are safe again? Are you going to choose
despair or apathy and hopefully time will lull you back into your
ignorant and idle bliss?
Or are you going to use this as a time
to be present to the suffering in this world? Will you choose to
suffer with everyone you know and those you can imagine, learn more
deeply the story of the human condition, discover the ways you are
perpetuating the cycles of evil in this world, repent, forgive,
forgive everyone because they are just like you and be more
charitable to your fellow human?
WE CANNOT CONTROL EVIL. The only thing
we CAN control is whether or not we choose to participate in
perpetuating it.
Grieve well my friends.
Pray. God is near.
Shalom.
Steven is the Director of Youth and Young Adults at St. Paul's Episcopal Church. He writes/posts about his music at http://www.stevenlefebvre.com/
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