Three years ago, we had Seung-Hui Cho and Virginia Tech.  Two years ago this past Valentine’s Day, Steven Kazmierczak killed five students and wounded 18 at Northern Illinois University before turning the gun on himself.  Last Friday,  Professor Amy Bishop shot six colleagues in a faculty meeting, killing three, purportedly in response to being denied tenure.  And early this morning, February 29, NIU students received a text-message alert warning that “There has been a shooting . . . suspect is apprehended and in custody.”

The incident at NIU this morning was isolated, a quarrel between two students, but among many of my friends who attend NIU and the families of those who were killed, it raised all the familiar questions.  What is causing this rash of shootings?  Is it the video games?  The television shows?  Our government, which has more or less stripped us of our Second Amendment rights?  James Alan Fox, a professor at Northeastern University, even wrote on The Chronicle of Higher Education’s website of the need for more transparency and fairness in the tenure-application process.

Sure, it’s all of these, in part.  We are effectively not allowed to carry guns.  Troubled students roam university hallways.  Video games desensitize, by allowing the teen-aged kid behind the controls to slash and punch and shoot virtual bad guys (or to be the virtual bad guy).  TV has all kinds of gore, blood, sex, and perversion.  But clearly, there is something else, right?  Clearly, there’s some kind of underlying factor for all this violence, this death, this misery?

Yes, there is: “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” (1 Peter 5:8)  It’s the same adversary we’ve always been fighting, trying to distract us from his work by throwing us into a turmoil of finger-pointing and blame-casting and pain.  This isn’t a new evil, something worse than we’ve ever seen before.  We may have permitted it to infect us in a way never seen before, but that’s a different matter. That’s our fault.

As with all things that are our fault, we have only one option.  Repent.  And, of course, “Pray without ceasing.”

Share This