Toys That Kill

We live in a free society where capitalism is praised for our wealth and consumerism is the opium of the masses. This will not be a plea to change the law of the land, to impose more rules that do little in actually shaping the character of a person or a country. No, this is for Christian parents out there and anyone else with some common sense of dignity. Please, do not buy your children toy guns.

It may be our right to bear arms as Americans. Every good American boy or girl should grow up playing cowboys and Indians. After all the United States began with a genocide of Native peoples; it's in our blood. But we are Christians first. Christians who are suppose to think others more highly than ourselves (even if that in and of itself might be anti-American) and who are suppose to love our enemies.

The problems with toy guns is that they help children pretend and fantasize about a violent world. It's fun and cool to be a marksman with a b.b. gun and to run in the woods pretending to shoot one another. Accept it is a fantasy that continues to indoctrinate our children into a world where we return evil for evil and that fails to love their enemies. I can imagine Jesus having a crisis as a kid pretending to kill a friend when he knowns himself to be the author of life.

Not until Columbine did the seriousness of guns really hit middle class suburban homes. Unfortunately I heard one student who had lived through the massacre and had friends among the 14 dead defending Grand Theft Auto, a game where you randomly shoot anyone you want and receive points for it. Because it is considered virtual reality it is OK because it isn't real.

Or is it? There is a difference in pretending to kill someone and actually killing them. I agree. But life is a process of spiritual formation, violence is a spiritual act, just how are we forming our spirit when we visit all these virtual worlds? As many instances in our recent history has proved, that line between reality and fantasy eventually gets blurred and another person is dead after a bar fight or over a pair of shoes. Maybe it won't be everybody, but isn't just one enough?

London Terrorists

In a sad and nearly predictable move, London police have become like the people they are chasing; terrorists. It is predictable because we live in cultures that continually seek retribution for violent crimes and they seek it using violence. It was predictable because The US and the UK are true believers in the myth that the only way to bring violent offenders to justice is through violence.

Like the terrorists, the police have killed an innocent man. How did he pose a threat if he was running away? How did he get shot 8 times though he posed little threat being unarmed and completely innocent. One report simply said the victim was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sounds like a police squad that I would fear. People should even think to themselves, "Should I go to the train today? No, if the terrorists won't get me the police might."

Forgive the sarcasm. But millennia of human history have tried to overcome violence with violence and the only reason the UK and US continue to do so is because we are good at it. It is our way of staying on top. Yet God constantly calls us as a "Christian" nation to overcome evil with good precisely because when we overcome evil with evil, innocent people die.

The caption for the picture: Matuzinho Otone holds a picture of his son Jean Charles de Menezes who was killed by UK police. Photo credit: Victor R. Caivano/AP

Forgiveness Forgone: Jeanette Sliwinski

This story is incredibly sad...for both families. I understand that the family of the victims are not only angry, but confused, shocked, grief stricken and in a dark place we can only hope to avoid ourselves. When lives are taken from us in this type of fashion, it is beyond devastating.

That is why I still have hope that one day the brothers and family of the victims who have condemned Jeanette Sliwinski will find it in their hearts to forgive her. For true healing from wounds this deep can only come through forgiveness.

Again, I completely understand that the victim's family are not at the point to forgive because of where they are at in the grief process. But I still hope. I am more concerned that the media aired the thoughts made from such a place because there will be no follow up story when or if forgiveness is granted someday, and yet again the media has perpetuated the righteousness of punitive justice without hope of restoration.

When I hear one family say they wish for her to sit and think about what she did, I wonder if this is a response from a place where they do not know how to respond. She tried to commit suicide and has found herself in a worse place than before. I am certain she is thinking about it and only wishes her selfish attempt would have been successful. But that is not what we should wish upon her. Nor do we wish her to be punished. As Christians we hope she will be restored and that all of the families involved will someday find healing from their grief.

It is that forgiveness that becomes so necessary in a world of violence. Because the words of the victim's family are not far from the words of many in Iraq or even the Middle East, who have forgone forgiveness for generations and for generations the killing has not ceased.

Spouse Abuse and Superbowl Linked?

Bill Wylie-Kellerman, in an article concerning the principality of sports, that is sport’s spirituality and power, responds to a statistic that Catholic theologian Michael Novak mentions as an answer to the question of whether violent sports like football sublimates and controls violence or socializes us to violence and legitimates it. Novak mentions the interesting fact that police officers around the country know that during Monday Night Football crime rates plummet. However, Wylie-Kellerman points out another fact that is far more telling. Super Bowl Sunday is regularly the day highest in incidents of spouse abuse. He follows, “All that testosterone saturated in adrenalin and alcohol. Then half the men in the world’s largest viewing audience come up losers for the day. I suppose they either buy something or beat somebody” (The Witness, Jan/Feb 1998).

Do sports control violence or legitimate it? Wylie-Kellerman also points out that inner-city gang colors are typically of football or sports teams.

Pete Seeger: Those Three Are On My Mind

In his song about Goodman, Schwerner & Chaney, the 3 civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in 1964, Pete Seeger recalls singing in a black church when they announced that they had found the buried bodies. As he looked around he recalls, "I remember looking around the room seeing people's lips moving in prayer. I didn't hear anyone shouting for revenge; Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Philosophy of non-violence made an impact. All these years later, I am more convinced that non-violence is the way the world will be saved. We must learn toforget revenge."

In a world that perpetuates war on the justification of revenge and now living in a country that justifies preemptive strikes to protect America and prevent terrorism, I believe we have already lost. In our war on terror we should heed the name. War and Terror are siblings of the same
parents: Violence and Power. Therefore the genetic makeup of War and Terror's children, that is the results of a War on Terror, is at best, disfigurement and at worst, death. We cannot use violence to overcome violent people for they will never truly change, but remain bitter and violent ambassadors of hate, waiting to for the day they can pounce yet again. We cannot overcome evil with evil whether we are talking about our homes or our countries, size is not the issue. The true issue is our souls.

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