Human beings are capable of extraordinary creativity, compassion, and reason. Yet again and again, history is scarred by violence. We are left asking why the same species that can build cathedrals, compose music, or sacrifice for love, also invents weapons and uses them against one another. The question becomes sharper when we consider how often violence arises not from personal hatred alone but from differences of belief and ideology.
Public assassinations remind us of this contradiction. School shootings shock us with their senselessness. Random knife attacks on the street prove that violence does not require complex weapons to erupt. And war, the most organized form of violence, shows how entire systems can normalize killing, often without any hatred at all. Together these examples raise a sobering puzzle: is confrontation inherently destructive, or is it something that can be redeemed?
The urgency of the question lies in the fact that confrontation is unavoidable. To live in community, to hold convictions, to seek truth, inevitably brings us into conflict with others. How we approach that confrontation will decide whether it sharpens us or destroys us.
Assassination and Ideological Hatred
The assassination of public figures often reflects the darker side of conviction. A leader, activist, or thinker becomes more than a person; they become a symbol. To the one who disagrees with them, that symbol can appear as the embodiment of everything wrong with society. In such a moment, the assassin imagines that silencing one voice will change the world.
This logic is tragically flawed, yet it persists throughout history. The killing of figures from Julius Caesar to Abraham Lincoln, from Gandhi to political leaders of our own time, shows how individuals become targets not simply for who they are but for what they represent. Hatred fed by ideology can strip away the humanity of the person, leaving only an object to be destroyed.
At its core, assassination is not just an act of violence against a body, but a denial of the possibility of dialogue. The bullet says, “I no longer see you as someone I can argue with or learn from.” In this way, assassination is both a political act and a spiritual collapse, because it refuses to recognize the divine spark in the other.
Mass Shootings and the Collapse of Meaning
School shootings reveal a different but related tragedy. Unlike assassinations, which often have clear political or ideological motives, mass shootings in schools frequently arise from despair, alienation, or rage. The perpetrator is often someone who feels invisible or powerless, who seeks a perverse form of recognition by committing an act that cannot be ignored.
In these cases, violence becomes a substitute for meaning. The shooter may not hate each victim personally, but sees the act itself as a way to assert existence. What should be a community of learning and growth becomes instead the site of destruction. The absence of belonging or love in the life of the perpetrator becomes a wound inflicted on others.
The horror of school shootings is magnified by their setting. Schools represent innocence, the passing on of knowledge, the formation of identity. When violence erupts there, it strikes at the very idea of future generations living in peace. The collapse of meaning in one life cascades into the trauma of many lives.
Random Violence on the Street
In societies where guns are tightly controlled, such as Japan, violence sometimes erupts in simpler and more immediate ways. Random stabbings or knife attacks in public places remind us that it is not the weapon itself but the will to harm that drives destruction. The weapon is only the tool; the deeper issue is the condition of the human heart.
These acts are often harder to explain. They may not stem from ideology or from a long history of alienation like in school shootings. Sometimes they appear as sudden eruptions, moments when frustration, despair, or instability boil over into physical attack. To the victims, the violence is terrifying precisely because it feels so arbitrary.
Such incidents raise uncomfortable questions about the fragility of social bonds. If someone can lash out with a knife at strangers, then trust in the public space is shaken. The streets no longer feel safe, and the ordinary rhythms of life are disrupted. What holds people together in peace seems far more fragile than we like to imagine.
War and Duty Without Hatred
The battlefield presents yet another form of violence, one that is more organized and systemic. Soldiers often kill not because of personal hatred toward the enemy, but because of duty, orders, or survival. The system of war transforms human beings into units of a machine, making violence impersonal.
This depersonalization is its own form of cruelty. When killing becomes routine, when it is justified as duty, it no longer requires hatred. It requires only obedience. The enemy becomes faceless, defined not by individuality but by uniform. In such a context, people can commit acts they might never consider in personal life.
The cruelty of war is not limited to the battlefield. It spreads trauma through generations, affecting families, communities, and nations. The duty that demands killing in one context often returns as grief, guilt, and brokenness in another. War shows us that violence can be systematized to the point where it feels ordinary, which may be even more dangerous than spontaneous eruptions of rage.
Confrontation as Human Experience
Confrontation itself is not always harmful. It is part of the human search for truth. Socrates confronted his fellow Athenians with difficult questions, believing that discomfort could lead to wisdom. The prophets of Israel confronted kings and societies, calling them back to justice and mercy. In such cases, confrontation was not destruction but renewal.
The danger lies in the purpose and the spirit of confrontation. If confrontation is pursued to humiliate, to dominate, or to prove superiority, then it easily breeds resentment. The one who feels defeated may grow defensive or hostile. Instead of leading to growth, the encounter sows the seeds of future violence.
Healthy confrontation requires humility. It requires the recognition that even in argument, the other remains a person, not an enemy. Without this humility, confrontation quickly slips into pride, and pride is the soil where hatred grows.
The Spiritual Dimension
From a spiritual perspective, the role of confrontation is illuminated by the life of Jesus. He confronted the religious leaders of his day, calling them hypocrites and challenging their misuse of power. Yet the same Jesus also spoke with gentleness to the outcast, forgave those who betrayed him, and prayed for those who crucified him. His confrontation was never about victory for its own sake but about awakening hearts to truth.
The Apostle Paul echoed this balance when he wrote that truth must be spoken in love. Truth without love becomes harshness, a kind of verbal violence. Love without truth becomes sentimentality, unwilling to challenge falsehood. To hold both together is the spiritual art that makes confrontation life-giving rather than destructive.
The deepest mistake of violent confrontation is forgetting that God’s love and grace extend to all people, even those who appear faithless or hostile. To strike another in hatred is to deny that they too are embraced by divine compassion. Spiritual confrontation remembers this truth and speaks from it.
The Erasure of Humanity
Across assassination, school shootings, random attacks, and war, one common thread emerges: the erasure of the other’s humanity. The assassin sees only a symbol to destroy. The school shooter sees only a stage for despair. The attacker on the street sees only a body to wound. The soldier in war sees only a unit of the enemy.
Once the other is no longer seen as human, violence becomes easier. Pride, fear, ideology, or duty all contribute to this erasure. What begins as confrontation of ideas can degenerate into destruction of lives. The tragic irony is that in erasing the humanity of the other, we also erode our own.
Recognizing this pattern is essential if societies are to move toward peace. Confrontation will always exist, but it need not lead to dehumanization. The challenge is to cultivate ways of seeing the other as a person, even in moments of disagreement.
Toward a Different Way
The alternative is not to abandon confrontation but to redeem it. Dialogue, patience, and truth spoken in love can transform confrontation from a weapon into a tool of healing. Even sharp disagreements can become opportunities for deeper understanding when guided by grace.
This does not mean avoiding conviction. There are moments when silence would be cowardice. Speaking truth to power requires courage, and sometimes that courage feels confrontational. Yet when conviction is joined with compassion, confrontation need not destroy. It can call forth what is best in the other rather than what is worst.
The path forward requires a commitment to rehumanization. To see even opponents as bearers of dignity, to remember that God’s grace is not limited by ideology or belief, and to resist the temptation to let fear or pride turn confrontation into hatred.
The Call to Rehumanize
Violence is easy. To strike, to silence, to destroy, requires little imagination. What is harder is to see the humanity of the other when everything in us wants to deny it. The higher calling is to resist the erosion of compassion and to hold fast to the belief that every life carries worth.
This is not a call to avoid conflict or to erase conviction. It is a call to hold conviction in a way that does not destroy the other. To remember that even enemies are not beyond the reach of love. To choose dialogue, even when silence or violence might seem simpler.
The future of our societies depends on this choice. If confrontation continues to collapse into violence, we risk losing not only lives but the very possibility of living together in dignity. If, however, we can rehumanize confrontation, we may discover that even in our differences, there is a path to peace rooted in grace.
Image by Goran Horvat
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