October 12 marks 10 years from the date when eight people were murdered over a child custody dispute.

It was the worst mass killing in Orange County history. It still touches many lives in Seal Beach, including my own.

Dispatchers – The Hidden Asset

By Donald Shoemaker

A 911 call is answered by a police dispatcher. The caller is threatening to take his own life. The trained dispatcher does her very best to calm and bring helpful resources to the person. Then a gunshot is heard and there is silence.

This is the real world of emergency dispatchers. On October 12, 2011 a massacre occurred in Seal Beach, California. Eight people were murdered and one wounded at a salon over a child custody dispute. The event shattered the tranquility of this idyllic beach community. It was the worst mass murder in the history of Orange County.

Those who were on the scene, as I was for many hours, remember the police and fire personnel from many agencies, the Mobile Command Post, the helicopters, the news media, the local library turned into the Family Assistance Center, the professional counselors and chaplains, the Red Cross. But what about the dispatchers who played such a vital role?

West Cities Police Communications (“West-Comm”) serves the dispatch needs of three communities—Cypress and Los Alamitos and Seal Beach. It receives about 3000 calls a week, of which about 600 are “911” calls.

Dispatchers undergo significant training prior to assuming their role, plus on-the-job training. They must demonstrate calmness under pressure, control of emotions, empathy and compassion, and decisiveness. I respect their ability to be so excellent at multi-tasking. I say this as a pianist who can’t play the piano and carry on a conversation at the same time.

Lead Dispatcher Marie Pope says, “Our job can be stressful. We typically take many calls, deal with stressful situations and must endure the pressure of responding quickly and calmly in life-threatening situations. Since we can’t see what is happening, we completely rely on the caller to give us detailed information to complete our calls for service. We ask specific questions to get the information out to the officers as quickly as possible while keeping in mind their safety. Many calls emotionally affect us, but with our job we have to keep going.” Marie coordinates a trained peer support team available to dispatchers as they deal with some of the calls and incidents they handle.

The massacre of 10/12/11 would weigh heavily on West-Comm and is still vivid as the tenth anniversary of the tragedy approaches.

October 12 was an ordinary day in a calm community. Dispatchers were eating their lunches at their workstations and conversing between calls.

All that changed as the 911 calls flooded in. There was an active shooter at a community salon. Several calls were forwarded from the highway patrol (in those days calls to 911 from cell phones often went to the CHP first). People reported “shots fired.” “With only four dispatchers in the room and one of them working the radio—it was chaos, with a lot of calls and trying to determine what was really going on,” a dispatcher told me.

Marie said, “Our dispatch center assisted the officers with maintaining the crime scenes via the radio by calling for mutual aid and calling in additional personnel to assist, in addition to several other requests from the field personnel. Our job did not stop…we still had calls for service to handle and 911 calls coming in… all while managing our own emotions as to what just occurred. I personally checked on each dispatcher individually and made sure they were OK and able to finish out the day.”
The priority goal of the dispatchers was to get the bad guy. A dispatcher said, “We were able to get officers there and put out a description of the suspect and suspect vehicle so that the officers were able to find him and catch him. In those moments when the call is going on, you become very task oriented.”

(I can add that, with the help of witnesses, the first police responder was able to pursue the suspect vehicle and stop it just a couple of blocks past the church where I served as pastor—a short pursuit that ended with a nonviolent surrender.)

Among the first 911 callers was an employee of the salon who had locked herself in an office. “She was so scared, but she was able to provide good information on what took place inside the salon. She thought the suspect was still inside and feared for her life, but it turned out to be one of our officers that was there to save her. Just being on the phone with her during all her emotions will stay with me.”

The dispatcher continued, “Dispatching is a hard profession. We have many ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ in this job… I have learned to process and then compartmentalize the calls I deal with. Many of us are mothers, wives, sisters, etc., and you have to be able to go home to those you love, and often take care of them. Over the years I have learned to rely on my faith.”

“We did our best that day. Unfortunately, we could not stop what occurred inside the salon, but I like to think with our hard work at trying to get the information on the shooter and his vehicle out to the officers while dealing with all the hectic calls coming in made a difference. Due to the EXCELLENT police work of the officers responding to that call—they were able to stop and arrest the shooter before he was able to hurt anyone else.”

“I pray for all the people and the families that were affected on 10/12/11 – it was evil that came into our city and those people’s lives that day. As dispatchers, we played a small but critical part in helping that day, and the officers working that day are the true heroes.”

(NOTE: I could not have prepared this article without the support of the Director of West-Comm operations and the assistance of Marie Pope, Lead Dispatcher for West-Comm. I also was assisted by a dispatcher who chose to be anonymous. Quotes by Marie are identified as hers. Other quotes are from the anonymous dispatcher.)

Covid19 Vaccination Update

Not all agreed with my midsummer appeal “Get Vaccinated!” to put it mildly.

“With few exceptions, it’s time for Americans to get vaccinated.”

What might these exceptions be?

Medical Exceptions, about which I claim no expertise.
Religious Exceptions, for which I do claim expertise.
• Secularists who scorn religious exemptions should not be allowed to dominate this debate or ignore religious freedom principles.
• Members of various faith groups need to learn and utilize their own group’s teachings on vaccinations.
• Some sub-groups within Christianity promote an emphasis on divine healing. Most of these leave room for medical means. A few do not.
• I cannot think of any strong biblical argument against vaccinations per se. (Scripture passages like 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 refer to allowing our bodies to be used for immoral purposes, like drunkenness, gluttony and fornication.)
• Some have argued that fetal tissue from abortions is used to develop a vaccine. I have not found this a convincing argument for an exemption.
• An individual whose Christian sub-group opposes vaccination as a matter of doctrine needs to articulate and support that opposition with documentation and prove that he/she is a member of the group.
• Individuals whose denomination or local church do not take a position against vaccination (and this would be many, including me) would need to argue their position for themselves, linking their position to scripture or Christian teaching. You are on your own! You need to articulate in writing how your understanding of the Christian faith supports your conclusion about vaccination. I have heard of cases where your declaration alone would suffice, but you should expect to have to defend your view and be prepared for pushback.
• Be sure to consider the impact on your work or ministry or relationships that may occur from your decision not to be vaccinated.

Both of the above—Medical and Religious Exceptions—are the “few exceptions” I have in mind in my “bottom line.” Otherwise…

“Get Vaccinated!”

Bible Insight – A Practical Look at Creation
Based on the First Creation Account (Genesis 1:1 – 2:3)

I love the “Big Outdoors.” So I love the great “creation” texts in the Bible (the first two chapters of Genesis, Psalm 19, Psalm 104 and more). And I love the great hymns that reflect God’s handiwork in creation.

Having climbed Mt. Whitney (14,505’) and the tall peaks in Southern California, I can relate to the words of “How Great Thou Art!” –“When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur…” And I love to sing “All Creatures of Our God and King,” with words from St. Francis of Assisi (1225 AD).

Here I give a survey of the opening words of Genesis—the seven days of creation (using the New International Version). May they bless and benefit!

Genesis 1:1 – “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

The alternate explanation is this: The emergence of the earth and heavens was an unsuperintended product of time, energy, matter and chance. If this explanation is true, nothing in the Bible matters. There is no transcendent basis for morality. But if Genesis 1:1 is true, the rest of the Bible is commentary on living out the meaning and purpose of God’s creation.

Genesis 1:2 – “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”

It’s too early in scripture to take God’s spirit (ruach Elohim) as a reference to the Holy Spirit of the New Testament. This is God’s breath, his powerful force for change, going forth. God intends to bring order out of chaos. And I’m delighted to say he is still in that business—bringing order into the chaos of our lives and human institutions if we are open to him. In fact, the rest of the book of Genesis finds God blessing dysfunctional people and families and bringing order out of their chaos. When I think of this, I think of the chorus:

Something beautiful, something good;
All my confusion he understood.
All I had to offer him was brokenness and strife,
But he made something beautiful of my life.

Genesis 1:3-4 – “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.”

Now we get to the six days of creation. God begins with light. As with the rest of God’s creative acts, the light God created was good. In the New Testament, God brings light through Jesus, the true “light of the world” (John 1:1-9).

Genesis 1:6-8 – “And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.’ So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. God called the expanse ‘sky.’”

Commonly called “the expanse” or “the firmament”, the sky separates the waters below (which God gathered into “seas” so that dry land could appear—v. 9) from the waters above, which we call the clouds. As I write, clouds have moved in from the mountains to the north and the blue sky of the morning has been replaced by them—all this in “the expanse”. No rain, unfortunately.

This is the language of appearance—how things appear to us. It is not the language of science. This is a hot debate, but I’m convinced that many scripture passages are written from the standpoint of how things appear to us and if we read science into them we are introducing a foreign element that won’t work. See, for example, Psalm 19:4-6 – “In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other…” It is wrong to read a geocentric poetic scripture like Psalm 19 as the language of science (as Henry Morris does in “The Scientific Accuracy of the Psalms”) instead of the language of appearance.

According to the language of appearance, God set the sun and moon and stars in this expanse/firmament as well. Again, this is as we view things and not astronomy, which would put them far above the expanse above the earth.

This “expanse”, by the way, is still there along with the water above it. I can look up at night and see the Moon and Venus and Jupiter in it.
Psalm 148:3-5 – “Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars. Praise him, you highest heavens and you waters above the skies…for he commanded and they were created.”

Genesis 1:11-25 – The progressive sequence of life on earth is vegetation (the 3rd day), life in the water and air (the 5th day), and living creatures on the earth (the 6th day). At each step, God saw that what he created was good.

Genesis 1:26 – “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, overall the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’”

On the 6th day the highest and last of God’s creative work—humanity—was created. Only with humanity (“man”) does God consult with himself as to what he will do. Although all the creative work of God manifests his wisdom (Psalm 104:26), God’s wise thoughtfulness is underscored by this reference to God consulting within himself before he made humankind. Whether this self-consultation opens room for the Holy Trinity—I’ll leave that for others to think about.

God says two things: (1) he will make man in his own image, and (2) man will rule over the rest of living creation. Man will be God’s co-regent. It should be a rule of enjoyment, wisdom and care, not of greed and exploitation.

Genesis 1:27 –

So God created mankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

In this poetic triad we find three declarations:
• Man is made in God’s likeness. He resembles God in certain vital ways.
• The same truth is restated by reversing the points, for emphasis.
• God created man as male and female.

The third point, if it is a reiteration like the second point, provides additional insight into what it means to be God’s image bearers. Maleness and femaleness constitute (at least in part) what it means to be in God’s image.
If, rather than a reiteration it is a new statement, the third point underscores that mankind is a duality, and both poles of this duality are image bearers. It is not the man (or the king) only who bears the image, but the woman too.

Humankind according to God’s creative order is binary. Human gender is not a fluid, subjective thing with multiple possibilities. The contemporary statement that one’s gender was assigned at birth (passive voice, apparently arbitrarily by another person) is not a biblical option.

When Jesus explained the essence of marriage (Mark 10:6-8), he combined this thought with a lesson from Genesis 2:24 – “At the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”

Genesis 1:31 – Once “man as male and female” is created, God saw that his creation was “very good” – not just “good” but “very good.” We diminish our humanity if we fail to see this distinction.

One day in “Creation Week” yet remains—the 7th day.

Genesis 2:2-3 – “By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.”

This would become foundational for the Seventh Day as a day of rest for mankind. To put it casually, “God took a day off, and we should too!”

Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). A day of rest after a week of work is for our own good. It shows we are masters of our work; work is not the master of us. It shows that while we value our work, we do not worship it. We worship God and give him glory by being his likeness in the world, being co-regents with him in the care of his creation, and by acknowledging the pattern of work and rest.

We thank God for his kindness and grace, in making us and placing us in a world that is “very good” and in giving us a pattern for work and rest.

“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
What is man that you are mindful of him…?
…You crowned him with glory and honor.”
O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! – Psalm 8:3-5, 9