The Lives of Others is a great movie.  I just sat in awe as it ended.

The story takes place in East Germany before the wall came down.  A man who is trained to spy on others begins a case.  As he listens in on a couple’s most private conversations and most intimate moments his attitude toward them and himself changes drastically.

The transformation of one human being by coming to really know and understand another is very powerful.  That is what the movie is about.  Whenever one group of people demonizes another group of people it can be traced to fear.  We hate what we are afraid of.  We despise those we do not understand.  Armies are trained to make the enemy less than human so they can destroy them without hesitation.  This movie show the power of knowing another, learning about the other person, and seeing a stranger as a neighbor.

The movie is a testimony to the power of human goodness.

On the news this week is a tragic testimony to the power of human evil.  Thirty two people are dead in Virginia from a gunman on campus.  Last night as the story was unfolding I became angrier and angrier.  It is simply too easy for one person to walk onto campus and kill 32 innocent people.  It was too easy for him to get all the weapons he had at his disposal.  It was too easy for him to be in a place he did not belong.  It was too easy to move from the first crime scene to the second.  I was all too easy and it makes me so angry.

It should not be that easy to kill people.  Logistically it should have been more difficult to gather the weapons, get the ammunition, transport the weapons, enter the buildings and leave the buildings after shooting.  There need to be safeguards in place.

Psychologically and spiritually it should have been more difficult for the gunman to pull the trigger on the others- whether they were friends or strangers.  It should have been more difficult for him to kill himself.  Where did this young man slip through the cracks and land in a place that made it so easy for him to do this?  Who failed him?

I wish I could believe this would change something.  I wish gun control would be tightened because 32 people died yesterday but I doubt it will happen.  It is that same distance- the separation- the anonymity of the stranger that will let it pass without enough of us caring enough to demand changes.  It is so sad.

I just sit in awe.