'To Tame the Savageness of Man...'

By Neil Earle

The recent slayings of 13 soldiers in Fort Hood, Texas once again brings this country face to face with senseless violence.

What is amazing is how quickly the media mayhem machine spins into action offering us “total coverage” yet very little perspective. Senseless tragedies always bring questions about God and religion to the fore, if only briefly. It was the same after Virginia Tech and Columbine and the Oklahoma City bombing and in one sense it will always be so.

At such times I like to recite for my history students and congregations one of the most overlooked public speeches in American history. It was April 4, 1968 and Martin Luther King, Jr. had just been killed in Memphis. Senator Robert Kennedy, younger brother of assassinated President John F. Kennedy was on his way to Indianapolis, Indiana to address a gathering supporting his Presidential bid that tumultuous year.

Against the advice of his aides and police Kennedy made the planned campaign stop in a primarily black area. He climbed on a flatbed truck and broke the terrible news to the crowd expecting an exciting Kennedy event. What he said after that is still remembered by those who saw it relayed in television later that evening:

“In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization…Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love.

“For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.

“But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond these rather difficult times. ...What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country…

“So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King…but more importantly to say a prayer for our won country which all of us love – a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it’s not the end of disorder. But the vast majority of [people] in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

(Interrupted by applause)

“Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”

The Senator’s words were prophetic – it was not the end of violence. He himself was killed by an assassin just two months later. They were prophetic in the larger theological sense that he diagnosed the problem – lack of compassion and understanding and empathy – and gave the solution, making a prayerful effort to reach out across the divides.

Some will use the shootings in Texas to vilify the 0.6% of Americans of Muslim descent forgetting that Muslims were the first suspected “perps” at the Oklahoma City bombing in 1994. Not so. It was home-grown terrorism as it was at Columbine. Most Americans will respond maturely and reject the knee-jerk reactions. That much has been learned as these staggering public tragedies unfold.

It is well-known among biographers that after his brother’s death in November, 1963 he went into a dark place of grieving. In those years he was impressed by Greek literature and its wrestling with the wild, raucousing winds of Fate, personified as Myra. Maybe Christian folk would have wished he would have quoted from Job or Ecclesiastes that night in Indiana. But he was close enough to the Biblical text. The apostle Paul himself said he had learned much from the Greek poets (Romans 1:14) and quoted from them on at least one occasion (Acts 17:28).

Robert Kennedy’s words carry weight because they are steeped in a wisdom born of suffering – the pain that falls drop by drop upon the heart distilling wisdom (Aeschylus). He was right on target with his repeated appeal for people to pray at such times. One can be sure hundreds of thousands of prayers went up from America’s churches this Sunday for Americans are not a violent people, not a sick people, not at all.

In his magnificent Romans commentary “The Message of Romans” British pastor and writer John Stott gave a thrilling analysis of one of the Bible’s most hopeful passages – Romans, Chapter 8. Paul’s words in this passage resonate, says Stott, with Five Unanswerable Questions, Five Undeniable Affirmations, and Five Unshakeable Convictions. We only have time for the Five Unshakeable Convictions – assurances built around Romans 8:28. They are the Good News According to Stott at this time for the families of the Fort Hood victims:

First, God is at work in our lives.
Second, God is at work for the Good.
Third, God works for our Good in all things.
Fourth, especially is this true for those who love Him.
Five, He has His own purposes in tragedy which time ultimately distills.

So let us say a prayer for the families and the victims. And let us from these honored dead take increased devotion to Him whose eye is on the sparrow.