An 8 year-old girl one day saw a newspaper’s photo of a young woman wounded by a car bomb in Middle East and said to her father: “Dad, it is so sad to see people die of such violence.” The man looked at the photo and replied: “Yes, it is horrible and very sad to see this.” However, being a good dad, he tried to assure her: “But, honey, it‘s very far away, half of a world away from us. It’s not going to happen to you.” “No, Dad,” said the girl. “When I grow up, it will.”
Unfortunately, the girl was right!
On December 14, 2012 in Newtown, a small town of Connecticut, a 20 year old man took his mother’s guns, fatally shot her while she was still in bed, drove her car to Sandy Hook elementary school, shot everyone he saw and killed 26 innocent people including 20 children ages 6-7. What a senseless violence!
On April 16, 2007, our heart was saddened and the whole world shocked to see the nonsense massacre on campus of Virginia Tech. Thirty-two innocent people were killed by a mad man. On September 13, 2006, over 20 people were shot at Dawson College in Montreal. Eight years prior to that on April 20, 1999 a mass killing occurred at Columbine High School in a small town of Colorado, 13 people killed.
Have we learned any lesson from the past tragedies? It seems to me that history repeats itself over and over again. I remember an inscription on a wall of a building in Auschwitz concentration camp which says: “The one who doesn’t remember the history is bound to live through it again.” We live through a horrible history again, and again, and again!
Why does violence keep occurring? What is the cause? What is the root of the problem? Psychologists, sociologists, politicians, educators and many other experts are giving different and valuable answers to the question. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee offered the theory that seems not faired to the victims but worth mentioning here. He says since "we have systematically removed God from our schools, should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?"
For me, however, the problem started when society emphasized too much on promoting and encouraging individualistic thinking and lifestyle. Consequently, the I-culture was born: iPod, iPhone, iPad, iReport, Myspace… That is the culture of ME; it is the “I” in control. The problem is also rooted in our education system when from elementary level and up, the focus is on teaching our children scientific knowledge while neglecting to help them acquire moral principles and good conduct.
The motto of the school system of my time in Vietnam was “Tiên Học Lễ, Hậu Học Văn” which means “Frist learn good conduct, then knowledge.” I think this motto must be applied or restored to our education system. Besides scientific knowledge, we must teach our children how to behave, how to make good moral choices, how to develop good conduct so that they will become good people and better citizens in the future. We also need to teach our children respect of others, patience and forgiveness.
In John 21:1-19, Jesus’ disciples went back home to Tiberias and continued doing what they did before: fishing. Jesus did appear to them twice earlier; however, they still returned home and lived a life as if nothing had been happened at all. Jesus was patient with them. He came to them for a third time so that he could ask them “Follow me” one more time. Peter who had denied Jesus three times was asked by Jesus three times: “Do you love me?” Jesus never writes people off because of their past mistakes. He always gives them a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth and many more chances. After receiving forgiveness from Christ, Peter then not only preached about repentance and forgiveness (Acts 2:38, 5:31) but he has also become a living sign of that experience. That’s why we have this saying: “Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future”. God’s forgiveness is a source of our hope.
Vaclav Havel, playwright and previous president of Czech Republic once said: “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out” (quoted by Timothy Radcliffe, What is the Point of Being a Christian, p. 17). There is also a saying: “Hope is not the closing of our eyes to the difficulties, the failure. It is a trust that if I fail now, I will not fail forever; if I am hurt, I will be healed. It is a trust that life is good and love is powerful.”
Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, O.P., the former Master of the Dominican Order, recalled his experience when he visited the Dominican brothers and sisters in Burundi: “I first went to Burundi (south of Rwanda – Genocide occurred from April 6 to mid July 1994) during the renewal of the ethnic conflicts between Hutus and Tutsis, which crucify that beautiful country. I wished to visit the community of Dominican nuns in the north of the country. It was really too dangerous to go by road, and so we planned to fly in the little UN plane that went from time to time. Because of the growing violence, the UN withdrew from the country and so we just had to trust that all would be well and go by car. It was a tough trip. We were stopped by the army who tried to prevent us from going ahead because there were battles on the road. We found a whole busload of people killed. There were shots, I think aimed at us. All the country was brown and dead. All the crops were burnt. And then in the distance we saw a green hill, and there was the monastery.
Six of the nuns were Tutsi and six Hutu. It was one of the few places where two ethnic groups lived together in peace and love. They had all lost nearly all their families in the slaughter… I asked how they managed to live in peace with each other. They replied that besides their common prayer, they always listened to the news together so that they could share all that happened. No one should be alone in her grief. Slowly people from all the ethnic groups learned that the monastery grounds were a safe place, and gathered in their church to pray and grew their crops beside it. It was a green place in a burnt land – and a SIGN OF HOPE (What Is the Point of Being a Christian? Burns & Oates, 2005, p.20-21).
Our society needs many more of these signs of hope. Will you be one?
