Only Christ Can Deliver Us From Black Days & Black Hearts
19 Apr 2007
I know you expect an article about Monday’s shooting at Virginia Tech. Well, what does one say about the worst shooting in US history? How do we make sense out of the senseless? Sorry preachers, but three points and a poem won’t do. There are no quick quips or catchy clichés that will make everything better.
We could look for a scapegoat. For instance, we could blame law enforcement. We could criticize real police officers for not figuring out real crimes as swiftly and ingeniously as television’s CSI figures out fictitious ones. We could blame the university’s faculty for not prognosticating the future and being there prepared to prevent what happened before it occurred. But the fact that human beings are not omniscient makes our scapegoating of law enforcement or Blacksburg’s faculty horribly unfair.
We could pretend that today’s college campuses are bastions of morality, and that Blacksburg in particular was the virtuous center of the universe. Yet, we all know the denigration of human life that is common today on America’s university campuses, where the theory of evolution is dogma, the sanctity of human life is viewed as antiquated, and things like abortion, euthanasia and stem-cell research are readily advocated. Why, then, should we be surprised when an almost fully indoctrinated college senior shows a blatant disregard for human life. Perhaps, the really surprising thing about Cho Seung-Hui’s dastardly deed is that it is not a more common occurrence on today’s college and university campuses—places where young people are routinely taught that life has evolved without purpose and to no end, is governed by the survival of the fittest, and may be justifiably taken from someone when deemed by others as expendable.
The postmortem psychoanalysis of Cho Seung-Hui has already begun. It will undoubtedly continue into the foreseeable future. Many are pointing to Cho’s writing of a violent play as a telltale sign of his murderous ambitions. If this is so, then Stephen King ought to be put under twenty-four hour surveillance. Others will attribute Cho’s evil deed to any one of a multitude of reasons proposed by today’s psychobabble; such as, his mother made him eat green peas while he was growing up. In the end, any explanation will suffice as long as it makes Cho out to be mentally ill rather than evil. After all, any admission of Cho’s evil forces us to face the evil lurking within our fallen race.
Gun control advocates are already lifting their voices to a glass-shattering crescendo in response to Monday’s shootings. “If guns were outlawed,” they argue, “this horrible incident would have never occurred.” On the other hand, the same argument can be made from the opposite prospective. If all of the students and faculty at Blacksburg were armed, Cho Seung-Hui would have thought twice before opening fire and certainly not have been able to shoot so many before being shot himself. Still, this is no better argument for everyone packing a pistol than the gun controllers’ argument is for everyone being prohibited from possessing one.
Guns are not the problem; people are the problem. Automobiles don’t kill anybody—they don’t drive themselves—but the wrong person can kill if he gets behind the wheel of an automobile. Likewise, guns don’t kill—they don’t shoot themselves—but the wrong person can kill if he gets his figure on a trigger. No one advocates the outlawing of cars, in spite of the fact that there are more traffic fatalities each year than gunshot fatalities, but many advocate the outlawing of guns.
This week’s terrible tragedy in Blacksburg has produced the same old cast of characters and the same old worn-out explanations that such tragedies always produce. It’s as though we’re willing to consider anything but the truth. What is the truth? It’s simply this: Tragic events like this past Monday’s are merely the inevitable consequences of a world in rebellion against God.
Contrary to popular opinion, what happened in Blacksburg this past Monday should be chalked up to sin and to sin alone. According to Jesus, the Holy Spirit is in the world today to convict the world of three things; namely, sin, righteousness and judgment (John 16:8). When it comes to sin, Jesus said that the proof of the Spirit’s case against our world is found in the fact that our world refuses to believe in Him (John 16:9). As long as we live in a Christ-rejecting world, black days can occur anywhere, not just in a place called Blacksburg, and there will never be a shortage of black hearts like Cho Seung-Hui’s. If our world wishes to rid itself of black days and black hearts, there’s only one hope of it ever doing so. Its only hope is to turn to Jesus Christ, who alone can deliver fallen humanity from black hearts and a fallen world from black days.
Don Walton
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