Struggling with the Level of Evil Behind the Connecticut School Shooting and What it Says About American Culture Today
On December 14, 2012, a gunman killed 20 children and six adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the Sandy Hook village of Newtown, Connecticut, before committing suicide. This was the second-deadliest mass shooting in United States history, after the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre. The gunman, identified by authorities as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, first killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, at their nearby Newtown home. He then drove to the school and shot the employees and students before killing himself. The overall death toll was 28, including the perpetrator.
By Tony Richie
Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy addressed the media the evening of the shootings near a local church holding a vigil for the victims, urging the people of Connecticut to come together and help each other. Malloy was visibly upset but reassured the people they would overcome the tragedy, saying “Evil visited this community today”. The night of December 14th on Fox News Bill O’Reilly (“The O’Reilly Factor”) described the Connecticut school shooting as an “unspeakable evil” that diminishes the entire country. He added that there is an evil in the universe that cannot be stopped. People just have to deal with it. He also asked, “Why does this happen so much in the U. S.?” He suggested that America is “a good country” but there is “a strain of insanity” in the nation. Governor Malloy, Bill O’Reilly, and others are right to label the Connecticut school shooting evil.
Like many other Americans, I struggle with the level of evil that takes a rifle into school classrooms, and that shoots 6 and 7 year-old boys and girls and their adult teachers and administrators multiple times. I don’t want this horrible event politicized. I don’t want it to become simply another talking point in the debate about gun control—not by either advocates or opponents. I struggle to understand, or at least somehow to deal with, the hideous evil behind this action. I struggle with what it may imply about contemporary American culture and society. There are no easy answers. However, Scripture straightforwardly confronts the reality of evil in the world and places it within the context of God’s redemptive love and grace.
An American pastor and theologian whose ministry focused on social and political themes, Reinhold Niebuhr, himself struggled with the evil that occurs in the United States in The Irony of American History. He suggested that a biblical interpretation of the drama of human history rejects the pathetic view of evil (unthinking natural evil). Evil is not our fate. It also rejects the tragic view (evil for the sake of good). Evil is not the way to a greater good. Rather, evil is often ironic (wrongful use of God’s gifts). Created in God’s image (Gen 1:26, 27), human beings have great capacities for good. However, as the third chapter of Genesis explains, evil entered the world through what Bible scholars and Christian theologians call “the Fall.” The human condition ever since has been, as Paul well summarized it, “when I would do good, evil is present with me” (Rom 7:21 KJV). Yet Christians rejoice with Paul that redemption from evil and sin is available “through Jesus Christ our Lord” (7:25)!
In the present national setting Americans need to be realistic about the reality of evil and its ability to distort and twist the good. The American Dream is good. The United States’ Constitution’s commitment to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is good. However, when we would do good, evil is present with us. Evil distorts the good that is America into a sense of entitlement for a perfect world that becomes bitter resentment when inevitably disappointed. Some express their disappointment, bitterness, and resentment through viciousness and violence against themselves and others. That is evil.
With Niebuhr, American Christians need to remember the doctrine of original sin. One of the hardest to face facts about the reality of sin is that it distorts and twists the good into unrecognizable forms. It does so all the more drastically when people are idealistic. Americans can no longer afford to be naïve about sin. Evil is present with us even in our attempts to be and to do that which good. America is a good nation, a great nation. It has brought or helped bring freedom to this world such as has never been known or even imagined in human history. But there are those who abuse or misuse that precious freedom. Evildoers exist among us.
Democracy is a political and social good that American Christians can affirm and endorse. Niebuhr famously said, “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” However, the hope of America is not democracy. The only hope for the United States of America, for every nation and individual, and for the world is redemption from the hideous stranglehold of sin. In the meanwhile, perhaps American Christians ought to be part of a nationwide movement working to restrain the forces of evil that abuse our God-given freedom (2 Th. 2:6-7).
