by Marty Coleman | Dec 21, 2012 | Sin and Science - 2012 |
An Unexpected Call
My drawing and commentary of a few days ago about the Sandy Hook shooting got a huge response, well over 60 comments so far and counting. This was due more to me harassing my friends to comment than it was to them just being cosmically led, but I will take them any way I can get them. One of my friends, Kaci Christian, a former reporter here in Tulsa who now lives in LA, took the extra step of actually calling me on the phone to talk about my post. We talked about many things but one thing I liked in particular was her thinking I could expand on the 5 elements by adding the mouth and the ear to compliment the eye. And I think she is right. There are many things to say about both but I am going to continue the track I started a few days ago and apply how these elements had a hand in the tragedy and how they might contribute to a solution as well.
The Mouth – The mouth takes in and it sends out. More than one person talked about how what we put in our body makes a huge difference in who we are, and that is true. But the immediate concern is what comes out of our mouths. This is about what we say in regards to the Sandy Hook tragedy but in a greater sense it’s about what we say any time. Do we talk with a helping hand at the heart of our thoughts or do we talk with an accusatory and judgmental gun pointed at another person, either the person we are talking to or an absent person, either an individual or a group of people.
I have many friends on both the left and right of various debates. I live in Oklahoma so a lot of my day to day friends from running, photography, church, etc. are conservative. I also happen to be from both coasts; raised in California and spending my teen years in Connecticut (not all that far from Newtown). I also am an artist who has spent a fair amount of time with other artists. Those elements lead me to have many liberal friends as well.
The big differences showed up quite angrily during the recent election of course, and there were times when I went too far in expressing myself. My words were too accusatory and judgmental. Not always, sometimes the words were needed and I don’t apologize for that. But other times I just let my anger about an issue get the better of me and I wrote or spoke words that were more of a gun than a hand.
I need to do better with my mouth and the words I let come out. What about you?
Remember this: You do have the ability to make your words be a hand that helps or a gun that shoots. Choose to speak as a hand reaching out.
The Ear – It can hear but does it listen? That is the age old question, isn’t it. Ask many married couples and you will hear stories of them not listening to each other in spite of hearing the words. The key always seems to come down to listening for what is said between the lines, not the line itself. How do we do that in the aftermath of something like Sandy Hook? When I hear a gun owner angrily defend his ownership of guns, what does he really want us to know? When I hear a friend go on an impassioned plea about mental health issues, what is behind it?
When I was first married, to both my wives actually, I heard the obvious from both of them. What they said is what I heard. Too late in my first marriage I finally heard what she was wanting me to hear, not just her auditory sounds. It’s made for a positive post-marriage relationship between the two of us, but I certainly do wish I wasn’t as dumb about it all during the marriage. The good thing is that I do think I learned something from those years and do better with Linda, my wife now. Of course, I am sure she would say I still have plenty of work to do in hearing her but I think she might also say I try hard to get to what is being said with her heart, not just her words.
How can we listen, not just hear, all the responses and feelings about Sandy Hook? We have to start with assuming the best of people. If we only listen for cliche conservative or liberal messages and respond with anger at the assumed agenda then that is all we will hear. Focus on finding out what are the hopes and fears of the person who is talking, not what is their agenda (even if they have one) and we find who they are underneath it all. Then we can listen with compassion and love, not reactive deafness.
What do you listen for?
Remember this: You have the ability to hear deeper than the words spoken. You can hear the hand or you can hear the gun, both often come out at the same time. Choose to hear the hand reaching out.
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman
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by Marty Coleman | Dec 19, 2012 | Sin and Science - 2012 |
The children and adults at Sandy Hook are dead because of the 5 elements shown above. Unless we address those five elements we will not have the change we want. Here why I think they matter.
- The Gun – Yes, the gun matters. It was a gun that was used to killed them. Those who say it doesn’t matter, that if guns were banned the bad guys would find some other way of committing mass atrocities are wrong. There is ample evidence that people will not be likely to kill another person if they have to use a weapon that demands them to be in contact with the person. They will not use a knife for example because they would have to be right there with the person and they would be afraid of having the weapon taken away and it being turned on them. They are also afraid they wouldn’t know how to actually do the killing or be strong enough. And finally they would not want blood all over them. Sick, but true. So, guns, and what type of guns are legal, matter in the debate. To say they don’t is to deny reality.
- The Hand – Yes, the hand matters. It was a specific person who pulled the trigger. He (or in rare cases she) should be held personally responsible for their actions. That is what our legal system is built for and should be used for. Training our children to take personal responsibility for their actions is one of the primary jobs of a parent, and those supporting the family. Having sane and effective consequences for the child, and, even more importantly, adults, who do not take that responsibility are essential. If we don’t include this in the debate we will not find the most effective answer to our violence problem.
- The Brain – Yes, the brain matters. I called it a brain instead of a mind because I want to focus on the reality of what happens in the physical part of the body called the brain. Mental illness is an unfortunate term in some ways because it makes us think that it’s simply about what a person thinks, not the physical structure of the brain itself. If you break a bone in your arm you don’t say you have an arm disease. When you pull a quad muscle during a run you don’t say you have a thigh disease. You call it something specific. You have a pulled quad muscle or a broken arm. People with mental illness have something physically wrong with their brain. It is harder to distill than when the injury is in other parts of the body, but it’s just as real. What that means is that it is not true that all people are in control of themselves and their actions at all time. There are things that happen in the brain that change perception of reality and make people not able to understand right from wrong, real threats from imagined ones. We are learning more about this all the time. We need to include this focus on the brain, how it can malfunction and what we can do to heal it or else we will not have an satisfactory answer to our national problem.
- The Eye – Yes, the eye matters. What we fill our eyes (and thus our minds) with affect who we are. If we spend our time watching movies and games that have as their focus the hurting of other people again and again, whether physically or emotionally, then we are very likely to start thinking along those lines. Programs, games and events that insistently show or allow us to participate voyeuristically in murder, killing, raping, terrorism, war and mayhem for it’s entertainment value do indeed move us in that direction. It becomes what we think about more than if we didn’t see or interact with those things. But I am also talking about mean-spirited, gossipy, and self-righteous programs and speakers whose sole goal is to make fun of other people, to cut them down and belittle them for being different than, and thus less than, they are. What we watch and put in our minds and hearts matter.
- The Dollar – Yes, money matters. Gun manufacturing is driven by sales, just as cars and toys are. No sales and the cars, toys or guns will not be manufactured. Vested interests, including everyone in the gun industry, mental health industry, video game &TV/movie industry, and science industry, have a right to make a living. There is nothing wrong with them arguing responsibly from their point of view but we should always understand they have a vested financial interest, even as they might be discussing things rationally. In the end, we as a nation are not primarily responsible for their industry’s financial health, they are. Our primary responsibility, foreign or domestic, is to protect our citizens. We have a right to come together and make laws that facilitate doing that. We regulated tobacco, cars, chemicals, transportation and many other things for the express purpose of protecting our citizens, even when doing so meant those industries had to change and adapt. However, the most effective voting we can do is with our pocket book. As a parent, you don’t have to buy that violent video game for your child for Christmas. As an adult you don’t have to pay to see a violent movie. As a gun enthusiast you don’t have to buy a semi-automatic assault rifle and high volume magazines. As a college graduate you can contribute to your alma mater doing research in neuroscience to help move our knowledge along in that field. As a citizen you can contribute to and participate in activities that promote safety and sanity. You have control over your money, use it wisely.
Those are the elements that matter. Those are the areas that need to be addressed. Give me a reasonable idea on how we as a nation can deal with and change our behaviors in those areas and we can start a productive discussion. What do you think?
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman
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by Marty Coleman | Dec 18, 2012 | Sin and Science - 2012 |
Blaming Sin
I have heard more than once (actually, more than a dozen times most likely) in my church life a pastor take our modern era to task for giving up on sin. They say something along the lines of ‘You know, we used to call a sin a sin but now we call it a syndrome or a condition or a societal issue. What we need to do is get back to calling a sin a sin.’ The point the pastor is leading to is personal responsibility, which is a worthy and valuable goal for ourselves and to teach to our children. Blaming others or society or anything else is often just a way to avoid taking the blame yourself in other words. But you know what another way of taking the blame off our selves is? By calling it sin.
Sin and Pride
The concept of sin is, as I mentioned yesterday, attached to ‘original sin’. It is explained by classic Christianity as something we have in us always. It’s something we can’t escape or work our way out of. As a matter of fact, many denominations have a central part of their liturgy being a recitation of how continually bad we are. What is that recitation and the underlying theology but a method of saying it’s something we are just stuck with. As a matter of fact, those who attempt to get rid of sin are often accused of being prideful.
Suspending Judgment
We can call it sin, we can say it’s from Satan if we want, but the truth is that doesn’t help us figure anything out about what to DO about it. All we really hear in church is to not do it. If we do sin then it is a moral failure. And we know how effective it is to condemn someone morally is in making them repent, right? No. So, what if we, while still using the word ‘sin’ if we want, actually start to look at what happens scientifically when someone does something bad. How about we put away the moral judgment for a bit while we investigate what is happening? What do we have to lose by doing that?
Effective Exploration
I certainly am not saying there isn’t personal responsibility. What I am saying is let’s be effective in how we figure out that responsibility. If that means we investigate what goes wrong in the synapse of the brain, then that’s what we do. If it means we explore how nutrition and upbringing effects behavior, then let’s do that. Whatever it is we pursue the answer as best we can. Our goal, after all, is to reduce ‘sin’, right? Well, since figuring out what causes it is essential to reducing it, let’s focus on how to do that instead of focusing on the judgment, which gets us no where.
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Drawing by Marty Coleman
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by Marty Coleman | Dec 17, 2012 | Sin and Science - 2012 |
Original Sin
This past week has been all about the Sandy Hook killings and the need for a new discussion about gun regulations and mental health. But I noticed something else that got me thinking and that was the big emphasis on ‘sin in the world’. It certainly is easy to say it, especially based on the predominant Christian background of culture in the US. Christianity states sin came in the world with Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God. All evil and all bad things stem from that basic doctrine of ‘original sin’.
Sin, Control and Power
There is a problem with this concept of sin. It is a mythical tale that through oral tradition story telling explains why we are the way we are. But what it doesn’t do is allow itself to be dissected very easily. It needs to be kept in an abstract realm to fit in theologically with the rest of Christianity. If it is dissected its power to impart guilt and condemnation will be destroyed. The powers that be in the Church and in the ensconced power in society as a whole doesn’t want that to happen because if it does, those who are invested in that story no longer have power over you. The can’t blame you or guilt you into behaving as they would like you to.
Mental Illness Explored
Let’s talk about mental illness as one example of how ineffective power is taken away if sin is explored. In medical and scientific circles they know that a mental illness is when something abnormal happens chemically, electrically or biologically in the brain of an individual. They know there is both therapeutic and/or pharmaceutical possibilities of treatment. They also know that research needs to continue into neuroscientific areas so we can learn more about why brains do those ‘evil’ things. What really makes it happen, all the way down to the cellular level, in other words.
Stop Signs
But in the certain religious oriented population it’s more likely you will hear this bad behavior talked about as a result of our sinful condition. And here is the rub – what do you do with that information? Do you scientifically find out the landscape of sin? How it develops chemically? Do we go to a medical lab and delve into sin with an electron microscope to see how it behaves? No, we don’t. We just say it exists and isn’t that too bad. Oh well. Let’s hug our kids and hope for the best.
Go Signs
That is not good enough. We should rid ourselves of the guilt of sin by going beyond it and exploring bad behavior in as much detail as we can in as many directions as we can. That is how we will find answers, not by saying it’s sin and that’s that.
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Drawing by Marty Coleman
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by Marty Coleman | May 15, 2010 | Augustine, Sin and Science - 2012 |
A vintage drawing from 2004
I don’t believe this.
I understand the idea that being unrealistically prideful can make one egotistical or make one think they are better than others. But the truth is we constantly encourage our children, friends, family members to be proud of themselves for great accomplishment. I want my children to be proud and I think it is good that they are when they do something worthy. I don’t believe acting on one hand like pride is bad while on the other pride is normal and healthy does anything to help them successfully integrate their actions and motives.
What do you think?
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“Other sins find themselves in evil deeds, pride finds itself in good ones, but both destroy.” – Augustine, 354-430, early christian father, Bishop of Hippo
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