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Practically before the last shots rang out at Virginia Tech, people were already trying to place blame. The school was blamed for not responding differently to Seung-hui Cho’s mental illness. The government was blamed because it needs better gun control. Movies and TV were blamed for creating a culture of violence. The police were blamed because they didn’t respond quickly enough. Lots of blame to go around, but none of it touches the real issue.
What happened at Virginia Tech, and at Columbine eight years ago, wasn’t something that the schools, the government, or the entertainment industry could have stopped. What happened in those schools, and in many other places across the country, was a failure of relationships. They were spiritual issues, not societal or governmental.
You see, God created us to be in relationship with him. While we are still on this earth, we are closest to our God-relationship when we are in healthy relationships with other people. We are never farther from our God-relationship than when we are in unhealthy, hurtful relationships. Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, and Seung-hui Cho were robbed of healthy relationships long before they made the decisions to commit the crimes that took so many lives. It didn’t have to be that way.
I remember hearing Darryl Scott tell about Rachel Joy Scott defending a disabled young man who was being picked on in school. After she died on April 20, 1999, that young man told about how Rachel had saved his life. His loneliness and despair had reached the point where he had decided to kill himself, but Rachel’s act of kindness turned his life around. Who might have turned Cho’s life around when he was in middle school? Could he have been reached in high school? We will never know, but rest assured, there is someone in your life who aches to know that somebody cares. Someone is ready to have their life turned around by an act of kindness.
God has asked all of us to care for each other, to bear one another’s burdens. If we all start loving the unlovable and reaching out to the disenchanted, we can make a difference. We could start by reaching out to the family of Seung-hui Cho. Yes, he killed 32 people before he took his own life. Yes, he was angry and violent. But his life was no less wasted than his victims’ lives just because he pulled the trigger. Virginia Tech has an “In Memoriam” page that lists Cho’s 32 victims, but just as in life, Cho is still on the outside, still feared and ignored. If we can learn to reach out in love and forgiveness to Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, and Seung-hui Cho, and mourn their deaths even as we mourn the deaths of their victims, we will go a long, long way to preventing another such massacre. Gun control won’t do it. Different rules for mentally ill students won’t do it. Only we will do it. Only we can develop relationships with those we don’t even want to be around. Only we can bring love and hope into an otherwise hopeless life. Only we can love and forgive, and in the process, change our world. |
