I'll never forget watching the news of Saddam Hussein's execution break on a bright late December day in 2006, in my parent's compact living room which even back then, only 19 years ago, still seemed so much bigger.

I remember--having followed the conflict only loosely and knowing that Saddam was one of the 'bad guys'--feeling a celebratory vehemence rise up inside of me. Even through the analog to digital airwave conversion, across timezones and oceans, I felt a sort of wrath fulfillment by proxy.

I don't remember what exactly I said, watching the report with my dad that day. Only that I exclaimed my approval, bordering on glee.

My dad, in his soft and subtle way, rebuked me like only he could: "Ryd, he's just a human being. You shouldn't wish harm upon anyone."

A wave of shame, then displacing it, a righteous indignation which I kept to myself.

'But he did deserve it!', I thought. The man committed countless atrocities, ordered the deaths of political and religious opponents, and oppressed people with brutal force.

Thing is, my Dad was right.

There's no real defense for wishing harm upon someone, or celebrating their demise and pain. But it's also human nature. Our default 'ID' and neurological pleasure centers thrive on this primality.

And therein lies the fickle needle we find ourselves once again balancing atop here in September 2025. I didn't ever see Saddam Hussein hang by the noose.

But today while scrolling, I did watch a man holding public forum in our country get shot through the jugular, go instantly limp from trauma induced shock, blood spraying like I've only ever seen in practical movie effects.

Brutal. Traumatic. Convicting. Not to mention the concurrent school shooting today at Evergreen School in Colorado, where multiple students were injured, traumatized, and brutalized.

Just two weeks ago I sat in a classroom at St. Pat's school here in town, meeting with two teachers and a principal to talk about how we can better serve the youth in our communities. Before we sat down, one of the teachers shared she was awaiting a text or call to confirm whether or not all the kids and families she knew at Annunciation School in Minneapolis, on the heels of bullets ripping through windows as kids and staff were literally praying. One little girl named Sophia remains in the ICU with a bullet lodged in her head, the ultimate outcome, hazy.

Those kids and all those who have passed before them in school massacres were killed so young that the very thought carries a wrongness very few things do. There is one, and only one paramount common thread that connects all of these. (And while yes, I believe firearms need far better regulation, the guns are not it.)

It's humanity. The only thing we have in common. This one life we've all been given.

Charlie Kirk was 31. I'm 37. The older I get, these kinds of thoughts are sobering, leaving behind kids far too soon. Like this man did today.

Recently I was listening to a podcast about storytelling and the 'Four Turnings', a repeating cycle that can be seen throughout history.

Right now we're in the thick of (and hopefully backend of) the Fourth Turning. A crisis point. An emerging trend for protagonists here in this crisis moment is 'the ruthless hero', who will do whatever it takes to, setting moral boundaries aside, seek 'justice' or take out the 'problem'. In the context of most fiction, we'd likely be peering through the scope at an antagonist so reprehensible can't help but demand his demise, egging our hero on.

No matter your convictions, let us not confuse the fictive with the real.

Perhaps none of us should be surprised, but I believe that day by day, reel by reel, screen by screen and year by year, our ability to parse the value of human life and our unreality from the true is failing. Empathy is losing.

And we may just be losing minds as well as our hearts. Here's the hope. Even in all the scuttlebutt, argument, and ugliness these things bring out in us without fail everytime, that one commonality holds. We mourn, are angry, and are moved by our humanity. By the loss of it, both physiologically and psychologically.

We want the same thing, which is something we aren't promised on this side of eternity. A world of no pain and no death.Returning to the words of my father, 'we're all just human beings.'

We all only get one life. That life was never going to be easy.

But let's not squander or soil it by wishing for or acting toward the death of another, and teach our kids the same.

Let's choose compassion. Every single time.

Mercy over Judgement. Kindness over Wrath.

The latter is a simple invitation.

One that only Christ demonstrated perfectly.

As usual, the example to follow.

James 2:13