Before I stop talking about guns until the next mass shooting, I want to encourage everyone to use the proper terminology when referring to a person who intentionally kills children. The correct word is ‘sinner’ and NOT ‘victim of mental illness.’
The ‘victims’ in a school shooting are the people who get shot and the people who care about the people who get shot. The person shooting people is not a victim. Showing great sympathy for someone who deliberately killed a kid is a good way to encourage the next shooter. I mean, we all like a little sympathy, right? Shooting up a school is an easy way to get some love and understanding from you.
The term, ‘mental illness’ is not helpful because you don’t apply it consistently. You think a school shooter blasting children in the classroom is a mentally ill person who needs help. You think a mother destroying the child in her womb is an empowered woman who is caring for herself. Both people create dead children but you think only one of them is sick. Only the shooter needs to be medicated and institutionalized, which is another reason you should stop saying ‘mental illness’ instead of ‘sin.’
If it is true that medical treatments can prevent people from committing crimes, then child molesters, misogynists, and rapists can’t be held accountable for their behavior. They are just people who are not properly medicated. Before you start cheering because I’m finally understanding, let me explain where your thinking is going to take you.
You are making Donald Trump, Hugh Hefner, Jeffrey Epstein, and Harvey Weinstein victims of mental illness. Those guys deserve the same compassion you heap on other abusive criminals. They can’t help themselves. Harvey Weinstein suffers from a chemical imbalance. You can’t hold that against him! Showing concern for a mass murderer and disdain for Donald Trump makes you a hypocrite. Are you ready to order the world to show Jeffrey Epstein some sympathy?
I didn’t think so…
The human mind is an incredibly complicated thing. It is irresponsible to chalk up evil as ‘mental illness’ and suggest that professional treatment will fix the problem. The bible doesn’t mention that you can escape God’s judgment by going off your meds.
(James 4:12) “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.”
2 Responses
Excellent, well thought out article. Too bad we have traded teaching critical thinking in our schools for training kids to find who or what to blame when things go wrong. btw…isn’t Bible always capitalized?
Excellent post! I always wondered why mentally ill assassins and mass murderers didn’t choose to plant daffodils instead. Plato taught that living a just life was superior to living an unjust life. The reason is because justice yields harmony whereas injustice yields the opposite.
People who commit crimes engage in acts of injustice which in turn pollute themselves, the people around them, and the entire society with disharmony.
Because, over the millennia of human history, there have been so many people who chose to live unjust lives the various civilizations have developed legal systems to deal with them.