Sentinel Watch September 17, 2012 Issue

Why violence is not natural to men

Kim Korinek—St. Paul, Minnesota and Arbor Vitae, Wisconsin

Gabe Korinek

Questions about the relationship of violence and men are being asked in the aftermath of mass shootings in Texas, Wisconsin, and Colorado. A Time.com article points out that the vast majority of violence is perpetrated by men and that more needs to be done to address this condition. It reports that “men are nine to ten times more likely to commit homicide and more likely to be its victims” (Erika Christakis, “The Overwhelming Maleness of Mass Homicide,” July 24, 2012). 

Such statistics are a sharp rebuke for us to rethink our expectations, education, and biases about manhood. Violence is about extreme fear, but is not a defining element of true manhood. True manhood counters violence. 

We need to see what is behind the association of men with violence and challenge it. Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Do you not hear from all mankind of the imperfect model? The world is holding it before your gaze continually. The result is that you are liable to follow those lower patterns, limit your lifework, and adopt into your experience the angular outline and deformity of matter models” (p. 248). To get beyond matter models, we need to see ourselves and others in spiritual terms. We need to go much deeper than the body’s chemical composition, biological, and hereditary makeup, or social roles and gender issues.