Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Pittsburgh Gym Shooting

An interesting new clue to the Pittsburgh Gym Shooting emerged; the gunman, George Sodini's, blog. In it he wrote many disturbing entries which show a progressive fall into what we call insanity. This news clip summarizes the information on the blog. http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=14913110
What is insanity?
Insanity can be defined in many different ways. One of these describes insanity as being a "violation of societal norms." In this case, this is what we see. The shooter is in fact the victim. In his blog a struggle can be seen with him continually failing to meet societal norms. He claims he had no friends, no girlfriends and then simply having no relationships at all. To me, it seems that Sodini was just alone and not meeting what society demanded. From an Orthodox Christian perspective he was trying too hard to conform to this world. We always find ourselves in these same type of scenarios. Where we are stuck in between two possible choices. One of these will allow us to conform to this world and be accepted by society. The other seems the less desirable path. It's the one that few take. It is the option to be different, to not conform to this world. The option to not fall prey to the demands of society. It is what lets us be transformed by the renewing of our minds. I will close with a final thought from a poem by Robert Frost, The Road not Taken.
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference"

Sometimes, taking and accepting the road less traveled by, will make a huge difference for us. In this case, you could say it was the difference between life and death.
God Bless.

No comments: