By Ken Lass
It’s become an all too familiar story, yet this one feels different. Now it’s happened in our own backyard. A man attending a gathering for a potluck social at St. Stephens Episcopal church in Vestavia suddenly produces a gun and allegedly opens fire, killing three people.
When this type of thing happens in southern Texas, or in Buffalo, New York, or Columbine, Colorado, we watch the video on the news, shake our heads, perhaps whisper a prayer for the families, and go on about our business.
But we can’t just mentally walk away from this one. We are shaken into the reality these victims could have been any one of us, any of our churches, any of our families. After all, we regularly gather for all manner of meetings in our churches, our schools, restaurants, and elsewhere. Many of us have a connection to these victims or their families or to the neighborhood. Why does this happen? How can we feel safe from such random violence? How can we protect ourselves?
The debate over the how’s and why’s will inevitably land on gun control, and after a passionate argument of the pros and cons, no answers will be found. Not only can we not seem to stop the violence, it is increasing at an alarming rate.
Could it be the reason answers are so elusive is because we are asking the wrong questions? Maybe we should be trying to figure out why there is so much anger, resentment, stress, and hate in our culture today. Isn’t what happened at St. Stephen’s just an extreme extension of what we can readily observe around us daily? The road rage inside our automobiles, the hostility posted on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms, the disrespect for law and order, and for the brave responders who try to maintain it?
Surely some degree of mental illness is involved. The intense media coverage is well-intentioned, but the sword is double-edged. The public does need to know, yet the twisted mind may see the attention as a platform for instant fame and celebrityhood, an opportunity for martyrdom to a cause that exists only in their head.
We can make this issue complex, convoluted and political, and we probably will. But the answer is simple, not to be confused with easy. Deep down inside, we’ve known it all along. It’s always been right in front of us. The solution likely boils down to an old adage: Love really does conquer all.
Human beings are less depressed, less angry, less stressed out, more rational, more self-disciplined, and more under control when they feel truly loved and cared about. Those who perpetrate these unspeakable acts are often described as “loners,” isolated, without friends. Lingering in that state can bring on the kind of psychological disorders that push one over the edge. Just maybe, if we truly tried to extend a little more mercy, patience, and kindness to everyone about us, to our children, to those we find unpleasant, to the friendless, it might actually attack the root of the problem instead of the tragic outgrowth.
It would be expedient to make this a spiritually themed column, to write that God is still in control and that He has a plan, but I fear it rings hollow to a family that must now go on without a beloved father, mother, and grandparent, to a community that has lost treasured friends and neighbors. It’s true that with God, all things are possible, but we still have to do the work, change the culture, put forth the effort, care more, extend our empathy beyond ourselves and our immediate families.
We will try new laws and tighter security measures, and certainly, those are warranted, but we should recognize them for what they are, bandages over a wound that doesn’t seem to be healing. The only ultimate answer is to love more and hate less.
Have I oversimplified a problem that runs deeper? Let’s find out.
(Ken Lass is a retired Birmingham TV news and sports anchor, and Trussville resident.)