Maybe it was weird for me to choose last night of all nights to finally watch the award-winning, but extremely violent movie, “Hacksaw Ridge.” But in the wake of the news of yet another tragic school shooting in Florida, two quotes from the movie almost shouted at me as I heard them.
In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons. — Company B Soldier: [Quoting the Greek historian Herodotus]
No one who hears of the shooting rampage yesterday by 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz should brush off the assertion that we are, indeed, at war. We are at war against violence, untreated mental illness and the weapons that make it so easy to exact carnage on dozens of innocent lives.
The Associated Press reported that Cruz, an “orphaned 19-year-old with a troubled past and his own AR-15 rifle was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder Thursday morning following the deadliest school shooting in the U.S. in five years.”
I’m not anti-gun ownership by licensed, trained and responsible citizens. At least I support ownership of handguns and hunting rifles. But I do not support the sale and availability of semi-automatic rifles. To anyone who wants to state that criminals will continue to find ways to purchase semi-automatic weapons, I can only point out that Cruz reportedly purchased his AR-15 rifle legally. It HAS to be harder than that!
Violence is the evil that we must fight. Yes, “Hacksaw Ridge” included graphic violence that was difficult to watch and hear. It wasn’t easier this morning to hear the stories of two high school children who witnessed the Florida school shootings up-close and personal.
Student Samantha Grady choked up on “The Today Show” when she was asked how her classmate, who was shot as they hid in a school classroom, was doing. “She didn’t make it,” Grady blurted out between tears. A boy interviewed on the local news described walking along a school hallway and seeing two girls on the ground, dead, holding hands.
In “Hacksaw Ridge,” the main character, Desmond Doss, is a conscientious objector who saved 75 men in Okinawa, during the bloodiest battle of World War II, without firing a single shot. Doss, a Seventh Day Adventist, believed that the war was just but killing was wrong. He was the only American soldier in WWII to fight on the front lines without a weapon. He became the only conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor for his actions during WWII.
Doss was misunderstood and harassed by his military leaders and fellow soldiers. But when it was time to act to save lives, Doss acted with more courage than anyone could ever expect.
I believe that his statement, made during a military trial launched as a result of his refusal to bear arms, is especially poignant for us today.
With the world so set on tearing itself apart, it don’t seem like such a bad thing to me to want to put a little bit of it back together.— Desmond Doss
