This past week there were two tragedies that were in the news: The mall shooting in Omaha and the shootings yesterday at the YWAM Center and New Life Church in Colorado.

Both shootings were carried out by obviously disturbed persons.  The Omaha shooter wanted to end his life in a way that would make him famous.  He lost his job at McDonald’s and his girlfriend broke up with him.  He left a note saying, in effect, “Now I’ll be famous.”  The news media was happy to oblige him - his picture, story and suicide note were all over the media after he killed eight people in cold blood and then shot himself.

Not much yet is known about yesterday’s twin shootings at the Youth with A Mission (YWAM) Training Center in Arvada and New Life Church in Colorado Springs, 70 miles south of Arvada.  It is now known that the same gunman was responsible for both incidents. 

New Life is best known as the church founded by Ted Haggard, who was removed in 2006 in the wake of sex and drug allegations.  Brady Boyd came to the church as the new pastor in August.

The Omaha mall shooting and the incident at New Life were very similar.  A wacko with a high-power rifle walks in and starts shooting at people that he didn’t know for no apparent reason. They were very different in the outcome and the body count because in the New Life shooting someone took action to stop the killing.

In the case of the mall shooting, the gunman got off over 25 shots.  “He just kept shooting,” said one eyewitness.  One man was seen screaming for someone to call 911 before he was shot in the head.  Seven were killed on the scene, including the gunman, and two more died soon thereafter of their wounds.

Yesterday at New Life, the gunman walked into the foyer and started shooting.  Two teenage sisters, Stephanie Works, 18, and Rachel Works, 16, were killed. Their father, David, 51, is hospitalized in fair condition with gunshot wounds to the stomach.  Two others were injured in the shooting.

Unlike in the Omaha shooting, there was someone on the scene to stop the crazed gunman.  An armed female security guard confronted the shooter in the foyer and shot and killed him before police arrived.  Colorado Springs Police Chief Richard Myers and Pastor Boyd are both hailing her actions as heroic. 

The gunman was killed by an armed security volunteer at the church before police arrived, authorities said… Boyd said the security guard rushed the attacker, who didn’t get more than 6 feet inside the building, and “took him down in the hallway.”

“She probably saved 100 lives,” Boyd said of the guard. The gunman, he added, “had a lot of ammunition to do a lot of damage.”  About 7,000 people were on the church campus at the time of the shooting, said Boyd. Security had been beefed up after the shootings hours earlier in Arvada, he said.

When I was in college, I had a good friend who was a committed pacifist.  He steadfastly maintained that there was no scenario under which he would fight back and hurt or kill another human being.  I admired him for the strength of his convictions, but I didn’t agree with him then, nor do I now.

When is it OK to fight back?  If my family was threatened by an attacker, I would not hesitate to use force - deadly force if need be - to protect them.  But I’m not sure I can justify that position biblically.  My friend would use Jesus’ statement to Simon Peter in the garden - “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword” - to say God favored total non-violence.  I resorted to the story of the strong man recorded in Matthew 12, Mark 3, and Luke 11 that says by implication that a man is going to protect his family and property.  And the fact that Jesus used force to drive the money changers out of the temple.

Theological and philosophical debates aside, I just know that if I was in the building at New Life yesterday, I would be grateful for the heroic actions of the volunteer security guard who put her life in jeopardy to protect the lives of many others.