The following is an article I wrote for next Sunday's Leonard Street bulletin. I thought I'd share it with you. I invite your comments.
Understanding What Happened
at Virginia Tech
The title of this article is overly ambitious. I don’t know that we can understand everything that happened April 16 in Blacksburg, Virginia. The numbers killed and wounded are greater, but otherwise it seems more of the same sort of thing we’ve heard too many times in recent years. Paducah. Jonesboro. Columbine. The Amish schoolhouse. Over and over again, killers have gone on “rampages” seemingly determined to go out in a blaze of glory and take as many innocent bystanders as possible with them.
What causes this kind of vicious, violent behavior? It is easy to blame the environment of violence in our culture. Everywhere we turn, we’re bombarded with it: movies, television, certain kinds of music, video games, as well as nearly every newscast and newspaper front page. Surely all of that exposure to blowing things up and blowing people away has some damaging effect on us.
We may be coarsened or desensitized by what we see and hear, but most people don’t get automatic rifles and start blasting away because they have been exposed to a violent world. There is something more at work in incidents like the Virginia Tech shootings.
Evil came into the world in Eden when the first man and woman made their unfortunate choice to disobey God and eat the forbidden fruit. Remember that fruit came from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil [Genesis 2:9]. Adam and Eve were so blessed in their paradise existence in the garden. Their whole world was perfect. Everything God had made was “very good” [Genesis 1:31]. However, there was just one problem – that one tree which had the potential to bring the awfulness of sin into the world. Greek mythology traces the existence of all life’s problems back to the opening of Pandora’s box. The Bible has a more truthful explanation. The first humans had the ability to decide for themselves whether or not they would obey God. The serpent tempted Eve and she made a bad choice. Adam followed her lead with his eyes open. He understood what he was doing and did it anyway [1 Timothy 2:14]. Since that time, the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve have continued to make bad choices which open the door wider and wider for evil to wreak its damage in the world. Adam and Eve charted the course, but we have all traveled down the same path. Romans 5:12 explains, Just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.”
We can be thankful that most of sinful humanity does not give in to evil to the extent that Cho Seung-Hui did in Blacksburg last Monday. I don’t pretend to understand the psychology of what was going on in that young man’s mind, but I see the fingerprint of the god of this world in his actions [2 Corinthians 4:4].
The good news is that good will triumph over evil. Forgiveness is available to every sinner who will believe in Christ, repent of his sins, and submit to the will of God. Baptism washes away sins. God is a loving Father who will protect us so that temptation can be resisted [1 Corinthians 10:13]. When we fail and give in to temptation, God is ready to forgive us as we repent and seek to come back to Him. The answer to all the evil in the world is found only in faith in Jesus Christ [John 8:24; John 14:6]. ...John Gaines
1 comment:
That was a good article. I wish there was some way to understand what happened and say this caused this so that in the future we can keep it from happening again. Unfortunitly that is not the way it works and the more cases like this I see the less I understand how one person can do that to another. In the end we pray for the victims and thier families, as well was Seung-Hui's family. They surly need our prayers at this time.
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