At services in the area, pastors and congregants talked about faith and light, hope and healing. But they did so without uttering the name of the 26-year-old gunman, who had also been a student at the college — one whose rampage stirred conversations about evil. At Foundation Fellowship, a nondenominational ministry here, Pastor Randy Webb told the 50 parishioners scattered in the pews that the shooting was a reminder that “Satan is alive.”
“It’s really hard to tell your son that it’s not going to be O.K. — because it’s not,” said Cherie Cox, a Sunday worshiper at Liberty Christian whose son is a student at the college but was not on campus during the shooting. “Evil can come wherever you are.”
Investigators have said the gunman, Christopher Harper-Mercer, appeared to have an animus toward organized religion, and some witnesses have said he interrogated his victims about their faith before shooting them. But worshipers did not seem to dwell on this aspect of the crime.
The Rev. Del McAmis, a retired pastor who is a parishioner of First Presbyterian Church, gave the homily at the Sunday morning services there and said many of the people he encountered at the vigil Thursday night for victims had questioned how God could allow such a tragedy to happen in their community. The problem, he explained, was that they had a romanticized version of God, whom they expected to make them happy, content, even prosperous.
“The problem was not God, but the view of God in their minds,” he said. “Folks like that are going to struggle when life throws something like this in their path.”
Source: In Close-Knit Oregon Community, Few Are Untouched by College Killings – The New York Times
As Jim has mentioned in class, Douglas County is very different from anything I have ever experienced. I am non-religious, liberal, city-dweller from Seattle. I am pro-choice, anti-gun, and stopped going to church as soon as my mom would let me. I have been finding it helpful to read about Douglas County, because my first reactions are always obvious judgements on the way someone else is leading their life. The varying media types and differing perspectives on Douglas County and the many problems there have helped me to have my initial reaction, and then critique that reaction.
In this article in particular, I was first annoyed and uninterested in the way the people talked about God and their faith and their total trust in it. Reading Rev. Del McAmis’ quote made me realize that people do have reasonable relationships with God. Being more religious does not always correlate with being unreasonable or unrealistic. It is simply a matter of circumstances (traumatic events are never reasonable) or personal connections and understanding.