They Shoot at Mockingbirds

The real tragedy is the predictability. Of course, I'm referring to the shootings in Virginia Tech last week. This is not a criticism of the United States as the only place such things happen. This phenomenon has plagued Canada as well.

It didn't deviate much from the script: one lonely, angry man acting out his rage, going to a crowded place, and slaughtering as many people as possible. This done, the shooter turned the gun upon himself.

Many other commentators have had something to say about what drives such people, what precautions should be taken, etcetera. I prefer, in keeping with the theme of this blog, to view this through the lens of theology.

I am convinced that wrong actions come from wrong ideas. Most wrong ideas about the world we live in have corresponding wrong ideas about God. Can any such wrong ideas be shown in events like the one in Virginia Tech?

Let us be counter-intuitive and begin at the end. The shooter, probably wet with the blood of his victims, turned the gun on himself. One might infer from this that he was avoiding punishment.

Should this surprise us?

We have been culturally secularized. We are taught in our schools that it is o.k. if you want to "have beliefs" just so long as you don't take them too seriously. Faith is really inconsequential, we are told, because it "has been dis-proven by science" and is therefore an invention of man. Believe whatever you will, because none of it really matters.

What has secularism offered?

It has eliminated both the judge and the punishment. No God and no Hell. Heart stops, fade to black. Virtue or vice alike are both extinguished by the yawning abyss. What is the incentive to good, or the deterrent from evil?

Facing the police would be humiliating, but dying on your own terms, they believe, is somehow a last act of defiance, and a slipping away unpunished.

What about the slaughter of their peers?

Whatever the reason, these shooters take it upon themselves to judge their peers as unfit to live. With a cavalier attitude toward life, they do not shrink back from executing judgment.

How has human life become so cheap in their eyes?

Any informed Christian could tell you that the value of human life corresponds directly to the value of the One whose Image we bear. If you devalue a dollar, a penny drops proportionately. If you devalue God, human life is proportionately devalued.

Look at our attitudes toward abortion and euthanasia, or less profound, (but just as telling), look at our easy divorces and disposable friendships. People are now rated by their degree of usefulness, and once they are no longer useful, they may be disposed of.

Between society and these killers which it occasionally vomits up, the principle difference is this:
The person our society does not value, it turns its back on.
The person a killer does not value, he turns a gun on.