Too Many Reasons to Kill

Along with discussing racism and common sense gun regulation, perhaps we should consider

Cain Killing Abel, Daniele Crespi, Wikimedia

something more basic - why, in the United States, do we have so many legal reasons to kill another person?

My dad and I were talking about this whole Zimmerman thing, and some other cases that have come up. He recalled a conversation with a colleague from Germany.

His colleague was an engineering contractor, here in Houston for a few weeks. They were at Guido's, enjoying seafood and beer, and his colleague was astounded at the long list of killings in the newspaper. He said that Houston alone had more killings than all of Germany. Yes, they have regulations about weapons in his country, he said, but more than that, "we do not have all those legal reasons for a person to kill another."

Around the U.S., it's hard to make the case that we value human life, we have so many reasons to kill. If you feel threatened, if you're protecting your house (or anything you own, really), to retrieve stolen property, "to stop rape, arson, burglary, robbery, theft at night and criminal mischief at night."

We have interesting euphemisms for it:

Stand Your Ground
Castle Doctrine
Make My Day

All summed up as "justifiable homicide."

“We all have contempt for whatever there’s too many of. Out here it’s sheep, but in the city it’s people.” -- The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough

Comments

Me and My Collar

You may run into me on a Friday, in my neighborhood, so it's time I let you know what you might see. When I was doing my required unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), my supervisor suggested that any of us who came from traditions where a clerical collar was an option, take one "collar week," to see how we were treated, as opposed to wearing regular professional clothes. After a couple of days, I joked to the Catholic priest, "How do you manage the power?" In regular clothes, I would walk into a patient's room, and it would take about 5 or so minutes of introductions and pleasantries before we could really get down to talking about their feelings, their fears, the deep stuff. With most people, as soon as that clerical collar walked in the room, with me attached, they began pouring out all the heavy stuff they were carrying. I was riding the bus back and forth every day, and though not quite so dramatic, the collar effect was alive there, to...

Beloved Community: The Now and Not Yet

Rev. Christine Robinson has a great little post up about the phrase "beloved community" and why it's problematic to use that to describe a church. Like her mom, I can get cranky about the whole thing, but my crankiness lies in the misuse of what is, to me, such a breathtaking and profound concept. Martin Luther King, Jr., someone whose words I study in great detail, is the one we often think of as originating the term, but he learned about it through the writings of Josiah Royce. Josiah Royce (right) with close friend William James. Royce was a philosopher, studying Kant, Hegel. I imagine he would have enjoyed Koestler's theory of the holon , because he saw humanity as being both individuals and part of a greater "organism" that was community. As King's belief about Beloved Community would be rooted in agape , Royce's philosophy stemmed from what he called loyalty, and by that he meant, "the practically devoted love of an individual f...

Testimony to the Woman in Starbucks Who Asked About My Church

You noted my clerical collar and rainbow pin and had some questions. I told you I'm a Unitarian Universalist minister, and you wanted to know more. I screwed up, I think, with you. Because I began giving you information, little explanations that you could have just as easily found on Wikipedia. I got busy explaining "what" instead of "why." I am a Unitarian Universalist because this religion gives me a history and a theology that I can have faith in, and part of that includes the fact that it has faith in me. Unitarian Universalism says that I -- even on my bad days -- am worthy to be treated with respect and dignity. And it teaches me that I have both the capability and the responsibility to determine and define my own creed by which I will live. To do that, I need tools, I need encouragement, and I need relationship. And that's why I am a Unitarian Universalist in faith and in practice. That's why I go to a Unitarian Universalist church, and wo...

Boots and Blessings

Search This Blog