See No Evil
Three years ago, we had Seung-Hui Cho and Virginia Tech. Two years ago this past Valentine's Day, Steven Kazmierczak killed five students and wounded 18 at Northern Illinois University before turning the gun on himself. Last Friday, Professor Amy Bishop shot six colleagues in a faculty meeting, killing three, purportedly in response to being denied tenure. And early this morning, February 29, NIU students received a text-message alert warning that "There has been a shooting . . . suspect is apprehended and in custody."
The incident at NIU this morning was isolated, a quarrel between two students, but among many of my friends who attend NIU and the families of those who were killed, it raised all the familiar questions. What is causing this rash of shootings? Is it the video games? The television shows? Our government, which has more or less stripped us of our Second Amendment rights? James Alan Fox, a professor at Northeastern University, even wrote on The Chronicle of Higher Education's website of the need for more transparency and fairness in the tenure-application process.
Sure, it's all of these, in part. We are effectively not allowed to carry guns. Troubled students roam university hallways. Video games desensitize, by allowing the teen-aged kid behind the controls to slash and punch and shoot virtual bad guys (or to be the virtual bad guy). TV has all kinds of gore, blood, sex, and perversion. But clearly, there is something else, right? Clearly, there's some kind of underlying factor for all this violence, this death, this misery?
Yes, there is: "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." (1 Peter 5:8) It's the same adversary we've always been fighting, trying to distract us from his work by throwing us into a turmoil of finger-pointing and blame-casting and pain. This isn't a new evil, something worse than we've ever seen before. We may have permitted it to infect us in a way never seen before, but that's a different matter. That's our fault.
As with all things that are our fault, we have only one option. Repent. And, of course, "Pray without ceasing."
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I would also add that these universities are too large, impersonal, and anti-Christian. Education ought to have some relation to producing moral and spiritual order in students. The opposite is true. Young people become morally and spiritually confused during their college years. It is ironic that so many of them see college as a time to "find" themselves. Most simply lose their connection to the things which truly define a person's character: family, place, and faith.
The trouble makers are likely to be (a)insane as at Virginia Tech, (b)poorly qualified for college work, (c)without moral instruction from devoted parents and family.
#1 Amen!! Way back thirty years ago when I (unfortunately) attended state colleges and universities (in the "back woods" of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and in the rather conservative Fox River Valley of Wisconsin) many of the professors were quite delighted in throwing doubt and skepticism on every traditional belief or value. I expect the schools nowadays are worse in a number of ways: 1) more skepticism and doubt, 2) more emphasis on diversity (i.e. ANY ethical system is as good as the traditional Western one), 3) utter abandon of any realistic treatment of students as persons (partly by emphasizing the cult of radical individuality), 4) lack of any moral standards for students, 5) the attitude of most academics that they are the enlightened Brahman class and ought to be revered (not merely respected) by the common unenlightened masses, most especially the “bigoted and naïve” parents of the students.
Parents who love their children should not send them to public school or a liberal college or university—their children very likely will be scarred for life by the experience. It is to be expected that violence will occur on campuses that are moral and spiritual vacuums. One Milwaukee TV news network recently “broke” a story about the numerous sexual assaults of varying degrees—most notably rape—occurring on college campuses and being hushed by the campus bigwigs who don’t want their schools to have a bad reputation.
Of course, the schools with their amoral faculty and floundering, rudderless students could not exist as they do if it weren’t for the larger American moral morass.
One of my sons enlisted in the army right out of high school because he's intelligent enough to see 24 year-old college graduates too proud to work at "menial" jobs which they perceive beneath them. College means 4 or possibly 5 or even 6 years of additional childhood subsidized by loans. My youngest is working for me for no pay (for a year), so that in a year or so he can make $100 an hour -- quite considerably more than a wet-behind-the ears MBA is likely to make.
I think children are morally confused even before they head off to college but yeah things can get worse there with no parentl guidance. I hear where Mr. Gervaise is coming from-college does extend childhood out of his pocket. Sending your kids to the military extends childhood on ours.
"And early this morning, February 29, NIU students received a text-message alert warning that “There has been a shooting . . . suspect is apprehended and in custody.”
Is it leap year in 2010 or did the editors not catch it?
When these universities teach that truth is relative or that there is no truth you get these results. It runs much deeper than video games and television, its the destruction of the soul.