Killing Amish schoolgirls

Charles Carl Roberts is an enigma. The milk truck driver, up until yesterday a law-abiding man, devoted husband and father, and apparently all-round nice guy, invaded an Amish schoolhouse and executed the schoolgirls. Few are expected to survive.

Police are scrambling to determine a motive. He did leave suicide notes, apparently outlining a 20-year old desire to molest girls and an anger with God. Police also speculate that the latter was fueled by the death of a newborn daughter in 1997. Evidence of the former comes from his suicide notes and the sexual lubricant he brought with him to the school siege, but which he apparently had no time to use.

There were virtually no advance warning signs, only a shift in moods reported by coworkers.

Roberts' co-workers said his mood had darkened in recent weeks, but suddenly brightened over the weekend, [State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B.] Miller said.

"A few days before the shooting a weight was lifted," Miller said Tuesday.

I am struck how easy it is to not know the people we work and even live with. There are things under the surface that can be incredibly powerful - for good or for evil - and yet remain completely hidden. Evil things in particular grow better in the dark. Most of the deranged killers in recent memory have been loners or very quiet men, turned in on themselves, or at the very least, keeping locked rooms in their souls that no one else was allowed to enter.

So what can be done about it? We can't exactly start reporting our coworkers to police every time they fall into inexplicable funks. Perhaps we need to be more sensitive to the people around us and probe gently if they make strange, uncharacteristic remarks. I've been guilty in the past of timidly backing away from topics that might get weird or messy. Maybe I shouldn't. Sunlight and fresh air are great disinfectants.

But our first responsibility remains ourselves. What are we nurturing in our own hidden rooms? It might never erupt in the spectacular evil of the Nickel Mines schoolhouse, but we could very well spray the acid of our bitterness, or the putrid stench of our sick obsessions on the people around us, wounding them or - even worse - encouraging their own evils. It is perhaps time to go talk to a friend, a pastor or priest, or a help line and let the air in.

Maybe if only one person confronts his own evils as a result of this slaughter, those little Amish schoolgirls will not have died in vain.

In the meanwhile, my heart and prayers go out to the families of both the victims and the killer.

[Correction] The references to molestations in the past that CCR claims to have done were made in a phone call to his wife during the siege.

[Update] See here for the reaction of the Amish.

Technorati tags: Charles Carl Roberts, Nickel Mines

Good negativity

Ninety percent of all ads in the current American election campaign are negative.

I stumbled across this little tidbit yesterday in a post on an American blog that was complaining about the negativity. Which was itself a negative post, ironically enough. It's impossible to decry something without being negative.

And that is as good a demonstration as any that not all negativity is bad. Nobody can be positive about child rape, for instance, at least not anybody you would want to have sitting in your living room.

Negativity can also be a powerful teaching and communication tool. Any teacher worth her salt knows that contrast is indispensable in teaching new concepts. One of the best ways to help students understand what something IS is by showing them at the same time what it ISN'T.

This can be done very legitimately in a political ad too. "My opponent advocates this. I think it's a bad idea for reasons X, Y, Z, and this is what I propose instead and why." This I would consider good negativity. It provides a positive counterbalance.

The problem arises when there is no positive message at all, when the ad consists uniquely of criticism or mudslinging. This caters to our lower instincts and to them only and contributes in every way to the lowering of the political debate. I heartily oppose it.

And that too, is good negativity.

Technorati tags: Negativity, Mud-slinging, Political ads

Frequencies in our ears

Staunch non-Catholic though I am (my apologies to all my fine Catholic friends, but conversion is just not on the agenda), I sometimes find truly valuable things coming out of the mouth of the Pope. This snippet from a recent sermon (hat tip to the Anchoress) resonated with me, first because I had posted along a similar line a while ago, and secondly because I've been struggling a bit with the frequencies in my own ears.

There is a hard-of-hearing towards God which we suffer from in this age. We simply cannot hear Him anymore - there are too many other frequencies in our ears. What is said about Him seems pre-scientific, no longer fitting for our time. With this hard-of-hearing, or even deafness, towards God we naturally lose our ability to speak with and to Him. Because of that, we lack a decisive perceptive faculty. Our internal senses are threatening to die off. With this loss in perception the radius of our relation to reality is drastically and dangerously curtailed.

I think we are all in desperate need of silence. It is as necessary to our well-being as food, water, and clean air.

Be still, and know that I am God. - Psalm 46:10