VT Reaction

April 18th, 2007 by Jaybrams

I would like to preface this by saying I don’t think I have any clue what I’m talking about. All I know is that i get stirred up with this stuff… half of what i’m about to say is probably crap, therefore, i’m not going to flood my page with it (and it is long). If you want to read it, click below… if not, don’t worry about it…

Tragedy has struck again in form of the largest domestic massacre in the modern history of the United States. As the news broke and the story unfolded Monday, I realized just how cold and callous we have become as a nation. It was just 8 years ago that tragedy struck Columbine. I was 17, a year removed from high school going to community college. I remember now going to my morning classes (which was a rare thing), but as soon as heard I the news I was back home planted on the couch. I didn’t blink for the next several hours.

When I was first told, my exact words were “dang, thats not good.” And that was that… I went about my business, didn’t even take 3 minutes to check out any news sites. I went to the cafe for lunch a few minutes later, watched about 5 minutes of the tube but spent the next 30 chatting about work, exercise, church, with maybe an occasional glance back at the TV.

I know for the people involved and the people very close to the situation, the ripple effect of yesterday will be long felt. For the rest of the nation, I’d venture to say most of us never stopped down for more than 10 minutes to really look at what is going on in our country. For months and months on end, Columbine was the topic of discussion in classrooms, churches, offices, retail chains, sports bars and tanning salons. Within a week or two, Virginia Tech will be just another story to update on the nightly news.

25 similar shootings since April 20th, 1999… No other country has more than five in that span. Kidd Kraddick asked “Why America? If you’re the only house on the block that is having problems, you have to look at yourself and say ‘Why? Why in this house?’”

And we will never have an answer that satisfies.

Don’t tell me lives could’ve been saved had they handled the first shooting differently yesterday. Yes, that may have delayed the problem. But this guy was obviously emotionally unstable and if he was bound and determined, it was going to happen whether it was yesterday, today or a month from now. They handled it like 95% of campuses would’ve handled it. Things may change now, but the officials made a tough choice and should not be held responsible.

Don’t tell me it’s video games, violent movies, goth music, and stupid-ass shows like jack-ass. Have they desensitized the American youth? Absolutely. With a click of a button you can watch videos of actual suicides, random acts of violence and other disgusting montages that have played a role in the desensitization of America.

Don’t tell me its gun control. Perhaps we need tighter laws. Perhaps we should take a page out of Germany and Australia’s books. When they had similar instance many years ago, they began changing gun laws the very day of the shootings. We all know the cliche… “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Guns just make it alot easier. But the issue is still the person who has the gun. Those who cry “a right to bare arms” have very little knowledge of the original intent of the law. Our right is survival based… not pleasure based, and certianly not massacre based. But messed up people have messed up ways and have no regard for laws anyway… tighter gun laws do not keep this from happening. (BTW, this gun was legal)

And most of all, don’t tell me this country needs God. Every country needs God. You think we have a more displeasing culture than the rest of the world? China aborts millions of babies a year to control the population; Europe was a decadent region when we were still a mostly “godly” nation, and the Middle East is the Middle East. Yet you want to tell me this happens in our country because we don’t have God? No shit, Sherlock. But saying “we need to turn back to God as a country” is also naive and blind. (BTW, this young man, while a loner, attendended church and was according to neighbors “very helpful” when things were needed)

We live in a very fallen and very broken world. The truth is we can do very little to avoid these things on a wide scale. All we can hope to affect is those near us and around us.

We do this through a true sense of community. As Christians, we need to step up and really become a community, not for other Christians but for those on the fence, those who don’t know God, and those who know Him but hate Him.

I fail miserably at the last two. I have no problem developing community with my fellow Christ followers, I think it’s so vital in our Christian walk that we have Christ-Following friends who we can bounce things off of and learn from each other. But I tend to just be casual observers and acquaintances in the lives of the lost people I am around every day.

I feel like I am back in High School trying to figure out how to include the outsiders and the forgotten. By the time we’re adults, even the outsiders and the forgotten find ways of coping and dealing and looking like *fairly* normal people. We forget the pain and the hurt they may be going through and we tend to convince ourselves that “they’re adults, it’s not our responsibility to tell them how to live.” … And that’s correct, but we do have the responsibility and joy to let them know that there is a different way to live. A way that still has pain and still has hurt and doesn’t always offer quick fixes or complete understanding, but does give you a way to deal with the pain and confusion in life.

And I don’t know what this means for me other than I try to improve, I try to care (which is difficult sometimes), and I try to flood my life with God’s Word so I can be flooded with His compassion.

The VT Shootings didn’t bring this all out it me, it’s been brooding inside for a bit now. The events just gave me an avenue to get it all out. So, if I seem different, edgy, non-compassionate, and quick to snap… ironically, it’s because i’m fighting within trying to figure out where to go from here and how to show more compassion.

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