Thoughts with Tim: The value of life over violence

Well, the weather must be getting nicer. I rode my bike to the church this morning for the first time this season. I have broken out the shorts. I am running outside every morning now (no more treadmills!). But the one sure sign that the weather is breaking is there have been two acts of mass violence in the news in the past 24 hours.

Yes, the lockdowns prevented mass casualty public shootings. But since COVID restrictions are starting to lift, I guess is time for us to kill each other in the name of grievance again. We had a group of people shot and killed in Colorado and I am just reading now that there is a hostage situation at a store in Rochester. Add that to the sex addict who shot up 3 sex shops in Atlanta and we are really off to a fantastic start to the summer season.

There is only one solution to this violence problem we see in our world, and that is we need to reestablish the value of life. There is no clearer statement in the devaluing of life than these violent actions. For way too many people in our world today, grievance with someone else is worth more than their life and that is despicable and wrong. There is more value to every person on Earth than just how they make you feel. In fact, how you feel about another person has no bearing on his or her value whatsoever. They are still a valuable person and are deserving of, at the very least, being left alone. You don’t have to like everyone, but to commit violence toward another person based on how they feel about them is the ultimate devaluing of life.

I know there is a lot of talk about “raising awareness”, that these violent events are about helping people see how important a certain issue is. I defy you to find any issue that is worth more than a person’s life. Carry your signs, protest, shout and yell on behalf of your cause, that is all completely fine with me. As soon as you engage in violence, you will find an enemy in me no matter what I think of your cause. Even if I agree with the cause, nothing in my life justifies violence unless it is self-defense.

I can imagine that everyone reading this article agrees with what I am saying. All of you feel the same gut level repulsive response to violence that I feel. I want this article to be about more than just “don’t kill anyone.” That is a pretty low standard, and I believe that we can do better. I challenge you to watch your responses, especially when you have strong feelings. You can disagree all you want, but that disagreement should never belittle or devalue the other person. Your disagreement is with the opinion; it should never grow out of a disregard to the value of the other person. Even if you would never consider violence, it is possible that we could all do a little better when we interact.

We are not responsible for how others feel, but we are responsible for what our feelings cause us to do. If your feelings cause you to disrespect another person, you have just made your feelings more important than the other person. You don’t need to tiptoe on eggshells around everyone, but every now and then, we all need to step back and make sure our responses are appropriately measured.

There are so many bad ideas around living life based on how you feel that I don’t have room in this article for all of them. But one of the negative experiences of preoccupation with our feelings is it causes us to completely devalue everyone else. It is living hyper-focused on your own feelings that other people get hurt, sometimes physically.

I am not trying to downplay the importance of your feelings. My point is to remind everyone to consider something outside of the bubble in which we live. We are so polarized around our own positions and feelings that sometimes we need to take a break and realize that there may be other ideas. We don’t have agree with them, we don’t even have to like them, but we do need to allow room for them to exist because the step between “I am the standard by which the world is judged” and “disagreement with me makes you expendable” is not a big step. There is more to life than protecting yourself from being offended. The moment you forget that, your world becomes a very dark place.