{"id":5544,"date":"2015-11-29T08:22:39","date_gmt":"2015-11-29T13:22:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=5544"},"modified":"2015-11-29T08:23:15","modified_gmt":"2015-11-29T13:23:15","slug":"outrageous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=5544","title":{"rendered":"outrageous"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/intramuralist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/IMG_5368.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-5546 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/intramuralist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/IMG_5368-e1448729328772-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_5368\" width=\"654\" height=\"491\" srcset=\"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/IMG_5368-e1448729328772-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/IMG_5368-e1448729328772-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/IMG_5368-e1448729328772-1x1.jpg 1w, https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/IMG_5368-e1448729328772.jpg 1632w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 654px) 100vw, 654px\" \/><\/a>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.<\/p>\n<p>This, friends, is wrong.<\/p>\n<p>What I find also fascinating, is the varied, selective, contrasting outrage\u2026<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>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.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>There are persons formerly quiet about Christians killed in Europe and the Middle East who are now loud because it&#8217;s at Planned Parenthood.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>There are persons who want this incident specifically labeled but refuse to be specific in uttering the phrase, \u201cradical Islamic terrorism.\u201d<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>There are persons who want to be sympathetic to other\u00a0protestors, even when they go too far, but demand zero empathy for a Planned Parenthood protestor.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>And there are persons who have zero empathy for other\u00a0protestors, but preach hesitancy before rushing to any judgment in Colorado Springs.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Ah, yes\u2026 we are a fickle people. Arguably better put, we are full of contrasts and contradictions\u2026 depending on how we feel, how we\u2019re bent, and what bias we have within us\u2026 each of us, me included.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement released on Saturday, Pres. Obama said that \u201cenough is enough.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I agree. However, that\u2019s where our contrasts and contradictions come into play.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s \u201cenough\u201d is not just shootings at Planned Parenthood. What\u2019s \u201cenough\u201d is not just a shooting at Fort Hood. What\u2019s \u201cenough\u201d is not just another massacre like Paris. What\u2019s \u201cenough\u201d is not just another person \u2014 via the workplace or college campus or Middle East \u2014 who feels capable of taking justice into their own hands. What\u2019s \u201cenough\u201d is not another person who is gravely misguided by motive, mental health, ideology, or something.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What <em>is<\/em> \u201cenough\u201d<\/strong> 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 \u2014 based on those bents and bias \u2014 but in other places, we either ignore it, downplay it, or greet it with political correctness.<\/p>\n<p>What is evil? How do we define it?<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The more I wrestle, the more I\u2019m convinced that we define evil differently \u2014 or at the very least \u2014 we set up some hierarchy of \u201cevils\u201d \u2014 as opposed to recognizing that evil is evil is evil.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s as if we believe we or the elect or some other human beings are somehow capable of decreeing what exactly is moral and immoral \u2014 as if we can proclaim the \u201cprofoundly immoral and malevolent.\u201d But we disagree; we don\u2019t know where to start. We can\u2019t agree on what evil is.<\/p>\n<p>Hence, my semi-humble stab \u2014 as best as I can discern \u2014 is that evil is the absence of good and absence of God. But that\u2019s 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 \u2014 especially when we disagree.<\/p>\n<p>Respectfully\u2026<br \/>\nAR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/?p=5544\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;outrageous&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-event"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5544"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5549,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5544\/revisions\/5549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intramuralist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}