Another Look at Violence

We live in a world of irony when you can star on a show called "Anger Management" and be Charlie Sheen, and it ends up being a situation comedy. But there is nothing funny about the mass attack that took place last Sunday morning. One of the first things we learned about Omar Mateen, the gun man in the night club massacre in Orlando, was that he had severely beaten his ex-wife many times. He had a history of domestic violence.As I flick through the channels on TV, I see an enormous amount of violence being portrayed in many ways and in massive proportions that has become numbing to viewers like me who see so much of it on TV. Actually, all you have to do is watch the nightly news to get a good dose of the real reality of violence that victimizes people on our own streets and neighborhood as well as on battlefields around the world.I don't have an answer for how to resolve this, but I do know that hitting a child is always a failure of discipline and wrong. Hitting your spouse is totally unacceptable under any circumstances. It's interesting that at a young age children physically express their anger, even in the best environment. Part of our mission as a church is to find ways to change the behavior of ourselves and of our children. Domestic violence, for example, doesn't have to be physical. Our words, our tone, and our actions can do a lot of damage.On a weekly basis, the message of the church continues to be the message of love that asks us to turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile, and return no one evil for evil. Take a reality check and see how angry you are.MEH