My pledge so that Sandy Hook does not happen in my own life:
1. I will hate any rage in my thoughts or my emotions.
2. I will hate it because my rage would be related, genetically, to the rage of Lanza, Loughner, Cho, Harris and Klebold.
3. I will not engage in entertainment that is predicated on graphic violence.
4. I will refuse to engage in any simulation of shootings of human beings, because it does, indubitably, desensitize a human conscience to the defacement of the imago dei.
5. I will hope and work for the openness of the public square, including schools, to the passion-suppressing religion of the one authentic Christology. There are forms of Christianity, to be sure, that have nothing to do with passion-suppression. I will emphasize only the one form that takes seriously Peacemaking. That form is the only one worth brandishing in the public square, and in schools.
6. I will renounce -- without expecting anyone else to -- the ownership of any arms. I say nothing about hunters who need only 3 bullets, and allow for a precise conservative reading of the second amendment. But I think the current exegesis of that amendment is extremely, and ironically, liberal.
7. I will embrace the Beatitudes, especially the one about Peacemaking.
8. I will make my own home and my own personality a place that manifests Peace on Earth, Good Will toward men.
9. I will no longer take part in the vendetta started by Lucifer at the beginning of time -- a vendetta in which human arms have become a priapistic fetish of demons.
10. I will remember this unprecedented day, a day of non-war face-to-face execution of first-graders. The use of an assault rifle on babies, face-to-face, in a peaceful school with multiple shots in each little body, has never happened before.
11. I will fear anger, and the darkness. I will not fear, or be angry with, the government or any man. The paranoia about Mr Obama is a satanic deception. Satan deserves my anger, not any creature who bears God's Image, or who was planted on God's holy earth. I will not fear Adam Lanza (or any of his brethren): I will be angry, instead, at the anti-children and anti-christ demoniac that motivated him -- a demoniac which also believes in the tragic and ironic modernist re-definition of freedom. Hell has its own Bill of Rights, and our cultural exegesis of Rights is pulling closer to it than to 1791.
12. I will pray so that Sandy Hook need not happen again. I pray that the Church answers the call to provide true mental health in this insanity. I will pray to Jesus Christ Who said, "Put away your sword." For He Himself could have called ten thousand angels. And, for peace on earth, did not.
6. I will renounce -- without expecting anyone else to -- the ownership of any arms. I say nothing about hunters who need only 3 bullets, and allow for a precise conservative reading of the second amendment. But I think the current exegesis of that amendment is extremely, and ironically, liberal.
7. I will embrace the Beatitudes, especially the one about Peacemaking.
8. I will make my own home and my own personality a place that manifests Peace on Earth, Good Will toward men.
9. I will no longer take part in the vendetta started by Lucifer at the beginning of time -- a vendetta in which human arms have become a priapistic fetish of demons.
10. I will remember this unprecedented day, a day of non-war face-to-face execution of first-graders. The use of an assault rifle on babies, face-to-face, in a peaceful school with multiple shots in each little body, has never happened before.
11. I will fear anger, and the darkness. I will not fear, or be angry with, the government or any man. The paranoia about Mr Obama is a satanic deception. Satan deserves my anger, not any creature who bears God's Image, or who was planted on God's holy earth. I will not fear Adam Lanza (or any of his brethren): I will be angry, instead, at the anti-children and anti-christ demoniac that motivated him -- a demoniac which also believes in the tragic and ironic modernist re-definition of freedom. Hell has its own Bill of Rights, and our cultural exegesis of Rights is pulling closer to it than to 1791.
12. I will pray so that Sandy Hook need not happen again. I pray that the Church answers the call to provide true mental health in this insanity. I will pray to Jesus Christ Who said, "Put away your sword." For He Himself could have called ten thousand angels. And, for peace on earth, did not.
I am reminded by this tragedy of the terrible terror that the children Beslan suffered in 2004, when assault rifles were thrust on babies in a peaceful school, on the first day of class, and three days of horror ensued. More than 300 souls lost their lives in that tragedy.
I am reminded of a tragedy in our own small town this past summer where a father murdered his soon-to-be ex wife and daughter, and son, both of whom were schoolmates of our kids, and then took his own life.
Love grows cold in the world and we are hard put to the test. May these little children and the adults slain in this horror, and yes, the shooter, and his murdered mother rest in peace.
Posted by: Eric | December 19, 2012 at 11:23 AM
Amen. Thank you for this.
I have lots I could say in elaboration of some of your specific points, but I fear I'd just fall into piling on the anger. I'll just say, thank you for being this blunt.
Posted by: Stella | December 17, 2012 at 12:42 PM