Make Way for Cho Seung-Hui

Editorialists Leonard Pitts and Eugene Robinson warn us to beware of the narratives we bring to our interpretation of events. Good advice for those of us with children on college campuses this week. Sage advice for college students. Astute observations for people of faith.

It simply cannot be too soon to carry the meta-narrative of scripture as the lens through which we force ourselves to reckon with the events occurring at Virginia Tech. The record of that narrative will, as always, convict and console us amidst our weeping.

Once, again, we’ve witnessed another of civil (not civilized) religion’s “memorial” services which fails to include the perpetrating sinner. Once, again, we’ve demonized a wrong-doers personhood. Once, again, we’ve ethnically cleansed an American cultural phenomenon with loaded descriptors of an immigrant’s long-ago origins, over and against his long-standing American upbringing.

From the same biblical codex that sprouts privately purchased monuments to the biblical Decalogue in public places comes this word: You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. (Exodus 22:21.) A later rewrite commands more than avoidance: The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. (Leviticus 19:34.)

On Monday we asked of the unfolding, deadly narrative, “Why.” By Wednesday we regretted the storied shooter’s answer; finding him to be neither alien, nor loving, and, by his own account, unloved.

Through our tear blurred vision we get to read this tragic episode inside a grander meta-narrative, the one so many claim to live in, with, and under. Our burning eyes, tear stained cheeks and salt-tasting tongues must find a way for our heavy hearts to makes room in God’s “always for-us, never at-us story” for Cho Seung-Hui.

The God of our, “There’s no way,” is the One who keeps sending us Him who is the way, the truth, and the life. That’s the same Jesus who wept over a city whose inhabitants kept deceiving themselves. It’s he who longed to gather each and all as a hen gathers her chicks, absorbing their pain, protecting their vulnerabilities, even as he lived and died to ensure that Death, no death, is ever the last word for anyone.

For Him, there is no “unlovable.” In Him, even salt-dried lips can heave through the sobbing, “Receive a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Alleluia!”

In short, “Make, we pray, a way out of our, ‘No Way!’”