Thoughts on "Recent" Developments

The news is disconcerting.

A man walks into a school and kills a couple dozen people, mostly small children, before taking his own life.

I don't know his name. I haven't seen his face. I don't care to be enlightened to either. He's not someone I care to know about or remember. I'm not sitting in judgement of him. That's not my chair. I just don't want to know him.

Why did this specific incident happen? I don't know.

There will be those who use this event to push their agenda of gun control. There will be those that say this was caused by song lyrics or movies or video games. And still those that think its because there's not enough prayer in school. There's never a deficiency of ignorance in America.

I think the problem lies in our culture. Not the entertainment choices of our culture but in the role we have pushed masculinity into. "Gentlemen" have become the exception, not the rule.

In most cases these acts of senseless violence have been carried out by young men. Often times these young men are outcasts or bullied. The gun represents power that they wield. It would be the same with a knife, a baseball bat or a fertilizer bomb. The motivator is power. The ability to be strong or intimidating because that's what young men are taught they should be.

We don't (as a culture) teach young men about the masculinity of caring for a child, holding a door, demonstrating common courtesy, loving one woman for her whole life, protecting the weak and dozens of other traits that our grandfathers just did because "it's what men do."

Robert E. Lee, no stranger to violence, put it this way:

"The forbearing use of power does not only form a touchstone, but the manner in which an individual enjoys certain advantages over others is a test of a true gentleman.
The power which the strong have over the weak, the employer over the employed, the educated over the unlettered, the experienced over the confiding, even the clever over the silly — the forbearing or inoffensive use of all this power or authority, or a total abstinence from it when the case admits it, will show the gentleman in a plain light.
The gentleman does not needlessly and unnecessarily remind an offender of a wrong he may have committed against him. He cannot only forgive, he can forget; and he strives for that nobleness of self and mildness of character which impart sufficient strength to let the past be but the past. A true man of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others."

That's the difference in a man like Lee and one of these shooters. The difference between protecting and harming. The difference between taking and giving.

The man Lee was describing would never shoot up a school, wouldn't kill his wife, wouldn't bomb a post office, wouldn't fly an civilian airplane into an office building. He uses power justly. He forgives. He moves on.

These are the men we need today. Where are these men?