While most were returning to some semblance of routine Friday morning, the typical Colorado calm was pierced by a shooter at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. Two civilians and one police officer died; the gunman is now in custody as the investigation ensues.
This, friends, is wrong.
What I find also fascinating, is the varied, selective, contrasting outrage…
- There are persons formerly loud about violence who are now silent because the incident took place at a site in which they vehemently disagree with what takes place there.
- There are persons formerly quiet about Christians killed in Europe and the Middle East who are now loud because it’s at Planned Parenthood.
- There are persons who want this incident specifically labeled but refuse to be specific in uttering the phrase, “radical Islamic terrorism.”
- There are persons who want to be sympathetic to other protestors, even when they go too far, but demand zero empathy for a Planned Parenthood protestor.
- And there are persons who have zero empathy for other protestors, but preach hesitancy before rushing to any judgment in Colorado Springs.
Ah, yes… we are a fickle people. Arguably better put, we are full of contrasts and contradictions… depending on how we feel, how we’re bent, and what bias we have within us… each of us, me included.
In a statement released on Saturday, Pres. Obama said that “enough is enough.”
I agree. However, that’s where our contrasts and contradictions come into play.
What’s “enough” is not just shootings at Planned Parenthood. What’s “enough” is not just a shooting at Fort Hood. What’s “enough” is not just another massacre like Paris. What’s “enough” is not just another person — via the workplace or college campus or Middle East — who feels capable of taking justice into their own hands. What’s “enough” is not another person who is gravely misguided by motive, mental health, ideology, or something.
What is “enough” is the selective acceptance of evil on this planet. Evil is evil is evil. Our problem is that we cannot seem to agree on what evil actually is. And we fight it passionately in some places — based on those bents and bias — but in other places, we either ignore it, downplay it, or greet it with political correctness.
What is evil? How do we define it?
For some, evil is the killing of people at Planned Parenthood; for others, it is the killing of infants inside Planned Parenthood. For still others, it is both. For perhaps still more, it is neither.
The more I wrestle, the more I’m convinced that we define evil differently — or at the very least — we set up some hierarchy of “evils” — as opposed to recognizing that evil is evil is evil.
It’s as if we believe we or the elect or some other human beings are somehow capable of decreeing what exactly is moral and immoral — as if we can proclaim the “profoundly immoral and malevolent.” But we disagree; we don’t know where to start. We can’t agree on what evil is.
Hence, my semi-humble stab — as best as I can discern — is that evil is the absence of good and absence of God. But that’s hard, as we seem to have increasingly more trouble recognizing who God is, what he asks of us, and how we are to treat other people — especially when we disagree.
Respectfully…
AR
This shooting is wrong, period. Those who are pro-life need to be equally so regarding all persons inside that building. However, a society that seeks to expunge absolutes of what is right and wrong cannot define evil. It has denied the existence of any standard.
And just as we have difficulty defining evil, how do we define good? I’m sure people most of us would regard as evil (Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer, etc.) thought they were doing good. An interesting quote I read once, ” Victors write the history.” Always thought provoking, so glad to have this dialog – thank you, Ann!