America the Brutal

How did we get to such a state of madness?

"I'm the big man. I got the gun. Why does she have this attitude?"

This was the way a 16-year-old explained killing a mother of three. While Christine Schweiger's 10-year-old daughter watched in horror, two teenagers ordered her to her knees outside a Popeye's Famous Fried Chicken restaurant in Milwaukee and demanded her money. When she said she didn't have any, one of the youths blew away most of her head with a 12-gauge, sawed-off shotgun.

Many years ago, Mao Zedong said that "power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Mao's maxim is true today in America. For many people, especially young African-American and Latino males in this nation's urban communities, their only source of power and self-esteem comes from a gun. But while the power Mao referred to was political, the violent abuse of power that society is currently plagued with is "driven more by greed." So suggests Jesse Jackson: Today's youth, he reminds us, are "not shooting for food and clothes. They're shooting for territory, conquest, gold, diamonds, cars."

In other words, the violence we witness is power with an attitude, as reflected in the reasoning of the teen who killed Christine Schweiger. It is power that blames the victim for not cooperating with its evil intentions. It justifies itself with a cold, conscienceless attitude that believes its victims deserved what they got. It is like the adulteress of Proverbs 30:20, who "eats, and wipes her mouth, and says, 'I have done no wrong.' "

Why is human life regarded in certain sectors of society as having such little value that, on a whim—without provocation—one human being will blow away another, with no remorse whatsoever? Whether the incident is the Rodney King and Reginald Denny beatings, or the Polly Klaas kidnapping-murder, or the Menendez brothers slaying their parents, the pattern is the same—violence without remorse, power with an attitude, an attitude that says, "You don't deserve to live."

How did we get to such a state of madness, and is there any way to achieve sanity?

We need to understand that violence does not occur in a social vacuum. Our values channel, shape, encourage, or discourage violent behavior.

Neither is the violence epidemic one-dimensional. The causal factors are historical, sociological, economical, political, psychological, theological, and spiritual. Let me suggest several reasons from these varied disciplines, each of which would not by itself be a sufficient explanation. Collectively, however, they provide a formidable argument for why we are in the present amoral morass of violence.

THE LAND OF COWBOYS

In American society, violence is, first, a cultural-historical value. The potential for violence was established from the foundations of our nation, with the Second Amendment to the Constitution in 1791: "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Today, even though the military use of privately owned arms has long disappeared, owning and displaying guns remains a fundamental right in American society.

Later, in the expansion of the nation at the expense of the native population, guns became the means by which the ill-devised Manifest Destiny of land appropriation was achieved. Two guns especially played a key role. The first was the Colt Revolver, patented in 1836 by Samuel Colt. Euphemistically labeled the "Peacemaker," it was better known as "the gun that won the West." The second was the Gatling Gun, a mechanically operated machine gun patented in 1862. Because the gun was capable of firing 350 rounds a minute through its rotating multiple barrels, it was believed to be the gun to end all wars. It did the opposite; it escalated violence.

Both weapons were part of a frontier mentality in American history. This mindset, combined with the ideology of rugged individualism, gave rise to the image of the American cowboy as the independent, "I-go-where-I-want-to-go, do-what-I-want-to-do" fellow, popularized in Hollywood Westerns, which, interestingly, have made a comeback in the nineties.

In our time, gun violence is an almost uniquely American problem, placing the U.S. in a league of its own. In 1990, handguns killed only 22 people in Great Britain, 68 in Canada, and 87 in Japan; in the U.S., 10,567.

Today's heavily armed "urban cowboys," roaming the streets at night in their multi-horse-powered vehicles, are a re-emergence of the nineteenth-century outlaws who terrorized towns such as Tombstone, Deadwood, Dodge City, and Abilene. Nighttime has become our new frontier. Many of the characteristics of the old land frontier—sparse population, isolated settlements, individualism, boredom, acceptance of deviance, nearly everyone carrying a gun, lawlessness, and violence—are visible in the time frontier of night.

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT

Second, in American society, violence is an integral part of the social fabric of the entertainment industry. James M. Henslin poignantly observes:

It may seem bizarre to members of other cultures, but murder is a major form of entertainment in American society. Night after night we watch shootings, strangulations, stabbings, slashings, beatings, bombings, and various other forms of mutilation and mayhem flashing across our television screens—all in living color.

Rap music, music videos, video games, and movies, especially the slasher movies targeted at a teenage audience, are all part of the booming multibillion-dollar entertainment industry. Together they have become a modern Pied Piper, luring our children and robbing them of their childhood through fear and violence, from which many never return. Sadly, entertainment is the number-one product the U.S. exports to the rest of the world. That raises the question, will the violence that dominates American culture soon dominate other countries, as they drink from the "broken cisterns" of selected American values?

DEVIANT INDIVIDUALISM

Third, violence in American society is a byproduct of disconnectedness. Emile Durkheim, the pioneering sociologist, suggested that violence is a product of people's disconnections from others and from their moral community, in large measure due to the upheaval brought on by rapid social change. Those who lack social bonds are more likely to commit violent acts.

Because of adverse conditions, many people today find themselves alone—economically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually. Thus, what armed youth gangs, serial killers, disgruntled postal employees, racist skinheads, and child killers have in common is this: they all experience a sense of disconnectedness from society.

Sociologists Roger Finke and Rodney Stark clarify this theory:

The real basis of the moral order is human relationships. Most of us conform to laws and social norms most of the time because to do otherwise would risk our relationships with others. When we are alone, even the most respectable of us act in ways we would not were anyone present. People who have no relationships with family or close friends, or whose relationships are with persons far away, are essentially alone all the time. They do not risk their attachments if they are detected in deviant behavior, because they have none to lose.

When people find themselves disconnected from the societal rewards of wealth, power, and prestige, due to layoffs, lack of job opportunity, or being locked out of the system for political reasons, a sense of frustration develops, which may erupt in violence. Sometimes this frustration may gain access to social rewards by alternative means. For example, since no one is going to get rich working for McDonald's at $4.25 an hour, why not sell crack for $500 a day? The drug economy thus becomes an "employment agency" for many people locked out of the system.

When people find themselves locked out of the structures and rewards of the larger society, they tend to construct their own group, even if this group is regarded as deviant by society. Why? Because when one feels rejected, one can in turn reject the rejecters and everything they stand for by forming a subculture with its own value system and code of conduct—"the code of the streets."

In a recent "Newsweek," University of Pennsylvania sociologist Elijah Anderson called this the "oppositional culture" of the streets. "It is a culture with its own code of behavior, based on gangsta bravado and gangsta respect, and it is a powerful force in the inner city. It subverts the values of hope, work, love and civility, and it condones and romanticizes violence." Many of today's urban youth, especially nighttimers, live in a different world from the rest of us, the daytimers. These two worlds neither interact nor relate.

Because of the cultural value that males should be the primary family breadwinners, males locked out of the system through joblessness and racism tend to experience the most social and psychological strain. This strain is manifested in a sense of powerlessness and inferiority. But since these traits are perceived in gang life as weaknesses, one has to "front" (do impression management) in order to convey the opposite. The result is an overriding concern with respect. When coupled with the psycho-cultural need to express a macho image, the slightest demonstration of disrespect can result in an instant display of violence. Because their fragile self-images are hanging by a thin thread of self-worth, males are the most involved in crime.

Saturday night—our most disconnected time of the week—is also "the most dangerous time of the week," according to Henslin. "During weekends," he says, "when murders are more frequent, people feel less constrained by schedules and responsibilities, and they are likely to get out in public and, not insignificantly, do more drinking than usual. This increases the likelihood of quarrels, with the peak coming on the traditional 'Saturday night out.' " Indeed, it is not coincidental that cheap handguns are called "Saturday-night specials."

SELF-HATRED

Fourth, violence in America is in part the legacy of self-hatred. The United States has a unique history as a nation of nations. Unfortunately, its diverse peoples have not always accepted one another. We have a long and violent history of rejecting the "stranger," especially the one who is seen as different by virtue of color or culture.

Throughout our history, there have been two ways of becoming an American: one for the cultural minorities, the other for the racial minorities. The former—the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the Jews—had to assimilate and be accepted by discarding their ethnic identification and their culture. Painful though that process was, the invisible gates to the majority's world were then opened to them because they were white. For the second group, identified by racial stigma, the issue was more complex. Their distinctiveness was biological and, as a result, the shedding of culture made little difference. They have rarely been seen as "genuine" Americans, but only as hyphenated Americans: African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, or Native Americans.

The social rejection of persons of color can result in a legacy of self-hatred, a sense that life is meaningless, that a people is without value, worth, power, and hope. It should come as no surprise when this social trauma spills over into rage and violence in the streets. In his autobiography, Makes Me Want to Holler, Nathan McCall reminds us that the consequence of teaching people to hate themselves is violence to themselves. This violence is expressed in killing another person like oneself, because my brother is an extension of myself. The result is black-on-black violence. "If my life does not matter," McCall says, "your life does not matter either, since neither one of us has a future."

When Jesus said, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," he gave us the inverse principle of how this happens. If I must use my self-regard as a yardstick to measure my response to my brother, then when I have no self-esteem, I have no standard to live by. And if all I feel for myself is hatred, then all I feel for you, as an extension of myself, is also hatred.

In view of all this, one can understand why young African-American, Asian-American, and Latino males are the most involved in violent crime—and why members of these groups turn on each other. Economically and politically blocked from societal rewards, and daily experiencing self-hatred and a lack of respect, they attack each other through a "horizontal violence."

This violence feeds the media, which, in turn, feed our stereotypes, which ultimately feed our fears and behaviors, even among us persons of color toward our own. Thus, Jesse Jackson himself admitted, in a 1993 speech decrying black-on-black violence: "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery—then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved." America is now collecting on a 400-year debt of violent dehumanization of persons of color.

IT CAUSES ME TO TREMBLE

Fifth, violence in American society reflects a lack of the fear of God. The carnage in our cities raises a crucial question: Where is God? Or, more precisely, where is the sense of the holiness and awesomeness of God to whom one must give account? The Bible calls this sense the "fear of God." It does not mean fear in our usual sense of being afraid. It means rather to quake or tremble in the presence of a Being so holy, so morally superior, so removed from evil, that in his presence, human boasting, human pride, human arrogance vanish as we bow in speechless humility, reverence, and adoration of the One beyond understanding.

For this reason, Proverbs declares, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Any correct understanding of the human condition begins with a sense of the presence of God in human affairs. When the fear of God is missing, evil, corruption, and violence prevail. "Fools say in their hearts, 'There is no God.' They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is no one who does good" (Ps. 14:1).

If God is the source of life, then anything that unjustly takes life separates us from God. But the question is: Is the taking of life that which separates us from God, or is our separation from God that which makes it easy to take life?

Surely it is a reciprocal relationship, but the spark of that action lies in our separation from God. The psalmist says, "Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in their hearts" (36:1). Why? "There is no fear of God before their eyes." Abraham went down to Egypt and feared for his life. He declared, "I thought, 'There is no fear of God at all in this place, and they will kill me' " (Gen. 20:11).

Where God is not feared, life is cheap.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

The church may very well be the most important institution to mediate change in our American cities. As Sojourners editor Jim Wallis observes, "The cruel and endemic economic injustice, soul-killing materialism, life-destroying drug traffic, pervasive racism, unprecedented breakdown of family life and structure, and almost total collapse of moral values that have created this culture of violence are, at heart, spiritual issues."

As the apostle Paul reminds us, "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against … the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm" (Eph. 6:12, NIV). Many Christians across the nation have recognized that our crisis is indeed a spiritual one and are responding with bold and innovative initiatives to deal with the problem head-on.

Recently, a coalition of seven Boston churches devised a ten-point plan for how churches can reach out to their inner-city neighborhoods. Their ambitious points of action are focused on building relationships and showing viable ways that the body of Christ can live out its call in urban communities. They include: commissioning missionaries to do pastoral work in the urban areas with the most violent and troubled young people; developing church teams to evangelize youth involved in gangs and drug trafficking; forming community-based economic-development programs; establishing ministry links between suburban and downtown churches. [Readers who want more information on the ten-point plan can write to Ray Hammond, Ten Point Coalition, 215 Forest Hills St., Jamaica Plain, Mass. 02130.]

In addition to the Boston coalition's plan, there are other, more immediate strategies available to churches and individual Christians who are willing to invest themselves in addressing our nation's epidemic of violence.

First, we can support creative ways to deal with the proliferation of illegal firearms in our communities—such as the "buy-back" programs that many major cities have recently implemented, offering gym shoes and sporting-event tickets in exchange for guns. Churches must also spend their energies educating their members about responsible gun ownership. "All who draw the sword will die by the sword," said Jesus (Matt. 26:52, NIV). His solemn warning was a call for nonviolence that speaks volumes to our present crisis.

Second, we can fight for a more responsible entertainment industry that will put human welfare above profit. We need to protest bad TV programming and film releases and support positive alternatives (like CBS's recent Christy series). The moneychangers in the temple of Mammon are just as amoral and callous as the young gunmen who kill on the streets. The only difference is that Hollywood investors do it through socially acceptable means. Both attitudes are just as murderous for their insensitivity.

Third, we can put our resources—both our money and energies—into jobs and education, not prisons. For many young people today, crime is the only option available for gaining respectability. We can change that by giving them the option of obtaining a quality education. Comparing four-year costs for college to those for incarceration offers a jarring commentary. Four years at a public university costs on the average $23,892; at a private university, $59,644. But four years in a federal prison costs $80,288. If one can help prevent the other, simple math tells us which is the wise investment.

Swede Roskam, a Chicago Christian businessman, has made that investment. Eleven years ago, Roskam, founded Educational Assistance Limited (EAL), a nonprofit organization that provides financial assistance to aspiring college students in our nation's inner cities. EAL secures donations of excess inventory items like computers, furniture, and office supplies from major corporations, and then gives the items to colleges and universities in exchange for scholarship credits for needy youth. Since 1983, the program has helped 1,300 students receive their college degrees. Roskam's resourcefulness has given many kids an education beyond the "school of the streets."

Fourth, we can work to build positive attachments. Families need to be strengthened. Support networks need to be developed in communities. We are all, in a sense, members of "gangs." Some groupings are positive, while others perpetrate destruction. We need to move people from deviant gangs to socially constructive ones. Churches and individual Christians can play a key role here, becoming "family" for the estranged and disconnected persons in our communities.

Consider Kathy Dudley, a wife and mother of two, who has courageously forged her dream for urban renewal with Voice of Hope Ministries (VOH) on Dallas's rough and impoverished West Side. Dudley's efforts provide West Dallas youth with weekly "Bible clubs," job training, and after-school activities. In its 12 years of outreach, VOH has spawned more than a dozen college graduates. "Our presence has significantly curbed the amount of gang violence in this community," says Dudley. More visionary churches and individuals like Dudley are needed to give our urban young people a sense of belonging and purpose.

Fifth, we must teach self-respect and an awareness of our value to God. We need to encourage our children to reject rejection and not themselves. Audre Lorde, the African-American poet, tells us, "It is a waste of time hating a mirror or its reflection instead of stopping the hand that makes glass distortions." Black and Latino youth today are being deflated by social mirrors of self-hate and, as a result, are killing themselves. What they need is our help in "stopping the hand that makes glass with distortions." Ultimate self-respect comes when we recognize our value to God—that he created us in his own image and paid an awesome price for our redemption, thereby endowing the human soul with great value. Churches that embody and communicate this wisdom to the spiritually and economically disheartened people of our communities can save lives that otherwise would be erased by violence.

Finally, and most important, we must restore to our communities a sense of awe toward God. Martin Luther observed that the "natural" person cannot fear God, for the natural does not comprehend the spiritual. The fear of God is only experienced through the "spiritual" dimension. Unfortunately, this is often the least developed dimension in people's lives. This is why people are, in ever-increasing numbers, searching for some form of spirituality—an intangible reality that provides a sense of security and meaningful purpose. A renewed sense of God's awesomeness will supply the security and purpose our culture is seeking. Only by being assured of God's love for us do we learn to love ourselves. And only by being assured of God's love for all people do we learn to imitate his example (Matt. 5:44-48).

Driving home from San Francisco recently, I pulled off Highway 101 to pay tribute at the informal memorial set up there in remembrance of Polly Klaas, the 12-year-old girl who was kidnapped from her home during a slumber party and later killed. It was a sobering experience, recalling her death at the hands of a heartless killer. Of all the kind words expressed there on cards, paper scraps, and wood, one moved me to the core. It simply read: "For a brief moment an angel rested here."

If Polly's life had been respected, if her abductor had seen the sacred in her, she would still be with us.

We, too, must learn to glimpse that unique image of God that dwells in every person. As we do, we can begin the process of rebuilding a society where differences can be valued and where children like Polly will be safe.

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Caleb Rosado is professor of sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California.

Copyright © 1994 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

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