June 14, 2016
Yale Divinity School Dean Gregory E. Sterling issued the following statement today on the mass shooting in Orlando:
The mass slaying that took place in Orlando was a monstrous atrocity. Although I am in Germany and far removed from the inundation of American media coverage, it is hard not to react viscerally.
Our hearts bleed for the victims and their families. There is no understanding of justice for the victims and their shattered families, only the quiet assurance that God’s power extends beyond death and the knowledge that we all care.
The determination to take a human life is not only a crime against God, it is a crime against oneself as a human being. It arrogates the person to the position of God by presuming that the person has the right of the Creator. While it is wrong to do this out of passion or greed or hatred, it is unthinkable to do this in the name of God. Killing in the name of religion is a claim that God is complicit in the act, a claim that makes God evil. I am grateful for the imams who have opposed this act and join them in rejecting it as an act of piety; it is an act of insanity.
There are ways to react that can involve us in the evil of this act. Stereotypes of the religion of the perpetrator are wrong. Stereotypes and the prejudices based on them are the bases for hatred. We cannot practice the basis of hatred and then oppose its full expression. The same is true for those who express their prejudice against the victims by pronouncing judgments against them. I can only hope that no Christian minister stands in a pulpit and pronounces judgment on the victims. Playing to prejudice contributes to the intolerance that led to this heinous act. Such expressions have no relationship to the Christianity that I know.
We need to look at ourselves as a society. How many times will the President need to make a statement about a mass shooting? What was unthinkable has become routine for all but the affected. One need not be an opponent of the Second Amendment to realize that we have a serious problem. If we do not act to limit the free flow of guns, especially assault weapons, we will have blood on our own hands. Similarly, we cannot glorify violence as a form of entertainment and then scream against it when it is no longer a fiction. Many do not want to hear these views, but we cannot continue as we have.
We need to pray for the comfort of those who have lost their loved ones, for the healing of those wounded, for the LBGTQ community and their families for whom this act struck an alarm of fear, for the members of the family of the perpetrator who are living in confusion and terror, and finally, for ourselves. Have we contributed to a climate of intolerance and hatred through our own struggles to tolerate those with whom we disagree? Have we said “enough is enough” to the violence made possible by the free flow of guns? We all have some soul searching to do.