The Sandy Hook Evil

I promised myself I wouldn't make any public comments about the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut for at least a week. When my news app pinged me this morning that bells were ringing there to mark the one-week anniversary of the shooting, it got me thinking, again, of what can possibly be said. I feel the need to issue two disclaimers related to this topic.

First, there is an enormous amount to say. When that level of evil is exposed in our society, it should spark deep, thoughtful, exhaustive and difficult discussions. This is a deep hole we're in. This isn't something we should read (or write) a couple of blog entries on and then move along to the next celebrity gossip. This should arrest our progress, or more accurately, make us aware that it halted while we weren't looking. As a society, we need to grapple better with things like evil, innocence, the sanctity of life, suffering, violence, mental health, and, yes, gun control. If we took the next 26 years to research, study, plan, test, and seek to understand violent evil, that wouldn't be enough to honor the 26 lives lost last week. I'm going to point out in this article (and probably a few others) a few of the things weighing most heavily on my mind this week, but what I have to say here is not all there is to say. What I know is not all there is to know. I do not have a 12-step plan for ending violent evil in America. And don't believe anyone who says they do.

Secondly, I'd like to acknowledge that none of my words here matter to the families who lost loved ones last week. I have sat with people who are enduring deep, deep sadness. For people in those situations, words don't matter; public policy doesn't matter; the threat of the next atrocity doesn't matter; their own safety doesn't matter. Nothing seems to matter but their loss. No blog post matters because no blog post is going to bring back their sons and daughters.

So with that much preamble, I must be about to launch quite a gun control debate, right? Not at all. I think we need to talk about gun control; I have some ideas and opinions on that topic. But I think we should get to that topic around year 25 or your 26-year study. I'd rather start with a more accurate categorization of last Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary. Last Friday wasn't primarily about gun violence. It wasn't primarily about mental health. It was primarily about evil. It was pure evil. It was the most evil thoughts of Adam Lanza's mind distilled into their most horrific and actionable form. It seems to me that this particular display of evil is special in our history. We've turned a corner. Americans have died in mass shootings before; children have died in mass shootings. But, as you've read countless times now, this is the first time in our nation's history anyone has embodied evil boldly enough to target kindergarteners.

And that matters.

I am not saying that a child's life is more precious than an adult's. My religion teaches that all people are created in God's image and all human life is sacred. I'm also not saying that those 20 children were any more valuable or important than the 16,000 children who died of hunger-related causes last Friday, or the 720 who died of AIDS that day. Each of those lives was sacred. Each of those deaths was an awful consequence of the presence of death in the world. But I am saying that last Friday's display of evil was symbolically weighty. It's a milestone of evil against vulnerable victims that stands out among its peers.

Our tendency over the past seven days has been to reach immediately for answers. We want solutions. We want to know, "What do we have to do to ensure that this doesn't happen again?" Obviously, that's a great question, one that we won't find easy answers to because there aren't easy answers. And I wonder if we're rushing toward solutions before we fully understand the problem. Again, the problem is evil. How do we understand evil?

To the extent that we pass some laws intended to limit the expression of evil, we are only fooling ourselves that we can control it. It could be that stricter gun laws would have forced Adam Lanza to kill three children with a kitchen knife rather than 20 children with guns, but for those hypothetical three families grieving this week, the end game is the same; they have been visited by evil. Likewise, an armed teacher or security guard might have stopped Adam Lanza after he killed the same three kids, but before he could get to the other 17. Again, would it matter to the families of his three victims? Yes, the numbers matter. Yes, three murders is better than 20. But let's not talk about behavioral band-aids that will reduce the numbers without taking about foundational truths that could actually have a larger effect. Let's talk about limiting the number of Adam Lanzas, not the number of kids Adam Lanza can kill.

Let's remain focused. The problem is that there is evil in our country. It's getting bolder. It's not lurking in dark alleys and the "other side of the tracks" any more. Evil is showing up in our gated communities and our suburban elementary schools.

And it's showing up in our hearts.

Let me drive this point home. You are a shooter like Adam Lanza. Do you know what signs Lanza exhibit before last Friday that he had the capacity to do what he did? None. At least very little. He might have seemed troubled at times, but so have you. He might have even been violent or melancholy or compulsive at times, but so have you. The reality is that we are all about two clicks away from bald-faced evil. Of course it doesn't seem that way. You're well-adjusted. Your life is manageable and predictable. You have a loving family. But let life throw you a few curves. Cancer. The death of a child. Job loss. Debt. Divorce. Disrespect. Betrayal. You'll start to withdraw. Your loving relationships will dissolve. You'll try more desperate versions of your coping mechanisms. You'll spend more time in the darker corners of your mind. And within weeks, you'll start to think about going out in a blaze of glory. America doesn't have two or three dozen potential Adam Lanzas playing video games in their moms' basements. America has 300 million potential Adam Lanzas.

Of course that doesn't happen to everyone who hits hard times, but the ones it does happen to aren't "more sick" than the rest of us. And we aren't "better people" than those who snap. The awful truth is that we are all capable of evil. We are all potential shooters. Evil isn't just in our neighbors' hearts; its in ours.

I was first disavowed of the notion that "I would never do something like that" in college. I had a friend named Ron Shamburger. He was a good guy. He came to the campus Christian meetings I was a part of. His family was stable. He made good grades. On September 30, 1994, Ron broke into his girlfriend's apartment, shot her in her bed, and then set fire to the place. He was executed by lethal injection on September 18, 2002. Evil got the better of Ron. If you think you're better than Ron, I hope live long and happy in your arrogant ignorance. I hope dumb luck keeps you from an outbreak of evil that would prove you wrong. If you're starting to see that your life's version of evil (shouting at your spouse? cheating on your taxes?) is only one step on a stairway toward hell, then you're starting to see the bigger issue at work in Newtown.

Evil exists in our country and in our hearts. I want to have the gun control debate, but let's table that for now and talk about the larger issue. Let's ask a more fundamental question. What are we going to do about evil? What on earth can we do?