Tragedy X 2

Columbine. To hear the word is to hear the tragedy. We’ve analyzed, dissected, and discussed Columbine and come to our final conclusions as to why two boys, Harris and Klebold, tried to blow up the school. Why would they plant a bomb in the cafeteria, wait outside the building for the timed explosion (11:17 AM), and plan to shoot the students running out of the burning building? Had the bomb detonated, five hundred would have died in the cafeteria that day and who knows how many more running out of the school. (Authorities estimate as high as 2,150 deaths, had their entire plan succeeded.) Still, they shot thirteen to death and put bullets in twenty-three others. The results of the studies have shown the root causes:

Violent video games did it, or

Bullies who bullied the two did it, or

Movies did it, or

Sorry parents did it, or

Ostracism did it, or

All, or any combination of 1-5 did it.

These answers put the blame somewhere and, at the same time, everywhere. These answers also do something else—they put the blame where we can get at it and, we believe that if we can get at it, we can control it, then prevent it. We can pass laws on video games; we can curtail movies with our “R’s” and “NC 17’s.” We can send parents to classes and publish guidelines to report and eliminate the bully-boys. We can discourage cliques and encourage inclusion. The point is, with these explanations, we can fix it.

But now the truth is out—nobody bullied them and nobody ostracized them. Their parents were and are good people. Games and movies didn’t overly influence them. It doesn’t make any difference that we know now know the above items aren’t true because something about those five things makes us comfortable. And their being comfortable for us rests on an assumption we make—we assume (all evidence to the contrary) that we, as a race, are perfectible.

If we’re perfectible, then, if we can identify the causes, we can fix people. We can fix the games, the movies, the bullies, the exclusions, and the parenting, and as a result, fix people and rid them of the problem.

But there’s something wrong. Nowhere on the list of the Big Five is the answer lurking. The reason it’s not there is because we’re not comfortable with it. We’re not comfortable with it, because once we say, “Those five aren’t the answer, evil is the answer,” the discussion is over, “fixing” it is over, and discussing it is over.

The one and only answer is “evil.” And that’s why we don’t like that answer: who can fix evil? And if we’re born evil, then the discussions stop and the therapies dry up. What procedures do we have for an evilectomy? To what prestigious moral clinic can we go for that “surgery?”

Were Harris and Klebold “damaged?” Yes, but not by the bully-boys, the cliques, the movies, or the games. They were damaged as we all are damaged: ruined by the fall of man and thereby curved in on ourselves; bent toward evil (Gen. 3; Rom. 5:12).

Ephesians 2:2-3 declares their (and our) damage: “the sons of disobedience, among whom all of us also formerly lived out our lives in the cravings of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature [not, “by nurture”] children of wrath even as the rest . . .” It’s always been the way of fallen man to want control so badly that he resents it when he can’t. Man’s nature is not up for tinkering through public housing, better medical care, or education.

Although we don’t like to hear it, we need to: “The human mind is more deceitful than anything else. It is incurably bad. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)

Since we can’t understand it, how can we cure it? If we refuse the Bible’s statement that the heart is evil, then it becomes doubly difficult for us to see any need of a Savior, since we believe we have no inherent need. Since we refuse the Bible’s answer, man flatters himself by thinking that with some enlightened tinkering here and there, he’s malleable to the point of perfection. Ephesians 2 states that man is, by nature, not perfectible. Jeremiah has stated that the inherent imperfection is “incurable.”

By buying into the theory of his own perfectibility, such a purchase both flatters and blinds man to the truth of who he is and WHO he needs. When Christ died on the cross, He not only paid the penalty for our personal sins, but He also paid the penalty for our sin natures. The atonement was complete. Whereas our old nature is not eradicated at salvation (I Jn. 1:8), the believer is given the Holy Spirit to control it and he need no longer live under its domination. No longer does he have to be a slave to that nature. The Bible’s answer isn’t the best one; it’s the only one.

The tragedy of Columbine has doubled in the passing decade: first there is the tragedy of the event itself and now, ten years later, we refuse to understand it.

…Dr. Mike Halsey, Pastor

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