Theory of Atonement
I wonder what that woman was praying for.
This morning I saw a woman in hospital scrubs standing before the Crucifix outside of St. Anslem’s Catholic Church on Fourth Avenue with her head bowed and her hands clasped in prayer.
It was early and I was on my way to the gym, while I presume this woman was on her way to work. When she was done, she walked by me on the way to the subway.
I had an urge to talk to her, but I wanted to respect her privacy. I was grateful that I witnessed this small act of faith, which can be very comforting during troubled times.
Like now.
We’ve had two mass shootings in less than a day in this demented country of ours that have left 29 people dead and more than 50 injured.
In El Paso, the suspect, who allegedly authored a four-page racist screed about his desire to kill Hispanic immigrants, walked into a Wal-Mart with an assault rifle and a heart full of hate and killed 20 people, including a 25-year-old woman who was shot while apparently shielding her two-month old son.
In Dayton, Ohio, another rifle-toting psychopath wearing body armor killed 9 people and wounded 27 others before the cops blew him away. News reports said that the shooter had written up a “hit list” when he was in high school that included girls who had rejected him.
These attacks follow last week’s shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California that left three people dead and the death of Andrew Golden in a car crash. Golden was 11 years old in 1998 when he and a 13-year old accomplice gunned down four students and a teacher at an Arkansas school.
Issues of Lies
The eerie thing was that I was thinking about the awful case on the very morning that news of Golden’s death broke.
Today Trump (I refuse to call him “president”) spewed some lame rhetoric about shootings being a mental health issue, when the real mental issue involves the people who somehow thinks guns aren’t the problem.
Then he had the gall to say that hate has no place in our country, when all he does is traffic in hate on a daily basis as he inspires and emboldens these killers with his racist rhetoric.
I had been planned to write about my weekend for this post. On Friday, my sister and I took our fifth annual trip to Coney Island, where we got on this old timey ride called the Spook-A-Rama, and then head over to the board walk to catch the fireworks.
The monsters my sister and I saw at Coney Island were fake—rubber and plastic models made to look scary. And the fireworks were loud and colorful, but harmless.
On Saturday I chugged up to Forest Hills, Queens to do volunteer work with my independent film group.
I interviewed two directors for the group podcast, met some terrific people, and did some serious film-related socializing—I’m still trying to keep my New Year’s resolutions.
It was a great day, but for nine people in Dayton, it was the last day of their lives.
These shootings have cast a pall over the entire country. Nothing has changed despite the frequency of these mass killings and while I honestly do pray for the victims and their families, the Bible says faith without works is dead.
I’m thinking more about that nurse praying outside of the church. St. Anslem, the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109, originated the satisfaction theory of atonement, which states that Jesus suffered crucifixion as a substitute for human sin, satisfying God’s wrath.
Maybe God’s wrath was satisfied, but we seem to have plenty of our own.
This morning I saw a woman in hospital scrubs standing before the Crucifix outside of St. Anslem’s Catholic Church on Fourth Avenue with her head bowed and her hands clasped in prayer.
It was early and I was on my way to the gym, while I presume this woman was on her way to work. When she was done, she walked by me on the way to the subway.
I had an urge to talk to her, but I wanted to respect her privacy. I was grateful that I witnessed this small act of faith, which can be very comforting during troubled times.
Like now.
We’ve had two mass shootings in less than a day in this demented country of ours that have left 29 people dead and more than 50 injured.
In El Paso, the suspect, who allegedly authored a four-page racist screed about his desire to kill Hispanic immigrants, walked into a Wal-Mart with an assault rifle and a heart full of hate and killed 20 people, including a 25-year-old woman who was shot while apparently shielding her two-month old son.
In Dayton, Ohio, another rifle-toting psychopath wearing body armor killed 9 people and wounded 27 others before the cops blew him away. News reports said that the shooter had written up a “hit list” when he was in high school that included girls who had rejected him.
These attacks follow last week’s shooting at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California that left three people dead and the death of Andrew Golden in a car crash. Golden was 11 years old in 1998 when he and a 13-year old accomplice gunned down four students and a teacher at an Arkansas school.
Issues of Lies
The eerie thing was that I was thinking about the awful case on the very morning that news of Golden’s death broke.
Today Trump (I refuse to call him “president”) spewed some lame rhetoric about shootings being a mental health issue, when the real mental issue involves the people who somehow thinks guns aren’t the problem.
Then he had the gall to say that hate has no place in our country, when all he does is traffic in hate on a daily basis as he inspires and emboldens these killers with his racist rhetoric.
I had been planned to write about my weekend for this post. On Friday, my sister and I took our fifth annual trip to Coney Island, where we got on this old timey ride called the Spook-A-Rama, and then head over to the board walk to catch the fireworks.
The monsters my sister and I saw at Coney Island were fake—rubber and plastic models made to look scary. And the fireworks were loud and colorful, but harmless.
On Saturday I chugged up to Forest Hills, Queens to do volunteer work with my independent film group.
I interviewed two directors for the group podcast, met some terrific people, and did some serious film-related socializing—I’m still trying to keep my New Year’s resolutions.
It was a great day, but for nine people in Dayton, it was the last day of their lives.
These shootings have cast a pall over the entire country. Nothing has changed despite the frequency of these mass killings and while I honestly do pray for the victims and their families, the Bible says faith without works is dead.
I’m thinking more about that nurse praying outside of the church. St. Anslem, the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109, originated the satisfaction theory of atonement, which states that Jesus suffered crucifixion as a substitute for human sin, satisfying God’s wrath.
Maybe God’s wrath was satisfied, but we seem to have plenty of our own.
Comments
The media is not the problem. it's the guns.