“... let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

I’ve been questioning many things since the massacre on the V-Tech campus. Like most people, I’ve asked myself why did this happen, how could this happen -- again. How do Canadians avoid such massacres, and rarely a murder? The answer is not gun control, or people control, or even media control.

 

Is the whole world except the U.S. privy to something that prevents someone from mowing people down? Could it be a lack of mass social activism in this country, or the need for a more humane-based, not money-based government and culture; maybe an international policy of peace would help. Are we sending a message to young people that the answer to problems is violence. Questions that keep tumbling in my head like so many interconnected fragments of truth without one clear answer. I too want to turn to prayer, because the questions overwhelm. I want to get on with my life. But I cannot escape one burning realization at the back of all the hype and videos of Cho spewing his bitter resentment towards a world that he felt had “raped his soul.” Perhaps there was nothing anyone could have done to help Cho. But aren’t we responsible to a degree for our own mad and lost souls. This goes beyond typical teen rebellion. Not only mass homicide, but he had a terrorist video tape, a digital manifesto. People are concerned about copycats -- I think this was a copycat massacre.

So many have been praying, overwhelmed and in need of comfort. Many go through their entire life praying for comfort and trying to miss the stray bullet, or point blank one. It’s no wonder faith teeters when crisis strikes. If fear motivates us then we create more things to fear, whether consciously or not. A fear-based social current that impacts public policy and social attitudes will, by default, manifest more things to fear. It’s self-justification for fear-based choices. Fear that terrorists will cross our boarders has proven less important than concern for the ones born here. Children are blowing themselves up, so to speak, in our own backyards. Maybe if we get rich enough, wall ourselves off, we’ll be safe, immune to horror -- a sort of financial paradise lost. We can watch it on TV, and at a distance Iraq is less real, mixed with commercials of Fruit Loops and Lexus -- Darfur is somebody else’s problem. Most people, from right to left, know that poverty, neglect, racism and peer pressure right here in the U.S., mixed with a propagandized war on terrorism and a dash of disaffection can turn any child’s American dream into a loaded concoction of hate. The Glock 9mm handgun was easily purchased at the Roanoke, Va. gun store and wasn’t intended to hunt rabbits.

Sure, we should morn and hold vigils for those killed all over the world by mankind’s fear and exploitation of his neighbor. It’s mass murder to do nothing to stop the genocide in central Africa. Since you’ve been reading this article at least 200 people have died of starvation. Over 4 million will die this year. Imagine if 32 people or more were being killed everyday in your neighborhood; unreasoning, unjustified terror would have a new meaning.

To give value to the 32 people’s lives at V-Tech, let’s pray for action, for an end to the fear that paralyzes us in the face of social terrorism. Inaction walks hand in hand with fear. Those who do nothing to improve this world are a part of the problem. God has placed the world in our hands and given us divine wisdom which we can access through prayer. Let’s fight the war on injustice, the war on hunger and maybe we can impact the war on terror, abroad and at home, in ways that we could not have imagined. Here are a few facts to keep in mind:

• In the Asian, African and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called “absolute poverty”

• Every year 15 million children die of hunger

• For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years

• Throughout the 1990’s more than 100 million children died from illness and starvation. Those 100 million deaths could have been prevented for the price of ten Stealth bombers, or what the world spends on its military in two days!

• The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed one-third is starving -- One in twelve people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of 5. United Nations Food and Agriculture

• The Indian subcontinent has nearly half the world’s hungry people. Africa and the rest of Asia together have approximately 40%, and the remaining hungry people are found in Latin America and other parts of the world. Hunger in Global Economy

• Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion - a majority of humanity - live on less than $1 per day, while the world’s 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world’s people. UNICEF

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