The church shooting today that left a Baptist preacher dead was just the latest in a series of church shootings, that have occurred over the last several months, but so far in this case the name of the gunman, now in the hospital from a self-inflicted knife wound to his throat, has not been released. It's believed though that he lived in an upscale neighborhood, though it is unknown whether he actually knew the preacher he killed.
What is remarkable about this story is how the congregants reacted. The first shot from the gunman struck the preacher's upraised Bible, resulting in shards of paper spraying out in all directions, giving the appearance of what one witness described as flying confetti. He and others went on to say they thought it was some kind of skit. An assistant pastor at the church said he heard what sounded like firecrackers.
People's minds react in strange ways when confronted by the unexpected. It's hard to wrap your mind around the proposition that somebody could just casually stride up the aisle in a church, during a service, and shoot the preacher point blank. But that's what happened, and when it became obvious what was going on, several of the parishioners in attendance tackled the gunman, resulting in two of them receiving non-life threatening stab wounds, which resulted in one of them being hospitalized.
I'm going to guess this has something to do with a job loss and possible home foreclosure, and he might have heard something from this minister to make him think he was unsympathetic to his plight. A marital break-up is also a possibility. I'm not trying to play a game of blame the victim for any of this, but the point is, there is going to be a lot of this going on over the next couple of years, or at least over the course of this one. There are a lot of people in jams, and when people get desperate, they do crazy things. A lot of times they might well subconsciously seek out a symbolic target. I'm going to be interested in seeing how this plays out and exactly what its all about.
Like I said, people's minds work in strange ways when faced with bizarre and tragic events. I find myself hoping the preacher was messing with the guys wife or was up to something similarly shady, because otherwise, its nothing but a senseless, seemingly random atrocity that makes no sense whatsoever. But, unfortunately, a great lot of the time things like this happens, that's precisely what it is.
Senseless and random. We want to have an explanation for everything. It's just in our natures, but oftentimes the chaotic nature of these kinds of events just defy rationality whether we like it or not.
2 comments:
The post was good, until you unecessarily speculated about why he did that action. That sarcstic tone hurts your writing. You don't know why he did that, and actually who cares why? Whatever his reason, its crazy.
Sarcasm? What sarcasm? Ren, you're starting to see it where none exists. The whole point to this post was how people's minds tend to react to situations like this, how they tend to look for rational explanations where there may be none, or how they might entirely misinterpret what they are seeing.
Otherwise, it would be just another post about an event that's already been posted about numerous other places.
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