Anger has an edge in the United States. Maybe it has that same edge in other countries and their news media don't come forth with it like ours do.

But here, when a man gets angry, and he has access to firearms, violence happens in ways that alarm us in the spontaneous ferocity of what erupts.

Soldiers — unarmed, vulnerable men and women — were shot dead yesterday at close range by an officer whom they were told to trust. The shooter, if he indeed acted alone, was a psychiatrist.

What we don't know on this Friday is whether that doctor had the capability of firing the 40-some rounds that apparently were spent that early Thursday afternoon. Were some of the dead or injured in cross-fire in what became a gun battle?

In Florida, the next day, a man walked into an office area where he'd once worked and opened fire on those he found there. One died; several were injured.

In Southern California this week, a teen died after being shot in crossfire at a football game. In northern California, a week or so ago, a young woman was brutally raped by multiple young men and left shaking, stripped to the waist, cowering under a park bench. No gunplay there. But Oh, the damage.

What is happening to us? Where is the fury, the rage, the cold hatred coming from? And why do we kill? Where is the compassion for the innocent? Where are the heroes who will stand up for those who are so at risk?

I won't blame it on TV, on Hollywood, on video game producers, on the music industry, on the NFL, the WWF or the UFC movement. No single player can take all the credit.

And it's not political. Please let's don't go there.

Is it the economy? Maybe. But only in the way we'd say rain has something to do with crashes on the highway.

No, it's deeper — something that's probably been building for decades. We're not the nation we once were. The rest of the developed world looks at us in pity. They shake their heads and think about how they don't want to become what we are.

And the denial we live in as our Stars and Stripes flap in the breeze only makes the problem worse. Freedom isn't free.

The role God plays in a nation's life and identity is part of the missing puzzle portion that rarely comes up in news media reporting. It's buried deep in analysis of events like Fort Hood and the Florida shootings — if it shows up at all.

God's people must take notice of the need their country has for healing. And they must pray — repenting, as well, for the sin that so easily besets us. O God, have mercy on us.

This happens to other people.

He was a friend. But I hadn’t seen him in more than 20 years.

The era of Facebook and Twitter and other networking make it possible to connect with people you thought you’d lost touch with. We’ve all been there. You get that invitation to become a friend. You look at the picture. Yikes. Why has everybody changed?

Brian Randone and I had trained for a marathon together. We’d sung together – in the stairwell of the Chicago Avenue subway, in the dining room of Giordano’s Pizza near Water Tower Place.

He was always smiling – one of those guys who had such a presence of the Holy Spirit in his life (or so it seemed) that he could be standing at the counter in McDonald’s, look the clerk in the eye, and start a conversation about God. For me, it wouldn’t work. For Brian, it did. He was younger by several years, but I looked up to him. He just had that something about him.

When I’d been married a year or so, I got a cassette tape in the mail from Brian and it was his voice saying hello, then a bootleg recording began of a song saying, in a variety of ways, “thank you for giving to the Lord.” I think he was in seminary at that point.

I’m not sure when I first saw the news story. It eventually ended up in the Los Angeles Times, but I think it popped up first on AOL news or another search engine, picked up from a TV report or wire service.

I saw the name and thought, “Can’t be.” It sounded the same, but L.A. is a big city – lots of names, lots of people. So I looked real hard at the picture. And my mind tried to peel away the years from that photo to the college-age guy I’d run the streets of Chicago with.

He was under arrest for murder. And the murder, police said, had been beyond brutal. The woman who had been killed died slowly – tortured, the report said. Brian was the one who had called 911 about her death. When police responded, his answers to questions were strange enough that he became the prime suspect.

Reports said Brian had been living with the woman, Felicia Lee, for several months. He’d met her by the pool at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.

She had been an actor in porn films and had done modeling. In fact, her face and body were all over the news reports -- moreso than Brian's picture. Stuff like that sells ads. But I wanted to know why. How could my friend have drifted so far? Had he?

The news reports said he had been part of a TV reality show about handsome eligible bachelors. That fit what I remembered about Brian, sort of. He'd been a kind of star-studded type in the ranks of single men at Moody Bible Institute where we were students together. I can't remember if he was dating anyone while I was there. But I was only there a year, part of a grad program that later expanded to a larger course of study.

A web site called "True Crime Report" carried updated news about his trial and plea (not guilty). It also carried dozens of comments from people who had known him for years. Some said they couldn't believe Brian could ever do it. Others said it didn't surprise them in the least. The ones who weren't surprised were the ones who had known him most recently — mentioning alcohol, illegal narcotics, jealousy, temper, and overall bad sense of judgment about himself and others. Most mentioned charisma: that same something I'd noticed in him at Moody.

It took me a few weeks to get his booking number and details about how to visit him at Men's Central Jail in downtown L.A. When I got there on a weekday afternoon, I expected short lines because I figured people would be at work. I was wrong. The lines were long. And it was mostly women — older teens and twenty-somethings, some with children. There were Moms, too. The day I was there was a few days before Halloween. One kid was in a witch costume. A girl sitting across from me looked to be in her mid-teens, holding a toddler.

The arrangement was a lot like the DMV. Too much work for too few people. When it gets crazy like that, when the lines get long and tempers wear thin, the people waiting cease to be human. They're being treated like numbers, objects, barriers to the peace and quiet needed to get stuff done. So they take on the identity. They act like irritants to an overworked and underpaid staff.
It becomes the law of the playground all over again. Big kids against the little kids.

When you're face to face with people who hate their jobs and hate those who make their jobs harder than they already are, you're smart to say little and know what to do before you get there. Without knowing it, I was breaking all the rules. I didn't know what to do. I needed help. And that's irritating.

So I went 0-2 in the space of four days trying to see Brian. At my second failure, I got on the phone and tried getting some answers. I got few. But I did get the sense that seeing Brian had become less about him and more about me.

When I got home, I put the Moody yearbook down on the floor of my office, put the bail bond card I'd gotten from Jaime (parking garage entrance) by my Bible, and decided I'd pray for Brian a while.

God was at work. It was time for me to get out of the way.