Free Will, Violence and Vengeance

I read about, and saw on YouTube, the recent “freespeech” statement by a parent who lost a child at Columbine. In reaction to the killings at the Amish school, he stated that the reason for all of these school shootings and other violence and terrorism is because evolution is taught in school and abortion is legal.

My heart breaks for this man, and I realize that he needs to rationalize what happened to his child in whatever way he can live with. However, in my mind, his reasoning is flawed and overly-simplistic. What he is trying to say is that the world needs more God in it, and that god must be in line with his particular Christian point of view. It is this thinking that has, over the centuries, sparked most of the terrible violence humans have visited upon one another. Religious conversion by conviction or force has never done anything to reduce the amount of violence in the world. Basically, in every conflict, each opponent, if not specifically believing that God is on their side, has believed that what they were doing was for the good of society. Society as they interpreted it.

I wish there was a magic solution to ending the increase in school violence, and for that matter, world violence. It is easy to think, if only this or if only that. It is comforting to be able to find an identifiable source of blame, holding that source responsible for invoking actions of a vengeful God. Me, I can’t ever envision a God or Deity that would send a gunman into a school of Amish children because somewhere else there was an abortion performed. I cannot believe that an angry Deity sent planes full of innocent people and terrorists crashing into the Twin Towers. Why wouldn’t the angry God punish the evil doers? To think like this is to believe that ultimately, the people who have perpetrated these heinous acts are really not responsible for what they do. To use a Christian comparison, it would be equivalent to saying that Judas was not himself responsible for the betrayal of Christ, but was compelled to do it. The theological argument, no matter what your belief system might be, is, do humans have free will or not?

In American society, there may be a heightened tolerance or expectation of violence – from a glorification that dates back to the Revolution. The reasons for it are probably as complicated and varied as the personalities of the 3 billion people that now occupy our borders. No one sweeping change in medical practice or educational curriculum is going to change that. It is up to each individual to be responsible for his or her own actions, to pass morals and beliefs on to offspring, to obey the civil laws of the land, respect and tolerate the rights of others. When you consider how much free will that involves, and how much temptation exists in the world you see just how difficult a place the human race is in.

I suggest, for those of you so inclined, to pray.