Covenant: A Reckoning to Shift the Paradigm

Processing the most egregious act of violence taking place mere minutes from where I spend my days and nights has weighed heavily on me, my school, my community, and our nation these past few days. The lives of six innocent people were taken in the blink of an eye at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, stripping away the untold value of three adults who had dedicated their lives to education—not knowing they would also be sacrificing their lives for this same cause—and three nine-year-old children who were cast to the dearth of mercy of yet another callous shooter.

If it wasn’t clear before, as these instances of horror spread to the backyards of the most fortuitous neighborhoods and back-alley boroughs alike, we are facing an unprecedented epidemic of deranged, confused, entitled, dissociated individuals who have lost sight of the value of human life: even the most innocent, yet-to-bloom, young lives.

Policymakers are motivated daily by their confidence in developing and advocating for necessary and tangible solutions to the biggest issues of our respective localities, states, nation, or world, but for the evil lurking around our public spaces and youngest classrooms, we have yet to find the solution. With respect to pragmatism, the tangible solution is not to outlaw guns, nor is it to embrace the status-quo. 

America has always rested on an extremely heightened sense of gratitude and pride in the nation–albeit, sometimes bordering on hubris leading to our own detriment and short-sighted perspective. However, this is no longer our state of affairs. We have lost all but a sliver of efficacy in government, and every day we lose another fraction of efficacy in ourselves as a people. 

Without our collective agency and ability to find solace in one another, who have we become and where do we go from here? Despite the treatment of political figures essentially as pillars of worship in recent years, the solution to bringing our country back in touch with reality does not rest on the shoulders of one president, one governor, one spokesperson, one activist, or one celebrity. The cure for our ailing sense of unity will take a wide-reaching paradigm shift either from the top-down or the bottom-up. No matter the final impetus for reform, we are nearing a breaking point and the emerging generation must be equipped to treat the wound caused by the deeply carved cut between our parties. The Band-Aid holding us together is hanging on by a very loose thread.

Feeling the impact of three less children in a community is a sentiment that bears no mind to partisan divide. I promise you; every human with any semblance of universal morality feels another piece of their heart chip away when such grief lands any family due to senseless gun-wielding.

From a perspective not yet marred by the undue influence of groupthink and party politics, I am not satisfied by the efforts of either side of the aisle. I do not yet have the answer to solve this epidemic, nor do I trust any one leader to surmise such a monumental solution. However, I am more than confident that if we came together–solidarity in the name of Hallie Scruggs, Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney, and the countess other children whose lives were taken from them in the most inhumane and tragic way–we could stop the horror that stems from hatred and manifests in cold-blooded murder of our world’s most precious and vulnerable.

I believe it is time for our leaders to adopt their own Hippocratic Oath and tuck away the ardent pride that diminishes our nation’s ability to come together and do no harm. We must shift the paradigm that has persisted into our modern-day. Safety, protection, and living without fear of tomorrow are not partisan issues–they are issues we are placing on the backs of our children if we continue to waste our days and unprecedented platforms on obstinate strife that strays further from consensus instead of toward it. 

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” It is time we heed the words of our presidential predecessor and realize that the strength, formidability, influence, and resilience of our country wane each day we wage war against each other instead of against the genuine perils that have the power to cripple us from the inside-out. While I will not pretend to yet know the most comprehensive and effective method to combat the ever-ensuing violence in our schools and communities, one thing I know for sure is that international predators–wrought with malice, corruption, ambition to seize the opportunity of a rapidly expanding power vacuum, and desire to extend their power across the world–are not wasting any time watching us fail to get our house in order.