Will I die today in a school shooting?
Will I die today in a school shooting? Did teenagers today attending Applachee High School in Winder, Georgia, ask themselves that this morning? As I write, four are dead and nine injured by a school shooting.
A pastor friend of mine, Rev. Jarmo Tarki, asked his teenage confirmands: what are the existential questions that deeply concern you? Recall that existential questions are life and death questions. They ask: will I exist or not? Here are two dramatic ones on their list.
- When I go to school today, am I likely to die from bullets shot by a school shooter?
- Will Earth support me in my old age? Or will global warming and ecological destruction so pollute the oceans and the atmosphere that I will either starve to death or suffocate from lack of fresh air to breathe? Will the present generation so deplete the planet of nonrenewable resources that nothing will be left for me and my children?
In this Patheos post, let’s deal with the first: will I die today in a school shooting? We’ll take up the second question in another Patheos post.
Is today the day I will die in a school shooting?
First, fear that our death may be imminent creates uncontrollable anxiety. To eat breakfast and then go to school worried that today might be the day – well, that’s unbearable.
Second, our fear of a school shooting raises a moral issue. Not for the teenagers. Rather, there is a moral responsibility on the shoulders of the older generation, namely, to keep schools safe. This responsibility has been shirked. Those investors who make a financial profit off gun and ammunition sales benefit from the anxiety generated out of fear for the next school shooting. And the will of these investors has prevailed.
Which is more important: big profit or victims of school shooting? Our nation has made a choice. This choice leaves our teenagers with existential questions such as: will I die today in a school shooting?
Blog posts on school shootings and related massacres
For details on the moral issue, try one of these.
Gun Safety Prevarication and Legislation
A Billion Bucks for Bullets and Blood
School Shootings Meet AR-15 Lapel Pins
Conclusion
The deep anxiety rising up out of existential questions can be tortuous. When a teenager asks – will I die today in a school shooting? – my heart breaks.
My wife, Karen, and I wear tee shirts that read: “we can end gun violence.” We can. But we don’t. Is this the human condition?
PT 3608 Existential Questions
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Ted Peters pursues Public Theology at the intersection of science, religion, ethics, and public policy. Peters is an emeritus professor at the Graduate Theological Union, where he co-edits the journal, Theology and Science, on behalf of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, in Berkeley, California, USA. His book, God in Cosmic History, traces the rise of the Axial religions 2500 years ago. He previously authored Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom? (Routledge, 2nd ed., 2002) as well as Science, Theology, and Ethics (Ashgate 2003). He is editor of AI and IA: Utopia or Extinction? (ATF 2019). Along with Arvin Gouw and Brian Patrick Green, he co-edited the new book, Religious Transhumanism and Its Critics hot off the press (Roman and Littlefield/Lexington, 2022). Soon he will publish The Voice of Christian Public Theology (ATF 2022). See his website: TedsTimelyTake.com.
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