Press Rewind
My wife and I just got done watching a National Geographic special about 9/11. They focused on speaking with the people that were actually there, and in a lot of cases talked to the emergeny operators and survivors.
I was surprised how emotional the whole thing made me. A lot has changed in my life since that day, most especially the fact that I now have a wife and kids. I think it hit closer to home as they talked about speaking with people in their last moments of life, and how most of them just wanted their families and loved ones to know they were OK.
Another emotion that erupted from within, which somewhat surprised me, was anger. That there were people in this world capable of inflicting that kind of damage on an entire society, merely because we believe differently then they do.
This is not anger with Muslims, Arabs, or any particular race or culture. This is the same anger I feel when I read about the man in Utah County who shot his wife, Kristy Ragsdale, as she was getting out of the car to go to church Sunday. Or when I read about Verne Jenkins, who was shot and killed after chasing a would-be thief out of a convenience store for stealing, of all things, a pack of gum.
It leads me to ask the question: What the HELL is wrong with these people?
Sometimes, I think people like this should be taken somewhere and executed. Painfully. Or tortured, or something far worse. Think of the pain and suffering these people and countless others have evoked on the friends and family these people have left behind.
And on the flipside of that intense hate, I wonder what circumstances could possibly have led up to these tragic events. What types of environments could these people have lived in to cause them to feel that these actions would somehow grant them a paradisiacal afterlife with God? Or, that shooting this person was the only way out of their current situation? What drives a person to kill?
In some ways, it’s why I fervently hope there is a God with the power to dish out punishments worthy of such offenses.
Unfortunately, all I can do is hope.
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