Fear and anger dominate everything from headlines to discussions between neighbors this week, as the world tries to assimilate its most recent unspeakable tragedy – the massacre of innocents in Uvalde, Texas.
Clearly, the horror of that slaughter is impacting us all, in overwhelming ways.
Even in a year when children in their hundreds are being killed by bombs in Ukraine and in their thousands by hunger in Afghanistan and Eritrea… even in a month which already claimed a mass murder of Americans, by an American… our response to Uvalde demonstrates that we cannot get comfy with evil.
We recoil from it.
We rail against it.
We rage at the waste, the senselessness, the injustice of it.
Strange unity
This culture-wide response should startle us.
Why?
Because it’s a cliché to say that we live in polarized, divided times.
Because just about everyone agrees that we tend to disagree on just about everything.
But… notice the way that photos of murdered children and their bereft parents bring out something common to all people, regardless of political or ideological creed.
Our shared horror, our shared grief, briefly but thoroughly unite us.
Of course, our fractured culture is on display in multiple ways, too:
Cynically opportunistic political posturing, grabs for the spotlight and microphone by folks who should sit down and shut up, the Blame Game intensely resumed after the first sharp intake of breath – these are facts.
And we vehemently disagree about why the shooting happened and what responses are likely to prevent another one – these are facts, too.
But it is also a fact that we weep together, in one accord, over the evidence of precious lives lost to us forever.
That shared weeping means something.
It means something of tremendous value and significance, something we must name and claim and proclaim – now, while the emotions are still at floodtide and attention is still scope-locked.
What it means
We live in an age of “identity politics.”
Basic assumptions of what makes us human and longstanding wisdom about what constitutes human flourishing are being systematically eviscerated.
Even the syntax of our shared language no longer functions as straightforward communication – teensy things like pronouns have morphed into one more point of contention in the all-out ideological war of our day.
But a unified rejection of evil means the imago dei which is common to each of us remains more powerful than the culturally-constructed silos separating all of us.
The visceral keenness of our pain at the loss of “other people’s children” means that our identity as humans remains more significant than our labels under the aegis of woke segregation.
(Indeed, in a deeply tragic way, unified horror toward the Buffalo massacre, which targeted mostly Black Americans, and the Uvalde massacre, which targeted mostly Hispanic Americans, points to the truth that ALL lives matter to Americans of ALL races. The wickedness of sorting folks according to skin tone, as in long-gone and much-grieved days, gets called out by this truth.)
Evil and the Evil One
It’s not fashionable, nowadays, to talk about the Devil. Our postmodern culture sees itself as too evolved, too self-sufficient and secure in digital comforts, to give credence to an entity whose whole function is the destruction of human souls.
But Jesus was very clear that Satan, the Accuser, not only exists but is endlessly vigilant in pursuing his objectives. Jesus came that we “might have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10b) By contrast, the Enemy “is like a ravening lion, looking whom he may devour.” (1 Peter 5:18)
Uvalde reminds us that, despite our pretensions of superiority and safety, Satan can creatively appropriate our new-fangled stuff to achieve unchanging, old-fashioned goals.
Think about it: what is the commonality among every mass murderer in recent history? Training by the Dark Web. Acculturation to ever deeper depths of perversion and destruction, via hours spent in the digital universe. A constructed “community” made up not of actual people but of deviant ideas and hateful rhetoric.
Our technology – that which can be purposed for good, to save lives and solve problems and connect people across great distances – can be and is leveraged by Satan, to “steal, kill, and destroy.” (John 10:10a)
Two take-aways
As we continue to mourn the violent loss of innocent children in Uvalde (and elsewhere), I hope we see and treasure the core unity that our grief illustrates so powerfully.
Recognizing the sacred in one another – savoring that made-in-God’s-image center of our shared humanity – that is a gift of Light in these dark days, even if it takes the shape of tears.
But I also hope that we recognize and repudiate the conceit that we are somehow “beyond” the need for salvation.
I hope we take action – as individuals, as churches, as a nation – to reinstate real, person-to-person connections that offer real, material hope to individuals – rather than leaving troubled souls at the mercy of online algorithms that amorally reinforce their destructive capacity.
Uvalde reminds us: we have an Enemy, and he is ever at work to foment evil.
But our response to Uvalde reminds us: we are made in the image of the One who gave us life and then gave us Life – the One who can save us from the very worst in ourselves – and the One who abides within us at our consent.
Satan never sleeps. But neither does Jesus. And because of Jesus, even death – even Uvalde – has no power over the Life that we have.
Remember that.
Live that.
