Getting It Right

I spied the downed branch as I entered the driveway. It was still attached—barely—to the trunk. I did not see the boy standing on it for another few moments. He looked about nine years old.

I prayed. I honestly prayed. I wanted God's help in handling the situation graciously. I wanted to help that boy. He just moved in across the street. His grandma knows I am a minister. So I also wanted to be as good a witness to the love of Jesus as I could.

I see everything that followed as an answer to prayer. As I got out of my truck I said to the boy, “Looks like you broke our tree.”

“No I didn't,” he said.

I asked, “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

I said, “Do you have anything you want to say?”

“No.”

I turned and walked into the garage. I grabbed a saw and walked back out to the tree. He was still standing there. I tried one more time. “Did you break the branch?”

“No.”

I bent down and started sawing the branch off at the trunk. After a few seconds, the boy tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I'm sorry.”

I said how great it was that he had admitted it, and I wasn't mad, in fact, I was glad that he had done the right thing. When I finished my cut I said, “Tell you what. How about you drag this branch back to the stack you can see in the back yard and we'll say we're all even?”

He said okay and started off with the branch. I told him to wait a second. “Don't forget this,” I said, and pulled down the super soaker he had left stuck in a higher branch.

He smiled and said, “Oh yeah! I forgot!”

I am ashamed to admit that I often do not act graciously. It is a very good thing my truck does not have a microphone and loudspeaker for all the world to hear what I say about other drivers. I can say mean things to my wife. Sarcasm and cynicism are my fall-back positions.

But every now and then, with God's help, I get it right. I know this sounds like one of those contrived lessons we used to read in Sunday school. But it actually happened exactly as I have depicted it. And I thank the Lord it did.

Guns

Guns.  Once again they demand our attention.  One guy uses them to kill randomly at yet another school.  Another guy speaks of them yet again as the root cause of such tragedies.  Before typing another word allow me to stipulate that I believe President Obama sincerely meant what he said.  I disagree with him, but I could be wrong.

Surely all honest people would agree that guns have become one of the most powerful symbols in our nation.  On the far right guns get wrapped up symbolically with baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet.  They belong to our glorious heritage.  To people on the far left guns stand for what they view as the cancerous qualities of the Marlboro Man: violence, machismo, isolationism, arrogance.  I venture to say most of us fit someplace in between on this spectrum.  But to me the whole conversation completely misses the point.

The point is that our culture has produced significant numbers of loners who are desensitized to violence and enraged by their obscurity.  They have no hope.  They believe their lives--crappy as they are--are the best to which they can ever aspire.  Some are mentally ill.  Others have substance abuse problems.  Still others have been seduced by radical Islam.  

The common thread running through all these men (no women yet) is despair.  

If I have correctly diagnosed the root cause of random school shootings, the antidote must address that despair.  But contemporary American culture has gotten dangerously close to bankruptcy on what it takes to ease despair.  It takes faith.  It takes faith in grace, mercy and forgiveness.  It takes faith in God.  Soren Kierkegaard, the 19th century Danish philosopher, wrote far more eloquently of this, especially in his work The Sickness Unto Death.  I can offer only a shadow of his thinking.  But shadows are where we are.  

We need light to eradicate the shadow that has fallen over the souls of so many young men.  We need the light of the love of Jesus.  Without it no law, no speech, no nothing can prevent the next shooting.