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It hit me that Jesus experienced all the hatred and injustice and violence that the leaders of this world could pour out on him, and he was also victim of the mindless hate and the violence of the crowd and the Roman soldiers who had nothing against him personally but who used him as an excuse to vent the hatred in their hearts. But Jesus did not take on and return their hate, and he did not let it change him from his course of revealing the Father's love, his love even for God's enemies. Love is stronger than hate because hate enslaves, and the decision to love brings freedom.

In Romans 12:21, Paul says, "Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good." We have seen many examples of this during the past week: people willing to work together; people and organizations being generous and supportive; and people praying and reaching out to others who are hurting. In many ways evil has been confronted with good.

I wonder if the capacity to overcome evil with good, to respond to hate with love, can filter into our lives, because we've seen the consequences if it doesn't. I wonder what mistreatment in our lives we need to respond to with good and what hate we need to meet with love.

Acknowledge the evil inside
The second thing I thought we should ponder is this: all of us have a dark side. In the paper there was a picture of a hand painted sign propped up against a tree in Clement Park. The sign said, "These flowers and prayers are for the innocent victims and their families, not for the two monsters that committed this selfish act."

One woman who was there to leave a bouquet of flowers saw the sign, and she whispered to no one in particular, "I want to give them to the monsters, too." And she left her flowers at another makeshift memorial.

I've been thinking long and hard this week and asking myself, Were these kids really monsters? No doubt, they did monstrous things. Part of me wants to say they were monsters because that makes my world fit together. If they are not like me, then my world can still make sense. But were they monsters? I don't know.

I do know that each one of us has potential for incredible good and potential for incredible evil. I don't think any of us would commit mass murder. That seems off the scale to me. But we also struggle. We, too, have incredible capacity for evil.

We would like to think evil is something outside of ourselves or only in other people. But when I look inside my heart, I discover evil is in me. Jeremiah 17:9 says, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure."

I also know these kids were not always monsters. In the paper this week I read about kids who liked baseball, kids who were exceptionally bright, kids who had friends of other races, kids that seemed normal when they were young.

But something went terribly wrong. Something turned them from normal kids to monstrous kids, and somehow these kids fed the dark side of their soul with the wrong kind of friends, music, books, movies, and games.

Value people over things
The third thing to think about is that this event should give us a better perspective on life. You think about the events of last Tuesday and suddenly you realize many of the things we normally consider valuable and chase after—money, possessions, cars, houses, success, and power—do not matter. If you stood at Leewood High School when the buses were coming in and you asked parents what they would give to see their kid get off that bus, they would tell you, "I would give anything in the world." Anything! What matters in life is people.

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September (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45