Early this morning, a shooter—allegedly 24-year-old James Holmes, according to police—opened fire in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises. News reports are still flying in, but officials estimate that 12 people were killed in the attack, another 38 or 39 wounded. The youngest victim was 3 months old.
I learned about the news from my wife, crying as she told me. “It’s just so sad,” she said. And it is. It strikes close to home for us here at Plugged In, too. We’ve attended midnight screenings at this very Aurora theater. But all we can really say right now is how sad it is, how tragic. We can’t yet speculate on why the shooter did what he did. We can’t ask how this might impact the world around us (though it undoubtedly will). We can only watch and listen as the news unreels, mourning, praying for the families, maybe crying a little.
And, with God’s help, we find a way to pick ourselves up again.
In Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight movies—like the one at the center of this terrible tragedy—we see villains who wish to tear the world down. They’re terrorists—unbalanced monsters who want to do more than bring down a building or take a life: They want to destroy our spirit, annihilate our hope. They whisper to us that there is no purpose, no meaning, in a world that can hold such atrocity.
But the films’ heroes—plural, mind you—refute that at every turn. Despite the tragedy, despite the heartbreak, they keep moving, keep trying to make the world a better place. They rediscover purpose, find meaning, uncover hope.
At the end of The Dark Knight when Joker’s horrific plans unravel, Batman confronts him. “What were you trying to prove?” He says. “That deep down, everyone’s as ugly as you? You’re alone!”
Again, we don’t have all the information about what happened this morning. But it appears that this gunman was very much alone—alone in his thinking, alone in his actions. Alone in his psychosis.
But we are not.
I shudder when people say that tragedies like this are part of God’s plan. We know very little about His designs, and to say such a thing seems, at best horribly presumptuous and at worst a gross misunderstanding of God’s character. “God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone,” James tells us. “But each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.”
But God is with us in the midst of these tragedies. He’ll be with the families affected. And I believe He can do profound spiritual work through it.
This is a hard day. We may be hurting or scared or confused or angry. But we are not alone. And that makes the difference.
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