Thursday Thinking - Our Culture of Violence

In the wake of the Newtown, CT tragedy, there is much to grieve, much to consider, and much to do. The prophet Jeremiah wrote, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it (Jer. 17:9)?" While we contemplate ways to address and prevent such tragedies in the future, I pray that our society will become more realistic and honest about the ways we've been giving our hearts over to the very violence we say we want to escape.

Journalist Gwynne Dyer alludes to this in his recent op-ed piece, Culture of Personal Violence to Blame --

What happened in Sandy Hook, Conn., Friday is the seventh massacre this year in which four or more people were killed by a lone shooter. The fact that this time 20 of the victims were little girls and boys six- or seven-years-old has caused a wave of revulsion in the United States, but it is not likely to lead to new laws on gun controls. It’s not even clear that new laws would help.

Half the firearms in the entire world are in the United States. The rate of murders by gunfire in the United States is almost 20 times higher than the average rate in 22 other populous, high-income countries where the frequency of other crimes is about the same. There is clearly a connection between these two facts, but it is not necessarily simple cause-and-effect.

Here’s one reason to suspect that it’s not that simple: the American rate for murders of all kinds — shooting, strangling, stabbing, poisoning, pushing people under buses, etc. — is seven times higher than it is in those other 22 rich countries. It can’t just be guns.

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Society will not change, unless we have the courage to make real changes. Those changes will need to address guns and security precautions and treatment programs, of course, but they will also need to address something more. Real change demands that we get honest about our hearts.