There was another mass shooting in the United States yesterday.
(The above is a sentence that could be written pretty much any day of the year.)
The shooting to which I am referring took place in Louisville, Kentucky, at a bank. The shooter was an employee of the bank, 25 years old, with a Masters Degree in Finance. Some of the photos of him, alongside news stories, show just about the definition of an all American, good looking, success story. He had a good job at a bank. He was very intelligent. Now, in the lexicon of the aftermath of such shootings, he is a monster.
The Governor of Kentucky knew one of the people who was killed in the shooting. After all, the shooting occurred at a bank in the city. Schools have been the more frequent target of mass shootings, but now they even take place at banks. They’re killing bankers now.
Governor Andy Bashear noted his sorrow at the death of his friend. He also said that “four children of God died today” in reference to the shooting. Since his comments, another shooting victim, who had been injured, has died, so there are now five killed as well as the shooter. Bashear’s reference to the victims being “children of God” excluded such a description for the shooter. In this way of seeing things, the victims were children of God while the shooter was not.
I contrast this way of seeing things with the words of leaders in the Indigenous community of James Smith Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada last fall. That mass killing was initially thought to have been perpetrated by two brothers. It later became clear that one of the brothers in fact stabbed and killed his brother, as well as nine other people. When Indigenous leaders gathered the community in mourning, they did not speak of the killer as if he was subhuman or a monster. In fact, they spoke of him as if he were still part of the community. The tragedy was not only that people were killed, the perpetrator also died in custody, but that the person who did the killing was a child of the community who had a deeply troubled life.
In her book, On Freedom, Maggie Nelson refers to Denise Ferreira da Silva’s essay “On Difference without Separability.” Ferreira da Silva identifies the distinction between what she calls “elementary entanglement” and “unresolvable estrangement.” Governor Bashear, in his denying the humanity of the shooter in Louisville, is identifying with the estrangement way of seeing things. In his understandable grief, and in his political position, he is allowing and inviting himself and others to choose separability. We can deny that the person who did such a terrible thing is human or even “one of us.” He must be other.
In refusing to call the perpetrator in Saskatchewan a monster, the Indigenous leaders are acknowledging “elementary entanglement.” This way is a path that offers a much higher probability of healing and even of hope.
I mention this because in my evangelical experience there was more awareness of “unresolvable estrangement” than there was of “elementary entanglement.” What are we to do with the knowledge that very many people are not like us and do not believe what we believe? We can seek to conquer them. This was a common strategy in the past. We can seek to win them over to our side, to become one of us. Much of what was referred to as evangelism took this approach. Or, we can seek a faith that includes the understanding that they are “one of us” before, and apart from, believing what we believe.
This is another example of the hope of a faith that is expressed in solidarity, not separation.
There is no denial of the horrible acts of people who kill. There is also not a denial their humanity. Rather, there is a desire to reckon with the fact that part of the terrible sorrow is that “one of us” did this.
This is why, in the Kentucky case, you see commentators and others grapple with the shooter’s background. He had an advanced degree? He was successful? He was good looking? What could have possibly happened? Why would someone like that do something like this?
Responsible spiritual leadership does not seek to amplify concepts of “the other.” Many of us have heard many sermons that seem to imply (or directly state) that if only everyone was like us then everything would be okay. This is a kind of willful blindness and it demonstrates a lack of spiritual and moral maturity.
Writing now, just days after Easter, we can ask what it would have meant if Jesus had taken the course of “unresolvable estrangement.” That is, what if he had determined to see humanity according to otherness rather than identifying with us? He, of course, had every right to do so. There is arguably more moral distance between him and us than between us and people we would consider to be terrible. So then, why do we think that we have anything hopeful to offer, in places of politics and religion, by choosing easy explanations of us and them?
We are elementarily entangled. This is not easy to accept but it is the grounds of hope and healing and a better future.
So very true - thanks for the thoughtful article.....