Cook: A way to choose life over death

Volunteers hang banners around the perimeter of Marjory Stoneman High School in Parkland, Fla., to welcome back students who will be returning to school Wednesday two weeks after the mass shooting that killed 17 students and staff. (Susan Stocker/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)
Volunteers hang banners around the perimeter of Marjory Stoneman High School in Parkland, Fla., to welcome back students who will be returning to school Wednesday two weeks after the mass shooting that killed 17 students and staff. (Susan Stocker/South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP)

The state of Florida recently announced it would seek the death penalty against Nikolas Cruz, the accused mass shooter in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School tragedy.

Instead, the state should spare Cruz's life.

Not for his sake.

But for ours.

Executing Cruz would only answer his violence and killing with more violence and killing.

And right now, we desperately need to emphasize life, not death.

Yes, Cruz is deserving of death row. His actions reprehensible, wicked.

But at his core, Cruz's worst affliction is also our worst affliction.

Suffering.

We all suffer.

Cruz is human.

And to be human is to suffer.

To hurt.

To ache.

To wish the world around you was different.

Isn't suffering what Cruz suffered from in its most extreme and egregious form? Mass shooters do not act out because they feel secure and loved and at ease. Saying this may sound ridiculously simplistic, but it is imperative to remember.

Why? Because the dangerous temptation is to turn Cruz into a monster. To other-ize him. To dismiss. To turn him into an alien, a barely human criminal.

Doing so forgets the plain truth that whatever suffering is present in him is also present in us.

The doses are different.

The scales are different.

The amounts are different.

But his violent rage is on the same spectrum as our everyday anger.

His terror, our fear.

His extreme isolation, our loneliness.

So we must take care not to "pathologize" suffering, as Andrew Chapman of Nashville's Against the Stream meditation center puts it.

"How disconnected we are from suffering," he said. "How easy it is to just label [Cruz] as crazy."

To pathologize suffering is to criminalize or stigmatize or mystify it; we assume that Cruz's suffering is not related to ours.

Yes, he violated the boundaries of what normal and healthy and sane people do.

Yet his violation has its origins within the same fundamental and universal problem we all share.

Suffering.

We must come into contact with our own sense of suffering, the ways we harbor anger and fear and isolation. The way we cultivate enemies. The way we hold grudges and nurse wounds. The way we isolate.

Cruz's actions - however egregiously violent - spring from this same ground. All violence does.

So while punishing and condemning such criminals - from life without parole to death row - it will also help if we as a people can remember and touch our own pain and hurt.

Because doing so softens something within us.

And unites us to the plight and broken-heartedness of others.

These words are not meant to forgive Cruz. They are not meant to overlook the nightmare of pain that those families must now endure.

Not overlook.

But look harder.

In America today, there is a gun problem.

When we look closely, we see that behind the gun problem, there is a suffering problem. A crisis of immense suffering.

Young to adult, rich to poor, conservative to liberal, we all suffer in various and varied ways. The rise in suicide, depression and anxiety - along with mass shootings - tells us that such suffering has become epidemic.

It tells us we as a nation are not as strong as we may wish. Or as bulletproof as we may hope.

It tells us that the way forward is through a growing understanding of what it means to suffer, and how to find freedom and relief.

We must change the way we buy, sell and view guns in this country.

Even more so, we must change the way we view, treat and approach suffering.

This Saturday, local teenagers have organized a March for Our Lives as part of the ongoing response to gun violence and mass school shootings.

It begins at 10 a.m. at Coolidge Park.

The march is a way to turn suffering into action and community.

It is a way to choose life over death.

David Cook writes a Sunday column and can be reached at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook at DavidCookTFP.

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