I had to turn off the news tonight. The coverage of the school shooting in Uvalve, Texas, was too much for me. It happened yesterday afternoon. An 18-year old walked into an elementary school, barracaded himself in a classroom and started shooting the teachers and students in the room (he had already shot his grandmother in the face). Two teachers and nineteen students are dead. Elementary students.
I have had many students over the years for whom going to school is a safe place. Their homes have some upheaval. There isn't food security. Their neighborhood isn't safe. The end of the school year produces anxiety for some. They're made to leave their place of safety.
But school isn't safe. It hasn't been for a while. Posts are going around on facebook with a list of all the school shootings that have happened in the US. It's long. Too long. One school is too long. There have been 2,052 school shootings in America since 1970. There have been 27 in the five months of 2022 alone.
Fingers get pointed at gun laws, lack of mental health help, social media...and these all have roles in what is going on, but it's something deeper. Other nations don't have these issues. Shootings may happen but not on the same scope. Since 2009 Mexico has had 8 school shootings, South Africa 6, India 5, Canada and France 2, and the USA had 288.
The Governor of Texas and law enforcement described the shooter and his actions as evil. And evil was definitely present in the taking of those young innocent lives. The fingerprints of evil are everywhere today. Many in the church are quick to point to the fall of society away from Christian morals. I was recently in a three part Sunday School class discussion how the Christian faith is meant to be amoral. Knowing good and evil is a result of the Fall (sin entering the world through Adam and Eve's disobediance. The church imposes it's concepts of good and bad, right and wrong, holy and evil on society. But that wasn't the intent when God created humanity. Humans were just meant to be in relationship with God. Life flowed from that. Righteousness was meant to be how life was lived--not "good" or "evil." Those things weren't even knowable until the Fall.
I bring this up because I think what is missing in society isn't morality, but love. Jesus said that the world would know His followers by their love. But what the world knows the church for is hate and judgment. Much of the church makes war against the LGBTQ movement, abortion clinics, socialist liberals and any other cause they deem as evil rather than showing the world love.
We don't know the shooter's motives for what he did--he was shot to prevent more bloodshed. Reporters say he was bullied as a youth and spent a lot of time alone. I can't wonder if he just needed more love.
Tonight I had to turn the news off. It was just too hard after several minutes of seeing all those parents who have an empty bedroom in their homes, the fellow students who witnessed the horrors of their classmates being gunned down.
It is not easy to go to work at a school wondering what could happen. It is not easy being a parent and sending my children to school knowing that they live in a world where they have to practice in their classrooms what to do in the event an intruder walks into their school. The world is not right. We can't keep doing nothing. I can't watch more of this on the news.
