| Putting Modern Life in Perspective COLUMBINE:
"Why?" or "Why Not?"
Columbine was not the first fatal shooting rampage in a public school, although it is
the worst to date. The activated alarm at the Westside Middle School in Jonesboro,
Arkansas became the signal for two boys to open fire on their schoolmates. Eleven-year-old
Andrew Golden and thirteen-year-old Mitchell Johnson gunned down their classmates and
teachers in a premeditated assault. Afterwards, President Clinton said, "We don't
know now and we may never fully understand what could have driven two youths to
deliberately shoot into a crowd."
Since the president made that statement our nation has witnessed a barrage of violence
inflicted by adolescents. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold entered the juvenile court
rehabilitation program after being convicted of a felony in January 1998. They had cleared
their records by participating in an anger-management seminar and community service
program.
Klebold and Harris prowled through their school with guns and bombs on a killing spree
that left fifteen people dead. Our nation responded in shock, disbelief, outrage, and with
the expected and predictable explanations and blameshifts. Low self-esteem, cliques, guns,
barbaric music, a violent entertainment subculture, organic psychosis, and the parents
have all been blamed. An endless stream of empty statements has issued forth from every
quarter of the country seeking to answer the question, HOW COULD A THING LIKE THIS HAPPEN?
I will not attempt to offer another simplistic explanation for this tragedy. However, a
broad overview of life American-style 1999 may offer some clues.
No significant relationship necessarily exists between a man whose sperm fertilizes the
female's egg. Conception is often viewed as an inconvenience which may be terminated at
any time by any number of abortion providers. Once life begins, apart from miscarriage, it
stands about a 50/50 change of being aborted by the person carrying the child.
Should the child be brought to term he enters the world with a high likelihood of never
knowing who his father is. If he does know who his father is, he would be a part of a
privileged minority if he has a meaningful relationship with him, instead of a negative
one. If his father and mother are together, the statistics are against him in that his
home is likely to be ripped apart by divorce.
If a child is fortunate enough to be born into an intact family with a female mother
and a male father, there is a better than average chance the child will end up in daycare
to be raised by hirelings, Big Bird, and a purple dinosaur. Shuffled from place to place,
viewing endless hours of images shifting every 21/2 seconds on the television screen, the
infant naturally feels unstable and insecure. With surrogate parents and electronic
babysitters, the child learns that the world is an uncertain and unsafe place where his
ability to survive rests upon his becoming self-sufficient, trusting no one.
Coming of age, the child most likely will be sent to pre-school and then to a public
school. Here children of every imaginable capability and incapability are mainstreamed
together in one classroom. Here education is defined as helping the child discover
himself/herself. Perhaps that's why the NEA (National Education Association) has a
curriculum, beginning in the first grade, to teach children about homosexuality. The
teacher's goal is primarily containment and socialization. The Ten Commandments cannot be
posted. The child learns in school that he has all the rights and authority is a joke. He
soon comes to realize that laziness is rewarded to nearly the same degree as diligence. He
will be pushed forward whether he learns anything or not. Why should he seek for a level
of proficiency, much less excellence, since the outcome is always the same, no matter what
he does?
Early on the child is indoctrinated with the theory of evolution. The child comes to
understand that he is the product of time and chance, a highly evolved animal that happens
to share the planet with less complex life forms. He learns that creatures up and down the
food chain are driven by urges, appetites, and instincts. Since he is an animal also, it's
only natural to satisfy his urges and appetites. He may not be able to add and subtract,
but he will be well instructed on how to multiply outside of marriage. He may lack skills
in the ABC's but he will have a thorough understanding of STD's (sexually transmitted
diseases). The more progressive schools will even supply the contraceptives for students
wanting to put their newly acquired knowledge to use.
Seeing the meaning of life as self-gratification, the child matures in realizing that
nothing is denied his pleasure-seeking nature, except smoking cigarettes! This is about
the only immoral choice one can make in a day of permissiveness and tolerance like ours.
The child comprehends that all recorded history is wrong and must be re-written. All
the world's ills have been caused by the domination of strong, white, European males who
forced their culture on the peoples of the earth. As an American, the child is made to
feel he is somehow responsible for all the world's past evils, yet intellectually knows
that no one is responsible for anything. Revisionist historians have convinced him that
his forefathers were all fiercely brutal to the always peaceful, nature-worshipping,
native Americans.
It's O.K. to worship Mother Earth and one does homage by remaining childless. Anyone
having more than two children should be convicted of environmental rape because he is
depleting the limited resources of our hallowed planet. The child will know that one baby
whale is more precious than any ten homo sapiens.
The driving force behind his teacher's sociology is that boys and girls are the same.
All distinctions in roles and standards are the design of a patriarchal construct designed
to demean and devalue women. In fact, the only true evil left is to have a remaining
vestage of primeval conscience still intact whose convictions are biblically informed.
Should the child happen to be among the declining residue whose family still attends
church on Sunday, it would be extremely unusual if his religious education did anything
other than validate his religious beliefs, regardless of what those beliefs happen to be.
The music, message, and manner of ministry will almost certainly parallel and compliment
his self-absorption. He will never be challenged to turn his back on sin, self, pride,
lust, and the world. Everything will be presented in a positive light and he will be
promised blessing as long as he continues to stand for nothing. After all, the
significance of religion is to make one's self feel good.
The President, with Bible under arm, attends the same kind of church he does. Bill
Clinton's conduct teaches the child that morality is determined by individual choice and
that moral boundaries don't exist. Lying under oath has no consequences and truthfulness
may actually be counterproductive as one aspires to attain a position of leadership. Larry
Flint, Barney Frank, and Ted Kennedy run to the President's defense and the majority of
the American public is happy so long as the economy isn't damaged. Sex, of any sort, is
nothing more than what pushing someone on a swing used to be.
Recognizing that the killing of the pre-born is a given, now Oregon votes on killing
its aged. We call evil, good, and good, evil.
The destruction of moral absolutes explains why children have no moral compass. Given
what the Scriptures teach concerning man's depravity, we should not be surprised at recent
atrocities. "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget
God" (Ps. 9:17). The intelligent question that should be asked in relation to
Columbine is not "Why?" The only reasonable question to ask is "Why
not?"
—Harold Vaughan
Note: The idea for this article and a number of the statistics were gleaned from an
article by Bill Cripe. |
