The Violent Soul

This afternoon I pulled in front of the little pharmacy in East Berlin, PA to drop off two packages for UPS pickup. As I was unloading, my ears noticed the nearby church bells were playing a hymn that I’ve recently come to love and I thought it was an unusual selection to hear beautifully reverberating through the little main street of the town.

I paused to listen long enough to confirm that it was playing “We’re Marching to Zion (Beautiful, Beautiful Zion)” and I was filled with an urge to capture the sight and sound on video. By the time I put my packages down, however, it had stopped. And then another melody rang out–one I cannot quickly identify.

I pulled out my phone and held it up to video, pointing it toward the bell tower of the Zwingli United Church of Christ building, and I stood motionless filming and listening; the contrast of the passing cars against the backdrop of sound intended to ring out various forms of communication and beauty caught my attention.

Like stopping to behold a rose that attracts our sense of sight and smell, I paused in my hectic day to take in the sound and the accompanying sight. I was not bothering anyone by standing on the sidewalk pointing my phone and filming, and I don’t think there was anything else about my appearance that should have prompted a passing car to communicate a form of violence toward me, yet, I felt it.

At about second 20 in this short video, you can hear (somewhat) the abrupt sound of a man making a dog-barking noise out his window at me. (Actually, as I listen I know this is the point it happened but the true sound of the noise he made is quite obscured.)

Of course the contemptuous sound startled me as the vehicle cruised by on this Friday afternoon, and I didn’t react but simply stood there stoically and unashamedly capturing something I considered beautiful that I might want to share.

For those who take in the news, this marks the end of another week of extreme violences in our world. Most are aware of the war in Ukraine as well as the recent surge of violence in Israel and Gaza. This past week, I was in an online conversation about an unprovoked violent bullying incident in a high school, and two nights ago, there was a mass shooting significant enough to make non-local news, that took place in Maine.

When the violence and the videos from the Hamas attack in Israel first came out, there was one video where I heard the violent sounds elicited from the mouths of the attackers in the form of what I would call a war cry. At the time, I pondered the sound of violent bloodshed, thinking back to the first murder by Cain of his brother, Abel. God said that the sound of Abel’s blood had arisen to His ears from the earth, basically. And that prompted me to try to research various distinctive war cries of various people groups.

God then said: What have you done? Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground!
Genesis 4:10

I thought perhaps I would do a piece called The Sound of Blood, however, it became too difficult and time-consuming. I was interested in finding video of the sound of the Israeli “war cry” (I could not find anything particular) to counter-balance what I heard as a violent sound of a human tongue that was preparing to shed blood, manifested in the jihadi “calls” that were in that first news reel. I did find some¹ for any reader with deeper interest in this spiritual and sociological phenomenon of particular war cries. The first other distinctive war or battle cry that came to mind after I heard those from Hamas was the rebel yell from the Confederate south. I pondered a bit why people united to shed blood sometimes elicit a barbaric sound–like an attacking animal–right beforehand.

It seems that the spirit of violence seeks to vocally announce a human sound producing extreme fear in its imminent victim right before it takes human life.

In some of my listenings and research last week, I came across the meaning of the Hebrew word that is pronounced as “Hamas” and its unusual, if not prophetic, meaning of “violence/cruelty/injustice.” Along with this, I was reminded that God destroyed the world in the flood because the violence on earth had become too great.

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them.
Genesis 6:11

Later this past week, as I contemplated aspects of the bullying act of unprovoked, outright violence from one high school girl to another, I thought about mass violence in schools and how, often, those who perpetrate such acts have behaved in ways that show concern in others long before they manifest the violent attacks. And how should we/can we handle these type of young people that display high amounts of sociopathy and significant aggressions, lest we miss some signal that might have averted the potential for yet another mass violence attack in a school?

And this led me to watch a video on Columbine–so very long ago it seems–but I was no less horrified as when it happened to again see the video of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold wielding violent eyes and expression with a tremendous spirit of demonic aggression as they made eye contact into school video camera, right before their murderous spree.

Obviously, anyone reading this knows there is so much violence in the world. I’m not writing anything new or providing any quick fix to what makes the human soul capable of such violences toward strangers and innocent people, without any sense of shame or remorse. And I ponder the method, means and role that demonic entities have on the human mind and soul–whether as external influence or invited, demonic possession of one’s soul.

These days, we often turn to the psychological to explain such things, yet some acts seem explained no other way except by spiritual means.

Again, earlier today, I was simply standing on a sidewalk, alone, holding my camera up toward a church building, while the bells were playing a Christian hymn. Many cars were passing by, and in one of them, a man was so provoked at the very sight of me silently doing what I was doing that he violently made dog sounds at me out his window as he passed.

Who was that man? Does he have a mother or a daughter or a sister? What was going on in his soul that produced such a violent reaction and what was it he wanted me to feel? Why did he feel need to produce a vocal sound of contempt and thrust it out his window toward me, as I stood there taking in the beautiful, peaceful sound of bells sending out tidings of joy and goodwill to the community?