A Tragedy and an Evil)

I don’t typically comment on world events or change my post lineup for special days. The way I see it, gospel study should be a constant in life, something steady and reliable, no matter what else is going on. So, whether it’s a special day or a mundane one, whether a happy day or sad, studying the gospel remains my rock through it all, and I try to have this blog reflect that.

But I recently saw a connection between something I wrote a couple weeks ago, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and I thought it might be instructive to talk about it.

First of all, let me emphatically renounce the assassination itself. It was evil, and cowardly evil at that. As Isaac Asimov said, “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” Anyone that feels any sort of satisfaction from the occurrence, and celebrated it, is also evil, and cowardly evil. Those that commit and celebrate violence upon the innocent are devolving from the divine to the animal.

In the face of such abhorrent evil, it is only natural to ask, “how did we get here?” and “what can we do about it now?”

And these are the questions that brought me back to my post from two weeks ago. On September 5, I shared this simple prayer:

May my first reaction to every problem in the world 
And every problem in my personal life
Be "What did I do to contribute to this?"

Taking Accountability)

Well, that was my prayer at the time, but will I actually hold to its ideals in this moment? Will I say that only people other than myself need to change? Will I comfort myself with the assurance that I’m ‘one of the good ones’ and that I contributed nothing to what transpired? Or will I try to find some piece, even if it is small, that I can take accountability for?

Over the next three days I want to take my intentions and make them into actions. I want to look at this terrible thing that happened and see what I can change about myself as a response to it. I want to take ownership for the ways that my behavior has helped build a culture that produces tragedies such as these. I want to be realistic, and pragmatic, and honest.

I want to do this, because I truly believe it is my responsibility to do so. I believe it is the responsibility of us all. Only by focusing first and foremost on our own accountability will we become innocent of the world’s evil and transcend it. If enough of us take accountability, then we will transcend the world’s evil by changing the world so that events like these don’t happen anymore. Or, if not of us take accountability to accomplish that, we will at least transcend the world by no longer being part of the cycle that creates moments like these. Either collectively or individually, we can only create a better world by each of us taking accountability for ourselves.