On Saturday morning, a man entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and shot and killed 11 innocent people. The single suspect reportedly targeted the victims solely because they were Jewish.
A former FBI agent who leads Pittsburgh’s department of public safety described the crime scene as “horrific.” Said Wendell Hissrich, “It’s one of the worst that I’ve seen, and I’ve been on some plane crashes. It’s — it’s very bad.”
The U.S. District Attorney involved has since stated that he is working toward soliciting approval to pursue the death penalty in this case.
(Deep breath…)
This is hard, friends…
As is often the case, I find myself sitting with silence… shocked… with more questions than answers, and somehow, simultaneously, feeling both abhorred and appalled…
How could someone do such a thing?
I ask more questions…
First, in regard to the victims’ families… so hard to grasp… I cannot imagine the gut-wrenching grief…
How will the families’ faith change in response?
Will it prompt them to rely on God even more?
How do you forgive for such a heinous act?
Is forgiveness healthy?
What does it change within us?
…
Then, in regard to the shooter… what an awful thing to do…
What’s the appropriate consequence?
Is the death penalty ever ok?
Is it ok to take a life because someone else took a life?
Does the horror of the crime scene matter?
Do we treat consequence differently because of the who’s involved and why they did it?
…
And lastly, questions perhaps to all of us, living amidst a society that struggles to love all people well…
Why do some hate the religious faithful?
Why do some hate others simply because they’re different?
How do we contribute to the hate?
Do we recognize when we fuel hatred?
And do we ever attempt to dress up our own anger, rage, or hatred as something more virtuous than it really is?
…
I wish this was an easy post today; it is not. I keep coming back to the historic psalmist who wrote “such knowledge is too wonderful for me” — with “wonderful” equating to “incomprehensible”… meaning simply unable to be understood.
Hate is incomprehensible; it’s awful. Sadly, there seem to exist pockets of hate all over the place. May it never be celebrated. May we never fuel it. May we each have more respect for what others believe.
Sadly this day…
AR