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February 12, 2012

Home > 2007 > JuneChristianity Today, June, 2007
When Tragedy Happens
After a massacre like Virginia Tech's, how we minister makes all the difference.




The basic facts were still being sorted out on the afternoon of the Virginia Tech shootings when we received the first press release from a Christian organization with an agenda to promote.



The deaths, we were informed, were "the result of gun control." This despite the fact that Virginia is among the least restrictive states in which to acquire firearms.

The agendas and self-promoting commentaries continued to pour in. The massacre was the fault of violent video games, several activists claimed—though there was no evidence that Seung-Hui Cho had ever played Halo 2 or any of its many cousins.

Others blamed the massacre on demon possession. That's not unthinkable, but it's also completely unfalsifiable.

News organizations were also eager to assign a cause for the tragedy. Stories and op-eds multiplied, calling for greater government expenditures in mental health, tighter government restrictions on guns, and increasingly elaborate security plans for public institutions.

But pronouncements like these fall short of answering the real question and invite us to look further. If it was mental illness that caused Cho's violent episode, was it because of some childhood trauma? Or a random twist in his dna? And if the episode was due to either cause, was it predictable or preventable?

Professionals had recognized Cho's mental illness, labeled it, and referred him for treatment. A judge had made it all official. Did that do any good?

The head of Virginia Tech's campus counseling center reportedly blamed the lack of a government social safety net for the apparent inability of campus officials to stop a disturbed person from acting on his violent fantasies. The propensity of some to locate responsibility for an individual's irrational acts on a government failure is appalling.

Indeed, the thought of implementing broad programs to prevent someone with a severe mental disorder from ever turning violent is both impracticable and prohibitively expensive. Solving yesterday's problem with tomorrow's social engineering is tempting. But focusing on yesterday and tomorrow keeps us from thinking about today.

Realism about Human Evil

We believe that CT readers—at least a significant portion of them—are focused on the present and on people's needs.

While the mainstream media were asking why and how questions, CT's online poll showed that relatively few of our readers (less than 10 percent) were interested in why Cho did it. Fewer still wanted to know how he could have been stopped, and only a handful were interested in political solutions that might prevent similar attacks in the future. Overwhelmingly, our readers wanted to know: How are Christians ministering in the aftermath?

What does this tell us? It suggests, first of all, that Christians are realistic about human nature and the presence of evil in society. We tend not to invest ourselves in utopian dreams of eliminating evil. Tragedies are going to happen. The human heart is profoundly wicked.

"There is no one righteous, not even one," Paul wrote in Romans 3. And then he linked up a concatenation of clauses from the Hebrew Bible to make his point: "All have turned away; … their throats are open graves; … the poison of vipers is on their lips; … their feet are swift to shed blood."

The Bible teaches us that the evil we see in others exists (with terrifying potential) in our hearts as well. This insight is fundamental to understanding Jesus, Paul, and Luther—not to mention ourselves.

Second, the overwhelming interest in ministry suggests that we refuse to be paralyzed by questions about free will and determinism. Those questions are worth exploring—both in their classic theological form and in the modern equivalents handed us by behavioral science. But the conundrum won't be easily resolved. The realities of human misbehavior cannot be reduced to a handy, either-or proposition.





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H. D. Schmidt

June 10, 2007  7:36am

Yes, America needs Jesus when it bleeds! However, where is Jesus when the "normal" bleeding of everyday goes on? America was brought forth, for a grander purpose by God Himself to once and for all, make this a better world with completely peaceful ways, other than with a horrendous war machinery the world has ever known. As a Christian, if one reads utterances by the Founding Fathers, one must be true to God Himself, and instead of furiously supporting America in its present actions in the world, but comdemn, when her guns roar all over the world, while morally things are falling apart on the very seem, in just about every aspect of life. America's materialism is rampant as never before. More American women now live with no man around than do; divorce is rampant! America uses 2/3rd of all illegal drugs and over half of prescription mood-altering and painkilling drugs of the world! America is a mass grave of millions of unborn! How than can the President bragg about America's goodness?

A.Yeshuratnam

June 10, 2007  5:24am

A nation and civilization that persistently offends God will feel the heavy hand of God's judgment. Relationship will fall apart. Wealth will become uncertain or decay. Children will be aborted or ignored. Depression and despair will become rampant. If that society pretends this is all normal and plunges ahead with business as usual, the misery will will only grow worse, or God may send a calamity so terrible that the nation and its people will think 9/11 was was only a small bubble. It is high time America returned to Mayflower days. It is high time Americans clamoured for Back to Jesus; Back to the Bible; Back to church' A.Yeshuratnam New Kowdiar Gardens TRIVANDRUM Kerala State India

Trevor

June 09, 2007  7:38am

We most certainly have an agenda when a whole society is bleeding; we evangelize: We bring the good news of Jesus into the world; because it is only Jesus who can heal a country. Ignoring this means that we put our own pride first and assume that by our efforts we can raise ourselves back up onto our feet, even bringing back up those who have no trust in Jesus. But, it is God who baptized Noah and his family and it is Jesus who baptizes nations. It is Jesus who raises up the broken and sets them back on their feet. When a nation is bleeding it needs Jesus.

Anonymous

June 08, 2007  12:34pm

Two comments. The first positive: The good Samaritan doesn't look at the cause of the evil which caused bandits to rob the poor bleeding man helped by Him. This article captures the way in which we must drop whatever we are doing and rush to the aid of the wounded. But this answer links deeply with the 2nd point, that we must, prophetically, consider why society is now so wounded, to give rise to "hate", because if we spent more time tending the wounds of others then we will be administering a medicine sadly lacking in contemporary culture.Jeremiah 14:19 (Read this passage for our society in the West): "19Have You, O LORD, completely rejected Judah? Or have You loathed Zion? Why have You stricken us so that we are beyond healing? We waited for peace, but nothing good came; And for a time of healing, but behold, terror!" So, dear contemporaries,What medicine is lacking?Jeremiah 30:13 "13'There is no one to plead your cause; No healing for your sore?" Except Jesus,so spread seeds now

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