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Waking up to new threats to biblical 'sheep,' even in small flocks in Middle America

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Waking up to new threats to biblical 'sheep,' even in small flocks in Middle America

When Jimmy Meeks reached Sutherland Springs, Texas, the First Baptist Church was screened off as a crime scene as experts investigated the Sunday morning massacre that claimed 26 lives. 

As a retired police officer, and a Baptist preacher, Meeks didn't need to enter the ravaged sanctuary. As a church-security consultant, he paid special attention to the church's parking lot and the surrounding area.

When the gunman arrived, he parked across the street. He had to cover lots of ground to reach the church.

"It's just a simple little building," said Meeks, who is part of a "Sheepdog Seminars" team, training church leaders how to protect biblical "sheep" from "wolves."

"There are churches like this one all over the country -- there always have been and there always will be. ... So many churches don't have someone outside in the parking lot, standing watch. They don't see the danger coming."

Church-security issues are back in the news, as America faces renewed debates about safety, faith and the Second Amendment.

But some church leaders, like Meeks, have been studiously paying attention to church-security issues ever since the night of Sept. 15, 1999, when an angry outsider entered Wedgwood Baptist in Fort Worth, Texas, and killed seven during a youth-group prayer rally.

Since 1999, at least 800 people have died in church attacks across America, said Meeks, who has 35 years of police experience, including 11 years when he led a Fort Worth church while serving as an officer in nearby Hurst. Two of his areas of expertise are hostage negotiations and crime-prevention techniques.

So far, 108 people have been killed in churches during 2017. The previous record was 77 in one year.

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At some point, 'Christianese' jargon may warp attempts at real prayer after tragedies

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At some point, 'Christianese' jargon may warp attempts at real prayer after tragedies

After the stunning news from First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, House Speaker Paul Ryan joined the online chorus of Americans offering support.

"Reports out of Texas are devastating," said Ryan, on Twitter. "The people of Sutherland Springs need our prayers right now."

A star in the Star Trek galaxy, and frequent guest on "The Big Bang Theory," was furious with Ryan.

"The murdered victims were in a church," tweeted Wil Wheaton. "If prayers did anything, they'd still be alive, you worthless sack of [expletive]."

Wheaton later added: "Hey, real and actual people of faith: I hear you. I apologize for insulting you, in my rage at Paul Ryan's refusal to address gun violence."

This was, of course, yet another round of warfare about the Second Amendment, faith, bloodshed, media bias and the political powers that be. The fighting hadn't even ended after the secular vs. sacred Twitter wars following the massacre at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas.

At this point, it's clear that the fighting over "thoughts and prayers" tweets is yet another sign that America is dividing into warring camps in which language and symbolic actions are causing pain and confusion, rather than unity, said Tim Stewart, a professional wordsmith who created the "Dictionary of Christianese" website.

It doesn't help that the vocabulary of many Christians, especially evangelicals, is packed with "insider jargon they use all the time, whether they know it or not. … This language is like a liturgy for them, but they don't understand that other people don't get it," said Stewart, who was raised Catholic, but attends a Southern Baptist church in Austin, Texas.

Columbine, Newtown and our culture of death

Blame it on the guns. No, blame the judges who banned Godtalk in schools, along with most lessons about right and wrong.

No, our lousy national mental health care system caused this hellish bloodbath.

No, the problem is the decay of American families, with workaholic parents chained to their desks while their children grow up in suburban cocoons with too much time on their hands.

No, it's Hollywood's fault. How can children tell the difference between fantasy and reality when they've been baptized in violent movies, television and single-shooter videogames?

Why not blame God?

These were the questions in 1999 when two teen-aged gunmen at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., killed 13 people and themselves in the massacre that set the standard for soul-searching media frenzies in postmodern America.

All the questions asked about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are now being asked about Adam Lanza after he gunned down 20 first graders and six employees at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., before taking his life. He began his rampage by killing his mother in the suburban home they shared after the 2008 divorce that split their family.

After Columbine, Denver's archbishop wrote an agonizing reflection that looked toward a future after all the headlines and endless cable-news coverage. Last week the staff of Archbishop Charles Chaput, now leader of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, circulated those words once again. What has changed?

"The media are already filled with 'sound bites' of shock and disbelief; psychologists, sociologists, grief counselors and law enforcement officers -- all with their theories and plans," he wrote. "God bless them for it. We certainly need help. Violence is now pervasive in American society -- in our homes, our schools, on our streets, in our cars as we drive home from work, in the news media, in the rhythms and lyrics of our music, in our novels, films and video games. It is so prevalent that we have become largely unconscious of it. ...

"The causes of this violence are many and complicated: racism, fear, selfishness. But in another, deeper sense, the cause is very simple: We're losing God, and in losing Him, we're losing ourselves. The complete contempt for human life shown by the young killers ... is not an accident, or an anomaly or a freak flaw in our social fabric. It's what we create when we live a contradiction. We can't systematically kill the unborn, the infirm and the condemned prisoners among us; we can't glorify brutality in our entertainment; we can't market avarice and greed ... and then hope that somehow our children will help build a culture of life."

Columbine unfolded in the Easter season, noted Chaput, a time in which believers are reminded that even the Son of God was not spared the reality of death.

"The Son of God descended into hell and so have we all, over the past few days," noted the archbishop. "But that isn't the end of the story."

Now, the Newtown massacre has shattered the season of Advent, in the days preceding the 12-day season of Christmas -- another biblical event that included violence and the deaths of innocents, as well as the singing of angels and signs of ultimate hope.

Little has changed.

Death is real and life is precious. Innocence is fragile and sin is terrifyingly real. The violence that haunts our culture is real and at times impossible to prevent. America is blessed and cursed with charge cards, computers, cellphones and many other gifts of modern life.

Chaput and other clergy faced familiar questions this week. The only option, he said, is to look in the mirror.

"God is good, but we human beings are free, and being free, we help fashion the nature of our world with the choices we make," he said, in a new letter. "Every life lost in Connecticut was unique, precious and irreplaceable. But the evil was routine; every human generation is rich with it. Why does God allow war? Why does God allow hunger? ...

"We are not the inevitable products of history or economics or any other determinist equation. We're free, and therefore responsible for both the beauty and the suffering we help make. Why does God allow wickedness? He allows it because we -- or others just like us -- choose it. The only effective antidote to the wickedness around us is to live differently from this moment forward."

Waiting for the WHY shoe to drop

You're waiting for the other shoe to drop.

You know the shoe I'm talking about -- the religion shoe. When the Virginia Tech University story broke, you began clicking from website to website, channel to channel, seeking information and, then, something more.

You've seen photos of mourners in pews, offering comfort and seeking solace. You know that believers will pray and that journalists will keep aiming cameras at them, because, that?s what Bible Belt people do. People in southwest Virginia put scriptures on big road signs and build huge crosses next to Interstate highways. They pray. It's a good photo, but it's just prayer. Right?

No, you're waiting for a real religion angle to surface, a crazy one linked to violence and power. After all, religion surfaces in so many bloody stories these days.

Plus, you know there are politicos here inside the Beltway who are sitting, TV remotes in their hands, waiting to grade the candidates. Will Barack Obama get the tone right, with the right mixture of scripture and concern? Will Hillary Clinton look chilly? Will anyone in the GOP herd look both presidential and pastoral?

You know the pope will say something and that -- no matter what he says about the mysteries of life and death, good and evil -- it will appear in news reports as a naive cry for peace and for an end to violence.

Then again, journalists know that the Jerry Falwell's Liberty University is up I-81 from Blacksburg. So maybe he'll come to Virginia Tech and talk about jealousy, broken hearts and the sexual revolution. Or maybe Pat Robertson will say -- something, anything. Then, on the other side, perhaps the atheist version of Robertson could call a press conference and say this tragedy is more evidence that life is random and without purpose. That would work.

You're waiting to find out what video game the shooter played all hours of the day and night. Did he go to see the movie "300" one too many times? Was he driven by Satan or too many "Left Behind" novels? People on both sides of the sacred vs. secular divide need to know.

You're waiting to see if he killed more women than men. You want to know if the big massacre started in the classroom of an evangelical professor who once witnessed to the shooter and made him mad. You heard reporters say the shooter was Asian and you immediately thought: Asia? What part of Asia? What religion was he?

You're waiting for something that points toward the source of this evil. Am I right? And if you remember the Columbine High School massacre, you may be thinking of that column that journalist Peggy Noonan -- a traditional Catholic -- wrote about the "culture of death" hours after that hellish day.

She wrote: "Your child is an intelligent little fish. He swims in deep water. Waves of sound and sight, of thought and fact, come invisibly through that water, like radar; they go through him again and again, from this direction and that. The sound from the television is a wave, and the sound from the radio. ... The waves contain words like this, which I'll limit to only one source, the news:

"... took the stand to say the killer was smiling the day the show aired ... said the procedure is, in fact, legal infanticide ... is thought to be connected to earlier sexual activity among teens ... court battle over who owns the frozen sperm ... contains songs that call for dominating and even imprisoning women ... died of lethal injection ... had threatened to kill her children. ... had asked Kevorkian for help in killing himself ... protested the game, which they said has gone beyond violence to sadism ... showed no remorse ... which is about a wager over whether he could sleep with another student ... which is about her attempts to balance three lovers and a watchful fiance...

"This is the ocean in which our children swim. This is the sound of our culture. It comes from all parts of our culture and reaches all parts of our culture, and all the people in it, which is everybody."

You're waiting for the other shoe to drop. You want to know the eternal "why" in "who, what, when, where, why and how."

I know that I do.