Is
this a movement?
All
week I have been following the teenage students from Parkland who are
expressing their sorrow, fear and anger. I watched several students interviewed
by a CBS reporter. I saw others speaking at a rally in Parkland. 100 Parkland
students took a 4 ½ hour bus trip to Tallahassee and the Florida legislature where
they tried to meet (mostly unsuccessfully) with lawmakers and make their voices
known. A group of 20 (students and parents from Parkland) met with President
Trump in what was called a “listening session.” A packed town hall meeting broadcast
by CNN revealed poignant audience questions directed at a panel that included
the Parkland sheriff and a spokeswoman from the National Rifle Association.
In
all of this I hear a common theme: the Parkland students, who survived
this shooting rampage, want the madness to stop; they want to lead the change
that adults have been unable or unwilling to accomplish. The raw emotions, their
youthful idealism and passionate determination is startling and refreshing. It
has been generations since college students were the energy behind a protest
movement against the Vietnam War. I am not sure that I have ever seen high
school kids on the front lines of such things.
But
it makes sense. In Vietnam, it was the college-age students who were putting
their lives at risk in Southeast Asia. Today, it is the high school kids who
feel that their lives are the most vulnerable…who wonder if one of their mentally
unstable, depressed, loner, violent, fellow students will become unhinged and
roam the school halls with an AR15.
Is
it a movement? Is it a sustainable movement?
Some
movements fizzle out. Other movements that begin with promise don’t lead to the
intended hopes….such as the Arab Spring.
But
some movements have spirit and others have the Holy Spirit. The civil rights
movement led by a preacher, Martin Luther King, became a moral and spiritual
movement. “Am I my brother and sister’s keeper?” And after the resurrection of
Jesus, a small band of followers with no religious or political clout, began a
movement which became the Christian church.
Is this a moral and spiritual movement? Will we, in the Christian community, see it as such?
