Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Connections

I've been thinking about the horror at Virginia Tech. I guess everyone has.
Today the news is reporting that the shooter was practically unknown on campus. No one in the English Dept. knew him. The Korean student community hadn't registered his existence. Even Koren English Dept. students didn't know who he was. A "suite-mate" said he never spoke to the others in the suite.
Is there any clearer picture of alienation?
Now I guess that if you really bought into the myth of rugged individualism, (and most of us do on some level,) this guy might have seemed like the epitome of a self-sufficient life.
But that isolation and silence and solitude: it was evil.
All that we know about God's intention and desire for human beings points to the indisputable fact that God created us to live in loving communities. To be accountable to one another, and honest with one another, and involved with something larger than ourselves.
It's not easy. Sometimes it's not even fun. Ask Jesus.
But it is the only way to live. Any other existence is just death with a heartbeat.

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