Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Mass shootings and the vocation of hero
Mass shootings and the vocation of hero
Apr 26, 2025 12:27 AM

If you wonder why there are so many mass shootings in America lately you might start by asking why you don’t know the name of Leo Johnson.

Seven years ago today, Johnson, the operations manager for Family Research Council (FRC) was temporarily manning the front desk at the organization’s Washington, DC headquarters when a terrorist entered with a handgun and 100 rounds of ammunition. As the shooter drew his weapon and began firing, Johnson charged the man. Although Johnson was wounded in the forearm he still managed to wrestle the gun away from him. (You can see a video of the incident here, and the post I wrote for the PowerBlog about my former colleague here.) The shooter later told authorities that he wanted to kill as many people as he could and smear Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their faces.

Johnson had been frequently awarded for being a loyal and dedicated employee and was admired by everyone who worked with him at FRC. Yet the certificates and “Employee of the Month” plaques were modest tributes to his true character, which few people fully recognized until Johnson prevented a mass shooting.

“The security guard here is a hero, as far as I’m concerned,” said Washington D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier, “He did his job. The person never made it past the front.” That is only partially correct. What makes Johnson a hero is that he did much more than his job—he fulfilled his vocation as a hero.

We often use the term vocation in reference to our careers or occupation. But while our jobs are a way—maybe even the most significant way—we serve others, the Biblical concept of vocation is more expansive. It includes all the roles in which we are called to serve and minister to our neighbors.

“The purpose of vocation is to love and serve one’s neighbor,” says Gene Veith. “This is the test, the criterion, and the guide for how to live out each and every vocation anyone can be called to: How does my calling serve my neighbor?”

Vocation is the specific way in which God calls us to live as a Christian in the world and serve our neighbor. For most of us, God is not likely to call us to the vocation of hero. Though active shooter situations are ing mon they are still extremely rare. We are unlikely to be called to the vocation of hero in as dramatic a way as was Johnson.

Yet while the probability may be low, we must be prepared for such a calling, and raise our children in a way that they aspire to be heroes. For potential heroes to rise to the call they must have cultivated heroic virtues, such as courage. As C.S. Lewis once said, “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality.”Young people especially need to aspire to roles in which they can develop and hone such virtues.

A few decades ago many young people in America had a desire to be an astronaut. But a recent survey found that kids in the US and the UK were three times as likely to want to be YouTubers or vloggers as astronauts (in contrast kids in China were more likely to want to be astronauts).

To be an astronaut requires developing self-control and ing fear of the unknown. To be a YouTuber merely requires a willingness to expose oneself before an audience. Guess which aspiration is more likely to lead to the formation of heroes and which is more likely to attract villains.

Indeed, the desire for fame seems to be mon motive for mass shooters. In 2015 an infamous mass shooter said,

I have noticed that so many people like [another mass shooter] are all alone and unknown, yet when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows who they are . . . A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone. His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day. Seems the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight.

Unfortunately, he’s correct. Despite efforts to minimize their notoriety, a murderer is about thousand times more likely to have his name be known than the heroic men and women who stop him. Think about the recent mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton and ask yourself, “What are the names of the people who stopped the killers?”

Chances are that you don’t know. If the media talked about them at all it was only briefly. The true “stars” of the horror reality show were the shooters. They are the ones who get the fame and attention.

Most heroes, of course, do not desire recognition. But what signal are we sending to confused, fame-obsessed young people when the villains name rings out while the heroes remain unknown?

Focusing on the heroes will not solve our country’s mass shooter problem. Yet by shifting the focus of our attention we can make a substantial change in our celebrity-obsessed culture. The names of the killers should be buried with them in their graves or traded for a number while they languish in prison. In contrast, the names of the heroes, men and women like Leo Johnson, should be widely known. We should show the best way to e famous is to heed the call to take up the vocation of hero.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Italy’s Tax Man Takes Aim at the Vatican
Kishore Jayabalan, the Acton Institute’s Rome office director, was interviewed by the Zenit news agency in an article titled, “Is Taxing the Church a Real Solution for Italy?” In the article, Jayabalan discusses the history of the Italian state and its imposition of property taxes on the Roman Catholic Church’s land holdings, residences and non-profit businesses. Sometimes in the past, particularly under Napoleonic rule and before the Lateran Pacts, the institution of property tax was often a subject of state...
Lord Acton and the Power of the Historian
Looking through my back stacks of periodicals the other day I ran across a review in Books & Culture by David Bebbington, “Macaulay in the Dock,” of a recent biography of Thomas Babington Macaulay. The essay takes its point of departure in Lord Acton’s characterization of Macaulay as “one of the greatest of all writers and masters, although I think him utterly base, contemptible and odious.” As Bebbington writes, “Acton, a towering intellectual of the later 19th century, was at...
Let’s Change Hearts and Minds (and Laws, Too)
Few clichés are so widespread within the evangelical subculture, says Matthew Lee Anderson, as the notion that our witness must be one of “changing hearts and minds.” In careful hands, the idea is at best ambiguous. At worst it reinforces the sort of interior-oriented individualism that allows for and perpetuates a blissful naivete about how institutions and structures shape our dispositions and thoughts. In less than careful hands, the phrase drives a wedge between law and culture by attempting to...
Integral Human Development
The Journal of Markets & Morality is planning a theme issue for the Spring of 2013: “Integral Human Development,” i.e. the synthesis of human freedom and responsibility necessary for the material and spiritual enrichment of human life. According to Pope Benedict XVI, Integral human development presupposes the responsible freedom of the individual and of peoples: no structure can guarantee this development over and above human responsibility. (Caritas in Veritate 17) There is a delicate balance between the material and the...
Obamacare’s Religious Rubes
The White House has a plan to mobilize prayer vigils in front of the Supreme Court in defense of Obamacare. It was reported that the administration met with leaders at non-profit organizations and religious officials who support the new health care law. The court takes up the constitutional test of the health care mandate in a couple of weeks. The mandate has now been challenged in 26 states. Cue the same stale big government religious prophets who confuse statism and...
Reagan, Whittaker Chambers, and the Threat to Freedom
Over at the Liberty Law Blog, there is an excellent post titled “Ronald Reagan, Whittaker Chambers, and the Dialogue of Liberty” by Alan Snyder. Snyder delves into the influence Chambers had on Reagan and how their worldviews differed as well. Many conservatives and scholars felt Chambers’ prediction that the West was on the losing side of history in the battle against Marxism collapsed after the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union. For many, the ideas of Chambers...
How to Love Liberty More Than a Libertarian Economist
I have a deep and abiding love for liberty—which is why I find myself so often in disagreement with libertarians. Libertarians love liberty too, of course, but they tend to love liberty a bit differently. I love liberty in an earthy, elemental way. I love liberty because I need it—like I need air and food—for human flourishing. In contrast, the libertarians I’ve encountered tend to love liberty primarily as an abstraction. Indeed, the most ideologically consistent libertarians I know seem...
Constitutional Cases and the Four Cardinal Virtues
Should virtue be a consideration in judicial decisionmaking? Indiana Law Professor R. George Wright makes an intriguing argument for why the four cardinal virtues could be useful in interpreting constitutional cases: Judges typically decide constitutional cases by referring to one or more legal precedents, rules, tests, principles, doctrines, or policies. This Article mends supplementing this standard approach with fully legitimate and appropriate attention to what many cultures have long recognized as the four basic cardinal virtues of practical wisdom or...
Is Work a Curse?
Is work a curse, a result of mankind’s fall from grace? Not according to the Book of Genesis. As Hugh Whelchel, Executive Director of the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics, explains, what Adam was called to do in the garden is what we are still called to do in our work today: Humanity was created by God to cultivate and keep God’s creation, which included developing it and protecting it. You see, we were created to be stewards of...
How to Steal a Bike in New York City
Edmund Burke didn’t really say it, but it still rings true: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. In a test of this maxim, filmmaker Casey Neistat tries to steal his own bike in several locations around New York City and finds that most people do nothing about it—even when it’s done right in front of a police station. I recently spent a couple of days conducting a bike theft experiment, which...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved