"Standing By This Faith" by Rev. Thomas Schade

[Memos from Rev. Barbara Merritt and Rev. Tom Schade]

M I N I S T E R ‘ S   M E M O




“Standing By This Faith”


When my children were in elementary school, Laurie Dann, a woman with a
history of mental illness went into a pre-school in a nearby Chicago suburb
and shot several students, who were just small children. One little boy
died, and 5 other children were injured. It was a terrifying and tragic
incident. And I will never forget my own small daughter asking me in all
seriousness, what she should do if that ever happened at her school. I can
never hear of such mass murders as those that happened at Virginia Tech
without remembering her fear, and my amazement that I would even have to
think of an answer to such a question.
The murders at Virginia Tech bring up, again, long standing arguments about
why people do terrible and destructive things, or commit evil deeds.
Are some persons “evil” in the nature?”
Or is a person who commits heinous acts of violence merely “sick?”
Or is it that a person may be “possessed by an evil spirit?”
Almost everything that happens becomes part of the ongoing grinding
theological conflict that defines our national intellectual life. What is
the nature of humanity and what is the cause of moral failure?
On the one hand, one position holds that humanity is by nature fallen and
evil. Society pressures and coerces people into good behavior, but some
people’s evil nature is so strong that they resist social pressure and act
out in crime. Crime is the result of the weakening of cultural inhibitions.
The other position is that humanity is, at least, not so bad. People, by
nature, want to get along and be acceptable to others. Crime is an
aberration from the norm. It can be studied. It arises from social
conditions which make it more pragmatic than good behavior, or from mental
illness which so distorts the perceptions that its sufferers no longer see
their situation clearly. But the first step to prevention is compassion,
trying to understand the situation from their point of view.
The liberal religions of Unitarianism and Universalism have tended to be in
the latter camp, rejecting the notions of a fallen humanity, or the vision
of a humanity divided into good people and bad people.
Our Universalist forbearers confronted this issue directly. They believed
that no one was beyond the power of God’s forgiveness and that in the end
all souls, even those who commit the worst sorts of crimes, will be
reconciled to a loving God. Even Cho Seung Hui.
In the aftermath of a terrible mass murder of completely innocent people, it
is hard to persevere in that faith stance. To imagine Cho’s reconciliation
with a loving God violates our sense of justice. It is so tempting to join
the crowd that labels him an embodiment of “evil.”
But we should be clear about what we want when we are so tempted.
We are asking for more than that the innocent be named as innocent and the
guilty as guilty. I cannot accept an easy formulation that says that Cho is
just another victim in this situation. He may be a victim of mental illness,
but those that died are victims of Cho.
Nor are we asking for an assurance that the guilty one will suffer in some
sort of eternal damnation. Heaven and Hell are abstract concepts to us; none
of us has seen the afterlife.
What I think that we want in these situations is religious permission to
hate.
We would not admit it, but what we want is religious permission to declare
Cho Seung Hui, as beyond the human community. There is a desire for
religious dispensation that says, “Yes, in this case, because it is so
awful, you can put aside all those teaching about turning the other cheek,
and praying for those who persecute you and loving your enemies.”
I cannot give you that permission. It is not mine to give. First of all,
each of you must make your own decisions about morality. But more
importantly, because the necessity of compassion is built into the very
structure of the Universe, and not added on as an after-thought, a luxury.
This is not just ministerial rhetoric, a glittering generality that says
that the truth is what I would like it to be.
Consider this: We will not prevent more of these tragedies with more guns,
or more gun control, or better security in the schools. We will prevent them
through a better understanding of mental illness and how to spot it and how
to treat it. And compassion, the ability to see the suffering soul in the
one who has committed even the most evil deeds, is first step toward that
knowledge.

                                    Tom

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