The news came in to Mitch Hamilton by phone just after midnight.
Members of his church had been inside the theater when shots rang out.
Hamilton is pastor of Mississippi Avenue Baptist Church, near the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, where a gunman opened fire early Friday, killing 12 and wounding dozens more.
“We’re close, but you feel like you’re a million miles away,” Hamilton said during a break from tending to the needs of his church and planning a prayer vigil.
“Things are happening so fast,” he said.
He thinks his church members are not among the dead, but with no list of victims, no one is sure. Either way, he knows there is a gaping wound in his community.
Clergy across Aurora, the Denver area and the state are wrestling with how to respond to a senseless act of violence that has rocked their community.
Tonight, rabbis will take their pulpits for Shabbat services.
“It’s impossible to be prepared for actions that reek of such evil,” said Rabbi Richard Rheins of Temple Sinai in Denver. “It’s not as if any of us have answers.
“Evil is in our midst,” he said. “We have to be vigilant. We have to be strong.”
Rabbi Joe Black from Temple Emanuel knows that his congregants will be looking up from their seats tonight, waiting for answers.
“I’ve been a rabbi for 25 years, and I know that I don’t have any answers. And if anybody says they do, I’m concerned,” Black said. “I think what we need to do is come together and acknowledge the importance and the centrality of asking questions of the things in this world we can’t comprehend.”
A day ago, Jack Dowling was ministering to fire victims in Colorado Springs. He and team of five other chaplains from the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team got the news of the shooting Friday morning and headed straight for Aurora.
“We were on the ground here around 7:45 a.m.,” said Dowling, of Bangor, Maine.
He and his team of specially trained disaster chaplains are tending to families waiting for answers at Gateway High School in Aurora.
“This is a raw emotional situation. People are traumatized,” he said.
“The challenge here is, the incident location is still a crime scene and will be for some time. So the police have to deal with it as a crime scene. Under normal circumstances, that takes many hours to deal with that and then to gradually start identifying the victims.”
Family and friends are wandering the secured area at the school, asking questions, taking nervous cell phone calls and battling through uncertainty, Dowling said.
Some know their loved ones are at the hospital; “the others who haven’t had that confirmed, they don’t know. They don’t know if their family member is in a hospital and unidentified or if the other reason they haven’t been contacted is, they are still at the theater.”
Experiences ministering at massacres at Virginia Tech and Binghamton, New York, are a road map for Dowling. There are few words for the chaplain to share with the families.
“It’s not as much what you say as what you do. We have a ministry of presence to listen and listen and listen some more. They have a story to tell about a loved one who maybe they don’t know is dead or alive. There’s a lot of grief; there’s a lot of crying; there’s a lot of emotions; there’s a lot of uncertainty.
“It’s a very fragile situation for the victims,” he said.
Lord Have Mercy! Sadly, this is systemic of the greater problems of a postmodern and sick American culture! Though I am sure it affects the whole of the Western society itself! The world is simply “evil” … “And know that we are (Christians)..of God, and the whole world lies in The Evil One.” (1 John 5: 19, lit. trans) See too, St. Paul’s Gal. 1:4, i.e. “evil-age”.
The ‘World’ is NOT evil. God Created the world, and He does not create ‘Evil’ However, evil is present in the world. The perpetrator of this Crime gave in to ‘evil’. It is said that there is a fine line between Genius and Insanity, and I believe this Crime was the work of an individual who was exceptionally brilliant in his studies, but his mind ran amock in a fantasy world where he, as the “Joker”, acted-out the Evil of his Character on innocent people enjoying an evening out at the theater. If this person isn’t deemed ‘Insane’ in the court system, I’ll be truly amazed. Perhaps this is a time to stand back and assess what “Entertainment” should be in our society. Are films that portray violence and horror and wanton sex having an effect on our generation? I believe so! Most of the Evil being acted-out by individuals can be related to something they read in a book, or saw in Movies. Can we control what happens from the use of these forms of ‘entertanment’ ? To a certain extent, yes! Closely monitoring our children with love, sheilding them from the ‘junk’ we see in the movies, and keeping in touch with them when they’re ‘of age’ are all important, along with instilling in them a sound religous background. Hollywood will continue to produce that which society is willing to buy. Parents have to monitor what children see in the Movies, including the comic book charactors, that are anything but ‘comical’. What kind of a society goes to the movies for a ‘Midnight’ screening of mayhem and violence? We are in the midst of unprecedented Evil. I have no doubt that The Chastisements are upon us, and we must be closer to Our Lord than ever before. As our ‘Muslim Brothers’ are ingaged in Ramadan, shouldn’t we Christians also be Fasting, Praying and taking advantage of the Sacraments on on a Daily basis? Yes, but not just for a month, but allways!
Indeed GOD does not make or create evil, but He does allow and control it, i.e. the Evil-one! St. Paul calls Satan (the Adversay), “the god of this world” in 2 Cor. 4:4. Indeed God has allowed the Fall of Adam (Man), we live in a fallen and broken world, but God is Sovereign, and Jesus is the Victor!
Note, in theology we call ths “Theodicy” – That part of theology concerned with defending the goodness and omnipotence of God in the face of the suffering and evil of the world.
*Adversary
From what I’ve been able to read on “Theodicy”, it appears to be the arguments of certain French and German ‘Philosophers’, who probably couldn’t agree on anything collectively, dating back to the 18th Century. While thay do seem to be looking for the existence of God and His role in ‘evil’ in the world, it’s all about Philosophy, which I find difficult as to understanding how it leads to ‘Theology’.When looking into the works of Sts.Thomas and Anselm, as well as the writings of some of the Popes, and early Church Fathers is where I believe we cross into ‘Theology’.
Just saying……
Yes, it has moved well into theology these days, here in fact the philosophical is subservient to the theological-biblical, as indeed it must be.
Btw, we should note that the Geman philosopher Leibniz, first coined the term “theodicy”, and sought to understand it within Christianity. It has now become a positive aspect in theology, and the mystery of the doctrine of God, in a fallen and evil world.
Btw, the Church needs to rediscover the biblical doctrine of Sin. Humanity is fallen and terribly broken! (As we are reminded with this terrible evil in Colorado) The great P.T. Forsyth said that sin, was a “Helpless Guilt”, myself I still prefer the term “total depravity”!