I don't know how I got on the Family Research Council's email list, but every once in a while I read what they send me. Their latest missive, on the killings at Virginia Tech, really stuck in my craw, because of one phrase. Here's the whole thing:

Comfort, Comfort My People

This morning we all woke up wishing that yesterday's tragedy was just a bad dream. Instead, we got ready for work feeling a little more vulnerable, hugging our kids just a little bit tighter, and trying desperately to make sense of it all. For many of us, the bloody horrors at Virginia Tech served as a sudden and painful reminder that we live in a fallen world where man is capable of unthinkable evil. As the media hastens to report every raw detail and parents struggle to overcome the fears now rekindled from Columbine, we wonder if America--like Virginia Tech--will ever be the same. Yet on a day scarred by sorrow and disbelief, there are still glimpses of selfless courage--men and women who, in the tradition of our great nation, paid the ultimate price to protect others. Students of Liviu Librescu are alive today because their professor used his own body to block a classroom doorway as the gunman approached. This hero, who survived the Holocaust only to give his life for his students, is one reason the death toll is not larger. And there are countless others. Policemen who rushed the stairwells, carrying out wounded. Students who helped others leap to safety. And friends, whose only service was offering a shoulder for people to cry on. As Benjamin Franklin once said, "Those things that hurt, instruct." In a world where make-believe violence is entertainment, may Americans finally refuse to pay the real-life price. In a country that seeks to silence God in its schools, may skeptics finally realize that on days like this, He cannot be shut out. I pray that as we carry in our hearts and in our prayers the memories of those lost, we also hold on to our hunger for goodness and virtue so that these innocent people have not have died in vain.

Now what bothers me is not the sentiment, but the use of that phrase here, they shall not have died in vain. Certainly, people are writing much worse things about this massacre. But what's wrong with using this phrase? A quick googling brought up this blog post about the phrase, tracing it down to the Gettysburg Address:

It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain...

And to Galatians 2:21:

I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain.

In both of these cases -- and when present-day politicians talk about ensuring that our troops have not died in vain -- the emphasis is placed on the death being one of self-sacrifice. The soldier willingly puts himself in harm's way -- if the soldier dies, he dies fighting for a cause. In order that they have not died in vain, we must continue to fight for the cause they died for. Christ willingly dies for our sins.¹ I may have my theology wrong, but I believe that in Christ's case in order for him not to have died in vain we should accept his teachings and his faith.

However, in the case of the students of Virginia Tech, none of them died fighting for a cause. They did not sacrifice themselves (with the exception of Liviu Librescu and probably others who was killed while helping others escape.) They died senselessly because of an insane man's rage. We cannot carry on the work that they died for. To use the language of martyrdom here is false. (Martin Luther King used the same phrase in his Eulogy for the Young Victims of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing, and to me it rings equally false there.)

What the FRC means, of course, is that if some good comes out of the killings then these (otherwise senseless) deaths have some purpose. But what good? The good that the FRC wants to put forward (namely, a return to religion in American life.) But this is an all-purpose statement. I could easily say, "We must pass strict gun laws, so that they shall not have died in vain," or "We must arm all students, so that they shall not have died in vain."²

Of course, everyone is trying to make sense of the senseless. And our political views will color how we make sense of this. But let's not make the victims into martyrs for whatever political cause we happen to espouse. Please, let them rest in peace.

¹ I am reminded of Jules Feiffer's line, "Christ died for our sins. Dare we make His martyrdom meaningless by not committing them?"

² Boing Boing points to the same idea at "Why the Bombings Mean That We Must Support My Politics" written after 9/11.

M E-L posted this on April 18, 2007
It is filed under National News

It is also indexed with the following tags: Family Research Council | Virginia Tech Shootings |