Beatitudes Blog

So much violence and pain and aggression that you want simply to weep

Submitted by Gary Hall on April 18, 2007 - 10:14pm.

The Very Rev. Gary Hall

Dean of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary

April 17, 2007

Yesterday at about this time I was seated in my stall at the back of the chapel listening to Beth Scriven talk about the problem of sin and the present day church’s inability to deal with it. In the contemporary church, Beth said, we are pretending that we’re still in Eden, that the world and its inhabitants have not fallen. As I was turning those ideas around in my head after church I got in my car to go out to lunch and heard that (at that time) twenty or so people had been killed by a gunman at Virginia Tech. Now that number, including the gunman, is up to thirty-three. I’m sure there are some people who think of college campuses as pristine gardens. But even they would have to agree that we’re not in Eden anymore.

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