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May
2007
Greetings,
It was mass murder that transcended Blacksburg, Virginia
and the families of thirty-two students and staff at
Virginia Tech who were killed. It reached the four
corners of the world. The victims ranged in age from
eighteen to seventy-six; they came from nine states,
along with Puerto Rico, Egypt, India, Indonesia, and
Romania. They were male and female, African-American,
Asian, Middle Eastern and Caucasian. “They were all
people who began a day little knowing it would suddenly
end their lives.”
One of the speakers at the memorial service held on
campus said, “This is not a time to seek easy answers or
to assign blame. It is, rather, a time to pray, mourn,
and reflect.” While this tragedy can perhaps be
partially explained by the easy accessibility of guns in
our society, by the saturation of violence in our
popular culture, by the fact that the visible signs of
Cho Seung Hui's troubled life could have been taken more
seriously, by concerns about university security, or by
any number of other things, ultimately there is no
simple explanation. And there are generally no single
causes for such horrible events.
A youth minister for Dare2Share ministries wrote, “The
shocking tragedy at Virginia Tech has got me reeling and
revisiting some old feelings. Eight years ago this week
I was in a church with six youth leaders promoting one
of our Dare2Share conferences. This particular
conference was on spiritual warfare and evangelism. It
was appropriately titled, "When all hell breaks loose…."
Then all hell did break loose. The Columbine tragedy was
unfolding twenty minutes down the road. Now it has
broken loose again, this time at Virginia Tech.”
Some people are asking, “Where was God?” Did it ever
occur to you that God is asking, “Where is your
godliness? Others are asking WHY? I want to say are you
kidding? Do you honestly have to ask why? As a society
we have removed prayer from schools. You can’t read the
words, “You shall not kill.” in school because it is
from the Bible. We have moved into an increasingly
secularized society. We allow teenagers to get abortions
without a parent’s permission. We distribute condoms in
school because boys will be boys. We allow pornography
to be sold and viewed on the internet all in the name of
free press. We don’t care what people do in private as
long as they do their job. Movies, music and video games
depict unspeakable violence, illicit sex, rape, drugs,
suicide, and satanic worship and we call it
entertainment.
God said, “You reap what you sow.”
“This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'Return to me,'
declares the LORD Almighty, 'and I will return to you,'
says the LORD Almighty.”
In Christ
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