Eve, not the Fall

I heard the news today that a girl I audited classes with for several semesters just got killed. After receiving the news, I browsed the internet to try to glean any scarce and coveted pieces of information from the vague reports (she left her apartment sometime after 1:30am to do work in the student government office, and was shot in a wealthy neighborhood a mile away from campus; police are calling it random, I am calling it weird).

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of reading a comment board attached to one of the news articles. It was terrible. People were using Eve’s death as a platform for venting whatever political beefs they had. They ranted about the discrimination of emphasizing the death of a beautiful white girl while other deaths go ignored. They ranted about the people groups they imagined were responsible for her death. They even talked about “the Carolina spirit.”

I couldn’t read much; I had wanted to learn about Eve, not their rants. On the afternoon that I learned about the death of someone I used to discuss philosophers with, the rants were simply disgusting.

But I do that. I don’t have many political rants, but hardly a death goes by that I don’t use as a platform to vent my philosophical/theological rants against no one in particular… against a fallen creation that can do nothing but accept death as a part of life.

Let me not do that tonight. There are plenty of things to be said about the press’s emphasis of the tragedies of the pretty, or about high rates of crime among various groups of people, or about the Fall and the repercussions of it that we must endure…

…but not tonight. Not now. Eve’s death does not speak to those things; we speak to those things and can relate any ol’ death to them. The only thing I know that Eve’s death is saying is… well… that it’s sad.

Let me leave it at that. Let me be willing to allow her death simply to be sad.