Guest Author - Alicia Soueid
A week after a Virginia Tech gunman took the lives of 32 students and faculty members, as well as his own, students and faculty returning to classes attended an informal ceremony in honor of those lost. No one spoke at the brief tribute. No one recited scripture or poetry to console mourners. Instead, students and faculty observed a minute of silence and watched as 32 white balloons were released while 32 bell tolls sounded.
The silence, the balloon release, and the bell toll were perhaps as fitting a tribute as one could offer given the incomprehensible nature of the massacre. As Virginia Tech Professor Nikki Giovanni said in a convocation held last Tuesday, “We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it…. No one deserves a tragedy.” Although there were representatives of various faiths at the earlier convocation, speakers seemed to downplay religious overtones in favor of a more unifying humanist message. Unfortunately, this raised the ire of a few outspoken fundamentalists who were disconcerted by the absence of Christian doctrine.
Criticisms of the fact that even the Christian speakers at the convocation failed to mention Jesus by name have begun to spring up all over the internet. One extremist anti-gay group claiming to preach the Christian faith, Westboro Baptist Church, even planned to picket the funerals of those who died in the massacre, claiming that their deaths were brought on by the will of God, but canceled their plans in exchange for air time on a nationally syndicated radio talk show. Fortunately, WBC does not speak for mainstream Christians, most of whom were outraged by the picketing plans.
Although many VT students of faith have sought comfort in prayer groups, they seem to draw comfort as much from the hugs and tears of others in the group as from the prayer itself. After all, religion does not really offer any better answers about this tragedy than science does. Assertions of free will do not alleviate doubts about why an active, loving God would allow this sort of evil to exist in the first place. Thus, with religion opting out of explaining why this happened, science and reason are left to grapple with how it happened and to ponder whether anything might have prevented it.
A more responsive mental health system and tighter gun control might not keep tragedies like this from occurring again in the future, but with so many unanswered questions, they offer us more hope than prayer and faith do. After all, the gunman’s desire to “die like Jesus Christ” did not keep him from committing this atrocity.
After all is said and done, the only real answers we have to violence like this are imperfect, human ones. And when scientific and political solutions such as better mental health care and tighter gun control fail us, then sometimes all we’re left with is the hugs and tears of our fellow men.
