Fifty hearts will pulse no more

Early Sunday morning, Omar Mateen walked into a (gay) nightclub in Orlando and opened fire. Before police were able to get into the nightclub and kill Mateen, he had killed 49 people and injured over 50. For now, it is America's worst mass shooting ever.
And so the blame game starts. Many blame the gun, and call for better gun control. Many blame Islam, and call for banning Muslims from entering the country. Some even blame the lack of prayer in schools.
All of these responses are wrong. (OK, I like the idea of gun control, but it's futile until we can convince congress that they don't have to do the politically correct thing: avoid in any way offending the NRA.)
So how are we to respond?

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."
Matthew 5:43-44

The weak person will respond with hatred.
The angry person will respond with violence, not caring whom he attacks so long as he can restore his sense of being able to hurt others before he is hurt.
The intelligent person will work out who is responsible, and attack the responsible party.
But it is only the person who is strong, wise, and compassionate who can respond to this tragedy with love.

How can I love a man who murders 49 people?

It appears that Omar Mateen was an angry young man, with issues of mental instability. Needing to find certainty and truth in his life, it seems he turned to the internet and found the teachings of radical Islam to be what he needed. All too often, when we reject people, they find solace in extremism. When people are fearful, they turn to violence. This is what motivated Anders Behring Breivik to kill 77 people in Norway in 2011. It is worth noting, with ironic sadness, that Breivik called for the deportation of all Muslims from Europe.
Omar Mateen's father says that he was disgusted seeing two men kiss in front of his family several months ago. At least one witness has said that he visited the Orlando nightclub several times prior to the attack, sitting alone, drinking, and staring at the scene around him. We can only imagine how he was feeding his hatred for homosexuals during these visits. Just as we will poke at a sore spot on our body, Mateen had to go to the nightclub to keep his anger fresh.

Romans 12:17

A young man, lost, filled with hate and anger, which was fanned by radical rhetoric. And now dead. Even if we can't feel love, we can at least feel pity.
This is not to say that we do not mourn the deaths of his victims. They did not deserve the fate he dealt them on Sunday.
But when we let go of our own anger, our own hate, and look instead with compassion, we can see more clearly.

Love your enemies: a Christian concept?

We saw above where Christ taught us to love our enemies (it also appears in Luke 6:27-28), and Paul teaches us not to respond to evil with further evil. But Christianity is not alone in this concept: it appears to be a deeper truth that has been repeatedly revealed to us.

In the advice of an Akkadian father to his son, from about 2200 BCE, we find the following:

Do not return evil to your adversary; requite with kindness the one who does evil to you, maintain justice for your enemy, be friendly to your enemy.

In the Tao Te Ching, written no later than 400 BCE, we find two passages along the same lines (from Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way, a new English version by Ursula K. Le Guin, Boston: Shambhala; 1998):

49: Trust and Power
The wise ... are good to good people
and they're good to bad people.
Power is goodness.

63: Consider Beginnings
Meet injury
with the power of goodness.

Meanwhile, the Buddha teaches, in The Dhammapada:

130. All tremble at violence; life is dear to all. Putting oneself in the place of another, one should not kill nor cause another to kill.
131. One who, while himself seeking happiness, oppresses with violence other beings who also desire happiness, will not attain happiness hereafter.
132. One who, while himself seeking happiness, does not oppress with violence other beings who also desire happiness, will find happiness hereafter.
133. Speak not harshly to anyone, for those thus spoken to might retort. Indeed, angry speech hurts, and retaliation may overtake you.

(See also The Four Immeasurables.)
Sharon Salzberg, in The Force of Kindness, helps us understand these passages (p. 31):

Overcoming Cruelty
The psychological root that empowers a natural sense of morality is the compassion that comes from empathy. Through the quality of empathy we understand that suffering hurts others in just the same way that it hurts us. ... In Buddhist teachings, the image used to reflect this quality of mind is that of a feather held near a flame, and the way it instantly curls away from the heat. In just that way, when our minds become imbued with an understanding of how suffering feels, and filled with a compassionate urge not to cause suffering in others, we naturally recoil from causing harm. ... In contrast, if others are seen as objects, rather than as feeling beings, it becomes quite easy to harm them, even in awful ways.

Here we find so much wisdom. When evil people urge us to harm a particular group, they first dehumanize members of that group: make them objects rather than feeling people. Thus Hitler dehumanized the Jews to facilitate the Holocaust, and we ourselves dehumanized the Japanese in our response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We must be vigilant when our leaders seek to use the same tactic today to turn us against Mexicans, or Muslims. We must remind ourselves that we are discussing people, feeling beings, who want happiness just as much as we do, and feel pain just as much as us.
And speaking of Muslims, what does the Quran have to say on this topic? This is a little more difficult. Much of the Quran, like the Old Testament, speaks to harnessing the wrath of God to defeat our enemies. But we do find, in surah 42 (from the N. J. Dawood translation; emphasis added):

That which you have been given is but the fleeting pleasure of this life. Better and more enduring is God's recompense to those who believe and put their trust in Him; who avoid grievous sins and lewd acts and, when angered, are willing to forgive.

So how shall I respond to the tragedy at The Pulse?

Not with anger.
Not with hatred.
But with sorrow.
And with love.
And in closing, Mark Sandlin provides us with the perfect prayer.