Life, Faith & Death: The Massacre at Emanuel

(from Shutterstock.com/Stocksnapper)

(from Shutterstock.com/Stocksnapper)

The horror of a delusional murderer suddenly killing 9 people who had welcomed him into their Bible study the evening of June 17 is unimaginable. The misuse of this tragedy to beat the drums of commentators’ biases and agendas is all too recognizable.

Those good, doomed people of Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina seem to have been among the best humanity offers. Some of them, including their overworked pastor, stayed late to hold their regular Bible study. An awkward, perhaps lonely young white man asked to join them, something so unlikely in an African-American community that suspicion could have been warranted.

He was no Rachel Dolezal.

These kind folks, acting upon their commission to love their neighbors and spread the Good News, welcomed Dylann Roof so warmly that afterward he admitted almost changing his mind about his self-ascribed duty to kill them. To the extent he expressed himself, he was taking revenge on the black race on behalf of the white race, trying to start a war between them. His stony look in custody is remindful of Timothy McVeigh’s defiant look at his execution, a “cold blank stare” empty except for internalized hate. Such psychopathic characters exist mostly in their own minds.

Observers’ perspectives always tell us more about their beliefs than about an event. Roof is racist, certainly, but that is somehow because we are all racist. He is sexist, too, reflecting historical attitudes toward women and colonialist attitudes toward land. Because he’s white, he’ll be given a pass as mentally ill instead of being labeled a “thug” or “terrorist”, which all violent African-Americans and Muslims are called. Removing Confederate flags, symbols and merchandise will change things. And, of course, it’s an opportunity to flog the same barren arguments about the failure of our “insane” gun laws and our need to copy “other advanced countries”. Could Pastor (and state senator) Pinckney have been partly responsible by promoting gun-control measures? Or is it not about guns at all, but rather the long history of “racial terrorism” in this country?

However Roof arrived at his hateful scheme, it was his, not society’s. Whatever his triggers and objects of obsession, they were his distortions, not anyone else’s. The tendency toward paranoid thinking is innate, can be escalated with misfortune and drug abuse, and its content gets filled in based on one’s life experiences.

As ever, the choice to attack a church was made because of its vulnerability, since he decided he couldn’t successfully “go into the ghetto and fight”. Nitpicking over whether a church in South Carolina is a legal “gun-free zone” misses the point. Almost all attackers seek targets unlikely to present armed resistance in order to cause maximum harm, which is the real “gun-free zone” risk.

The choice to use a gun was Roof’s, whether he stole it from his mother, was given it by his father, or purchased it himself. No background check yet conceived would have prevented him from getting a firearm. Those who knew him might have interceded by reporting signs of dangerousness. Even then, the options for intervention are limited, given our emphasis on individuals’ freedoms over forced confinement even for treatment. [Gun violence restraining orders could be useful, if established with proper safeguards against abuse.]

Without, impossibly, eliminating every last gun from the world, they will always be used against innocents. Charleston is a perfect example that, unopposed, evil with power wins in this world. This and incidents with better outcomes, such as Boiling Springs’ Southside Freewill Baptist church (also in South Carolina) or New Life Church in Colorado, show that the faithful need better protection than signs banning guns. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Cynthia Hurd, Depayne Doctor, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, Clementa Pinckney, Daniel Simmons, Myra Thompson, Tywanza Sanders and Felicia Sanders (Tywanza’s mother, and the only survivor*) deserved that.

Four days after this slaughter my church’s lectionary included the battle of David and Goliath, Paul exhorting the Corinthians to open their hearts wide despite terrible tribulations, and an episode in Mark about the power of faith. These suggest ways to take more profound meaning from Charleston, focusing on those souls who shared the best of themselves, not their confused, deranged killer.

Lives can go very bad, as when deviants like Roof can’t perceive others’ equal legitimacy. They can be exceedingly good, like the Emanuel 10 who showed unquestioning acceptance of a stranger. Even greater perhaps are their families, who confronted the killer with forgiveness. Protecting those who serve in faith, as David did his people, enables them to keep their hearts open “with the weapons of righteousness” too.

*[Correction:  There were actually a total of 5 survivors.  Felecia Sanders, who covered her 5 year old granddaughter: Polly Shepherd who Roof told to tell what had happened; and Pinckney’s wife and daughter who were in a nearby office when the shooting began.]

Robert B Young, MD

— DRGO editor Robert B. Young, MD is a psychiatrist practicing in Pittsford, NY, an associate clinical professor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

All DRGO articles by Robert B. Young, MD.