Jovan Belcher, Bob Costas and the Oversimplification of Complex Issues

This is a tough subject. I should start with that--if nothing else to remind myself that this is shifting sand on which I blog. It's much easier to come across as heartless than it is to be thoughtful, especially when the reality you are broaching is shocking and surreal. I acknowledge that. I think anybody who wants to be faithful to real-life stories of pain and loss has to acknowledge that their opinions cannot encapsulate the issue, and that is--in fact--the very point of today's blog.

For those of you who do not know, Jovan Belcher was a linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs football team who killed his girlfriend and himself last Saturday morning. Were this an anonymous individual committing this crime we would not have heard about it or cared; that's just the harsh reality; but in this case it has stuck in the public consciousness because of the celebrity. I don't think this is a bad thing. What is a bad thing is that instances of domestic abuse and murder don't always hit us like this. That is troubling. But it's also a little off subject.

Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images 

A day after the tragic events, NBC's Bob Costas used his 30-second halftime soap box during Sunday Night Football to speak out against America's gun culture in light of the Belcher murder-suicide. Understandably, Costas has taken a good deal of flack for his remarks from a very vocal portion of the American population concerned with the 2nd amendment to the Constitution--the one concerning a citizen's right to bear arms.

Photo by Evan Agostini / Associated Press

It seems to me the real issue here is that the first thing we talk about in light of a tragedy like this is "issues" at all. Everyone wants to make this about something: about guns, about mental health, about CTE (brain-damage related to concussions often found in football players). But all of these "abouts" only make abstract a very complex and real situation. Jovan Belcher was a complicated person. I know that because he was, well, a person. We are all flawed messed-up creations to varying degrees, and factors outside of us and within us push us in one direction or another. I am reminded daily that it is by the grace of God--and rarely, if ever, by my own will-power--that I am blessed to be in the life situation I am in.

Jovan Belcher committed a horrible act. That's a good starting point. The next step, however, is a difficult one. It is not to make unneeded assertions about the character of the person or the issues that led to the acts but rather to turn this whole mess around and run to the victims: to love on Kasandra Perkins' family, to love on Belcher's family, and to honestly say "We don't know why this happened to you, but we are crying with you and for you." I hope they feel that love and support today and in these days ahead. That is what matters most in the wake of tragedy, and that is how we keep events like these from repeating themselves.

I think this is fundamentally about community, which is not an issue but a context. Here was a guy who had a breakdown of community, a guy who couldn't see past his current struggles and when overwhelmed made the unhealthiest and damaging of choices. Whether he did it with a legally-owned gun or not is almost irrelevant, because a person who feels he has no choice, who cannot see any way forward, will go down that route one way or another.

Costas did a very human thing, which was to see these events through a lens with which he was familiar. It makes sense even if it is unhelpful. Costas understands that there is no such thing as an ethical handgun. Belcher committed his acts with a handgun. Ergo, the solution is to remove handguns from the picture. That is a simple step. In fact, it's way too simple. Here's a tip: if you find yourself confronted with a situation that's impossible to understand think twice about attempting to fix it with something uniform and simple.

Why did this nation do away with slavery? Not firstly because the people believed that the issue of slavery was bad, but because they learned to see the slaves as human beings deserving of the same kind of rights and liberties as any of the rest of us, and only then did they confront the issue. What we fail to see these days are the ways in which we are enslaved to forces outside of ourselves. Belcher was enslaved to a view of the world that could not see past his current troubles. It didn't matter that he was making a lot of money, because money couldn't solve his problems. It didn't matter that he had the support of his team, because the team couldn't fix his relationship. All that mattered was the complex situation in which he found himself and the only solution he could imagine: ending life. That's never an acceptable solution--I hope we can agree on that--but in order to avoid it in the future we need to avoid the vilification of issues and people and instead focus on how we can suggest options to others who may find themselves in a similar place.

Anybody who has done pre-marital counseling knows that conflict management is key to healthiness in a relationship, and one of the keys to conflict management is learning to see more possible solutions to problems. When you see more possibilities it is much easier to learn how to give-and-take. If there are only one or two possible solutions to a problem then the situation is much more likely to escalate. In the case of Belcher we don't know the psychology or the state of the relationship (and it would be rash to make assumptions that we do), but one thing is certain: Belcher made a choiceless choice to end a life. That is illogical, but so is all domestic abuse. You are never without a choice. The trick is to learn that.

So, my hope in the wake of the Belcher tragedy is that this dialogue becomes more expansive rather than more issue-specific. We need to start recognizing people who can see only one or two possibilities and we need to show them a wider perspective. Good parents do this often without even knowing it, which makes those who grow up without parents or suitable role models even more apt to see the world and their relationships in black and white. This is something we can fix, but it takes delving to the root of the problem. Ironically, arguing for gun controls after a tragedy is black-white thinking as well. We can do without it. Instead, let's build a community willing to find those who are lost and offer more options; only when we have addressed the underlying problems should we return to the issues. Often times, when the undergrowth is cleared we will find that the issues solve themselves.