Tipping Point

I had one of those moments today that I don’t often have. 

I had heard there was a breathtaking picture floating around social media of a three-year-old who washed up dead on a beach.  I read comments by people who didn’t want to see the photo because they had children.  I saw other comments by people who didn’t want to come face to face with the bold reality that this small, wee, one, this vulnerable child, could in fact be their child.  I saw other comments that said plainly, “it looked like my child.”  These were all bold, daring people who don’t run easily from a fight—or a picture. 

I knew what was coming. 

I would have had to look myself, to find it, except I was in a phone conversation and just happened to glance over to the Facebook feed to see that the person I was talking to on the phone had also just posted the story. 

I knew to wait until I was off the phone. 

By then, there were other postings. 

I knew what would happen when I saw. 

And there was that feeling in the pit of my stomach—not the feeling I’d been having because I skipped lunch. 

I was listening to the NPR news story.  I heard Mr. Broucheart talk about being moved by the shoes.  They were ordinary children’s shoes in the photo I was looking at with the soldier carrying the limp body.  There was nothing strange or odd about the shoes. 

And then I saw the image of the boy lying face-down on the beach, no soldier around, just the boy.  And his shoes. 

I wept first. 

Then I groaned. 

But I don’t think it was because I put those kind of shoes on my own two boys when they were that age, or my daughter who just graduated from those kind of shoes this last year.  These weren’t the shoes of my children and I wasn’t reminded of my own children so much.  I had by then come to grips with the reality that this child, his mother and his brother—and his father who survived—were all fleeing from Syria.  From the war in Syria.  From the war in Syria that in part is shaped by the foreign policy (or lack of policies) by my own country.  From the war in Syria that affects thousands of lives across a whole region of the world, now.  Countless children affected, lost, killed, lives destroyed by far more violent means than drowning at sea! 

I was also being reminded that these waters were dangerous waters from biblical times.  That the Apostle Paul for one was shipwrecked in this same region, and himself—the stories tell us—made many a perilous crossing to deliver the good news of the gospel or riding in chains.  There was, after all, perhaps not anything new about this story in more than 2,000 years.  It just keeps happening.  It’s just that it’s far, far away from my day to day life—and I don’t hear about it, every day. 

The picture forced an emotional reaction in me, but I was not sad.  I’m angry.  Because this, too, is the face of gun violence, of violence and fear.  This is what happens when human beings are too afraid, or we’re hell-bent to have our own way at the expense of others.  And I see it all the time in my every day life right here in suburban America and it is only by the grace of God—no, perhaps only by dumb statistical luck—no, I want to say something about God makes this better for me, but I’m afraid it doesn’t because I know for certain God doesn’t love me or my children more or less than God loved this child washed up on the shore, or some other father’s child in Syria or inner-city Philadelphia.  And that’s the rub.  This isn’t a story about God or the lack or loss of God.  It’s a story about human beings who don’t walk enough with God.  Myself included. 

This is what I put on Facebook: 

The photo breaks my heart. But I'm not offended by a photo. I'm angry. I'm angry that even now, we as Christian people will be most likely to pray about it, but do nothing more. Myself included. Come, Lord Jesus, and convict us that we are wholly unable to live this way. But that we must put ourselves and drag others kicking and screaming if necessary, under the call and claim of your Kingdom. May we be forced to look at the world we have been complicit in creating. May we confess our poor choices. May we look to the promise that we can now write another ending so that others don't have to be victims.

Today, this is what this picture did to me. 

I’m willing to say: “I hate guns.”  There are reasons I have to live with them.  But I hate them. 

This tragic story began because of armed, human conflict.  This family simply wanted to escape.  We all want to escape. 

The shoes didn’t bother me. 

I’d rather not spare you the horrific image.  Perhaps there are reasons we don’t pass the photos from Sandy Hook Elementary or Columbine.  We should look in wonder …and come to grips with our human complicity.  Ask ourselves why we allow it to happen again and again and again.  Myself included.  Perhaps, that should be said of a great many things of which we keep ourselves neatly separated from.  It’s why we can live with all the violence and killing that we do. 

© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania