Plugging My Ears

Chaos makes me furrow my brow. Tragedy, even in view of God’s divine plan, makes me cry. The inexplicable nature of evil within a person confuses me. When a young man gets to a place in his life that he chooses to shoot down strangers in a place previously recognized as safe and fun - a shopping mall, it is a shock to a community and to a nation. I wonder if he questioned himself. I wonder what went through his mind that convinced him to follow through. What events and disappointments trigger such deep pain? What was kept under the surface and untouched by the light of healing and redemption and for how long? The poor sweet people in Omaha are left with all kinds of unanswerable questions. The innocence of the Midwest has been compromised.

Do we, can we believe that God is perfectly in control of things like this? The truth is, God made this young man; He knit him together in his mother’s womb with wisdom and intricacy. He also numbered his days as well as the others who died yesterday.

The chaos and confusion come when you think about the innocence of those involved. The tragic reality is that our sin always involves others. When someone is sinned against there is opportunity to respond sinfully to it. We get angry, we get bitter, we blame others, we are ruled by shame, paralyzed by fear. And then we sin against someone else who then has the opportunity to respond sinfully as well. It’s a devastating cycle and it never touches just one person.

These are some of the thoughts that ran through my mind as my family sat down for a matinee at 2:20 on December 5, 2007. My mom got a phone call from my aunt, who we had just eaten lunch with. She was on her way into Von Mar when two women ran out screaming and crying, “DON’T go in there! There’s a guy with a gun shooting people!” Simultaneously, a preview came on the screen for a movie about an investigation for a mysterious shooting. The irony was disturbing. The following preview was even more disturbing, video footage from a killer documenting his disastrous choices and evil against other people. Sitting in the 6th row, somewhere near the middle with my eyes tightly shut and plugging my ears I could still hear the sounds of screams of this awful preview. It was a little too real that day.

Later that day, as the soapy brushes washed clean the dirt from my dad’s pick-up, we listened to the radio reports about what information they were able to uncover at that point. It’s almost senseless for me to write about something that makes me speechless....