Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Letter from my attorney friend in India on Va. Tech --and My Response

Hello Barb. Ma'am !!
Its me John
..... I heard and read about the Korean student on a shooting rampage killing
33 innocent students for some personal grudge. I say that he was always a
potential fanatic and those who knew him should have taken due care to avoid
him. I'd go a step further in formulation of preventive arrests of potential
and dangerous-minded people. In most cases these people reveal their plan to
their peers who simply brush off the matter as fantasy. Two families from
India were told that [their]children who were victims shall soon be dispatched
to their homes for rites. Imagine being the parent of a child who set off
for a distant land for higher and better studies; and to forget about their
ever being there in the first place, they will never be seen again. It's . .
. it's very very sad, Ma'am.

Did the people fail to show sufficient love to the young boy, or was it
political hatred, or a host of combined reasons? Being a student of
psychology, we look for reasons as to what prompts these killers to go on
such a rampage, harming those with whom they never had strained relations --absolute strangers.

The consequences of such acts are felt by several families, some of whom are
unable to take it.

The message is simple. We must be prepared to lose our dear ones if and when
we have to. We must practice detatchment deep within our minds with those
who we love and feel for and care for. We must practice calmness of the mind
and avoid displaying our emotions publicly
.

________________________

Dear John,

Yes, how very sad for the families --all of them --who sent their children to college at V. Tech with high hopes --so many very bright and beloved students and teachers. One was from Toledo here, a Catholic school grad, an exemplary student and person, now a prof at Va. Tech, who had worked on solutions for handicapped people and had much accomplishment to his name and left behind wife and 3 children.

About your last paragraph, which is Hindu philosophy, is it not? not only can we NOT detach from people we love, but according to the great teacher, Jesus, we should not detach in the way you describe. Detachment to me means distancing oneself --being remote from someone emotionally. The killer did that. That was his problem. He would not speak even to those who were trying to be friendly to him. He had come here as an Asian child at 8 and experienced ridicule from cruel school kids in elementary school for his difference (including language difficulty). His detachment led him to be totally self-focused and emotionally dead to the feelings of others --and sociopathic as a result. We should be on the lookout for such people but not to avoid them. As you said, he didn't know his victims, for the most part. The ridicule of him PLUS the detachment FROM him for his painful inability to relate-- both helped to push him over the edge. The angels weep. God weeps, for this was not HIs plan for this child or the others.

I can't imagine living as a dormitory suite mate with someone who would never speak to you or have courteous, polite exchange. I would want to do an intervention --and force him to receive caring interest --overwhelm him with genuine kindness and concern. I don't hear that anyone really tried very persistently to reach through his hateful, remote exterior. Instead, he retreated from people and was so scary in his isolation that they retreated--which is what you seem to be recommending as a solution. But just avoiding him did not help. He turned his wrath on strangers --just to make a statement. His real statement was: "I am sick! And I hate you all for not caring about me! I'll show YOU and the world that I was significant!"

Jesus called sinners the "sick who need the Physician" and said that was why he hung out sometimes with blatant sinners of his Hebrew culture--the "winebibbers and the harlots." For He was the Great Physician --the healer of our hurts, the forgiver of our sins.

In John 4:6, there is a story in which Jesus spoke to a woman at a well who was not a Jew, but a Samaritan, (sort of like Shia vs. Sunnis --because both claimed Abraham and Jacob as religious/cultural forefathers.) He told her HE knew she lived with a series of 5 husbands, the present man not being her husband. From that, SHE knew He was a prophet --for otherwise, she was a stranger to him. Yet he spoke knowledge of her life and also gave words of life to her about the Living water that only He could give.

He knows each of us the way He knew the Samaritan woman at the well. To her and to us, He says, "whosoever drinks the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life."

Jesus said to her, "You worship you know not what; we [Jews] know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth for the Father seeks such to worship him. God is a Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth."

The woman said unto Him, "I know that the Messiah is to come who is called Christ; when He is come, He will tell us all things."

Jesus replied: "I that speak unto you am HE."


The tragedy from a Christian perspective is that people die everyday without being reconciled to God because they did not believe in Christ. The Creator sends His Living Word, His Living Message, in Jesus --His Son, the only begotten of the Father --the ONLY Savior --and tells the world to spread the news, that our escape from mortality is through believing in Jesus and confessing our sinful state to Him, in faith believing that He hears through His Holy Spirit present on the earth and in the hearts of believers.

This same Jesus tells us to NOT be detached from troublesome people but to love enemies, brothers, neighbors. We can never be snobbish, thinking ourselves better than others, and please God. We must NOT transcend beyond troublesome people through meditation --but, intstead, be PRO-ACTIVE; love them in Jesus' name --to tell them about HIM, so they may recognize their need and experience His love and forgiveness--for eternal life beyond the grave.

"Because I live, you shall also live." --said Jesus, to those who believe and receive. "I am the way, the Truth, and the Life; no man comes to the Father except by me." He is the Shepherd and the Gate, the Cornerstone of the Church and of LIfe.

We've all been given this choice and a greater tragedy than U.Va's is that so many of us are rejecting this free gift of salvation --choosing instead to join the mockers and the scornful who refused to believe even though they saw His miraculous powers and heard His claims and teachings.

the woman at the well? she believed --and ran home to bring the others to meet Jesus and he spent 2 days with these Samaritans--and they believed --and were saved by their faith.

The Samaritan woman? An unlikely missionary whose faith planted a church!

6 comments:

liberal_dem said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Barb said...

Well, Hi LD!

Whew! I'm glad to see, that your snuffed out candle on your website didn't mean you had quit the web!

You do have an irrelevant post here that some would find interesting as you do --I suspect your point is to say I was irrelevant on YOUR blog --I assume --but I always segued from something in people's comments or your original premise in my tangents.

Can you explain to me a connection to my post here that I might be missing?

Certainly glad to have you visit my blog.

I do enjoy interesting people and you are that.

Affectionately (really),

Barb

liberal_dem said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Barb said...

As I just said --did you read it? I segued from other people's comments to you --and you never called THEM off-topic.

I really get under your skin and you yourself should wonder why. I have a theory.

SNAKE HUNTERS said...

There are thousands of views on
a Creator, and each is intolerant of the other fellows notions.

It's O.K., as long as we retain
some Goodwill for each other.

Hubble recently found a planet similar to Earth, and ONLY 20 Light
Years Out. I have trouble thinking about One Light-Year!

I also have difficulty with Devine
Revelation & Infallibility. reb

www.lazyonebenn.blogspot.com

Barb said...

I agree --true tolerance is coexisting peacefully despite our differences. It doesn't mean we agree with each other.

I have great tolerance and even capacity for friendship with those who don't believe --don't agree --but they often do not. sometimes I observe that hatred is "bound up in the heart of" an unbeliever--like "folly is bound in the heart of a child."

I didn't know Hubble found another Earth perhaps --Perhaps it is the New Jerusalem? Heaven? --or the New Earth and New Heaven mentioned in the Bible. --or the place jesus said He was going away to prepare for those who believe in Him.

or just another planet --with or without life.

It does take faith --a gift God is willing to bestow --to believe in Revelation. I assume God's infallibility but no man's--as the Bible says there is none righteous, no not one. We all stand in need of a redeemer --whom our Creator has provided.

You are getting up in years. Do you believe in the resurrected Christ who said faith in Him would give us eternal life?

If a man is seen alive after His death, and speaks of a spiritual Kingdom --and salvation that came through the Jews --and through Himself, a Jew, as the Passover lamb -- would He not have credibility in the area of Revelation? I'm partial to the words of resurrected rabbis, myself.

what did you teach?