Better Off Dead

Yesterday, while I was trying on earrings and lipstick in my beautiful home surrounded by my five innocent children, an emotionally deranged young man was walking into a Kindergarten school room in Connecticut and opening fire on them. He stole them from their families, he irreparably broke the hearts of this country, and he snatched the innocence and security away from all of the other children who had to witness this mindless act of carnage.

And then he turned the gun on himself.

Adam Lanza is better off dead.

A friend of mine asserted that, on a national level, the right to gun ownership does not trump those children's right to a healthy and uninterrupted life. When faced with a problem, in this case unfiltered evil, I think that the human mind immediately seeks to fix. Taking away the right to gun ownership would fix the problem of people getting shot, right?

Here's the problem I have: The word "right" gets my hackles up. To what do we really have the right?

I posted a picture on Facebook last year of plastic medical bins being wheeled away from an abortion clinic with the label "Hazardous Medical Waste." The picture was difficult to look at, but when you got past the emotions that it evoked, you were left with the reality. Scared, poor, single young women walk into abortion clinics every day having decided that their life isn't good enough to support a child. Their own life is in shambles. How could they possibly give of themselves the necessary means to nurture new life?

The life growing inside of their womb is better off dead.

I read a Facebook post from a friend that said until we start talking about the root causes and societal problems that lead to these massacres - they will never end. Even in Japan, where guns are outlawed, a man walked into a school room and killed bystanders with a knife. Guns and knives don't kill people - people kill people.

RU486 and Vacuum Extractors don't kill fetuses - mothers kill fetuses. And until we start talking about the root causes and societal problems that lead to this genocide - it will never end.

A few months ago, somewhere in rural China, a mother walked into an orphanage and abandoned her 6 year old daughter. After a couple of weeks, it because clear that she is never coming back. Last week, my 60 year old childless, American friends got a call that they had preliminary clearance to come to China and pick up this little girl. Their daughter. 

But that is ridiculous, right? They're 60. They are going to die. But not before they give a new life, new hope, and love to this little girl.

And the three of them will be all be better off. Alive.

So next week, let us welcome the coming Christ Child to his teenaged, unwed (at conception) Mother and his aging foster Father. Let us contemplate this poor, mixed family and their status as eventual refugees from their homeland. Let these things sit in your soul as you try to heal your very own wounds - whatever they may be - and then decide if anyone, anyone is truly better off dead.