Early Monday morning, shots rang out on the campus of Virginia Tech. Gunman Cho Seung-Hui, a Virginia Tech student, armed with a 9mm pistol and a .22 handgun, moved systematically from room to room in Norris Hall, a building housing faculty offices, classrooms and laboratories. As campus police reached the second-floor scene of the carnage, the shooting stopped. After taking 32 lives, the murderer then turned his weapons on himself.
Despite the constant media coverage of this incident, there are several lessons that most Americans will not learn from these events.
1. We will not learn that God is not the author of evil.
This Sunday, thousands of Christian churches across the country and the world preached on the supposed lessons of this tragedy. They no doubt spoke of how evil events are all a part of God's Divine plan, though it may be impossible for us to understand. They will not realize, however, that the end result of their thinking is that God becomes a monster responsible for every evil on the earth. They make God the originator of Hitler's Holocaust, Stalin's mass murder, Hussein's reign of terror, and Cho Seung-Hui's bloodbath. In direct opposition to Scripture, they make God the author of sin (James 1:13).
The events of Monday morning were not decreed by God. He did not cause this to try to teach us something. The Lord is not to blame for the deaths of these thirty two bright and promising men and women. These murders were the result of mankind's disobedience to God's plan. They were the work of an evil individual who lived his life in rebellion to God's desire for Him, the result of man walking in "his own ways" (Acts 14:16) and forsaking the way of the Lord.
The lesson we should learn from all this is not that God causes, plans, actively allows, decrees or predestinates evil. Rather we should learn that we are sinners by our very nature and that any one of us is capable of the same acts. We should learn that God hates sin and never causes people to sin to bring about His "sovereign will." We should learn that, despite our sinfulness, Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay for man's sin, was buried to put it out of God's sight, and rose again with the offer of eternal life to all those who trust in Him. This is the message that your "preacher" probably didn't preach last Sunday or any Sunday.
2. We will not learn that mass murder is the direct result of evolutionary teaching and legalized abortion.
Before the Virginia Tech shootings, the most well-known school shooting was at Columbine High School in Colorado. In that case, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered twelve students and a teacher, wounding twenty four others. What is often absent from the reporting of the incident is the fact that these two murderers felt they were furthering the process of evolution, survival of the fittest, by exterminating their weaker classmates. While this type of logic is repugnant to most of us, it is the inescapable conclusion of evolutionary thinking.
Are we surprised at these types of murders when every day thousands of the most vulnerable Americans, the unborn, are murdered in no less grisly fashion through the holocaust of abortion? Should it surprise us that our young people place such little worth on human life when our laws expose those most in need of protection to be killed simply for convenience sake? Shootings like those at Columbine and Virginia Tech are merely the fruit of a culture which allows, supports and glorifies murder of the innocent.
3. We will not learn that God has designed every man to be the protector of himself, his family and his neighbors.
Before the end of the day on Monday, another crime was being planned and carried out. Traitors to the security of our country and the authority of our Constitution were conspiring together to use these events as an excuse to strip all Americans of their rights of self defense guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the Constitution. These conspirators ignore the fact that 32 people were murdered despite an absolute ban on guns on the campus of Virginia Tech. These traitors refuse to acknowledge that murderers are criminals, and criminals, by definition, do not obey laws. This is why stricter gun laws will only serve to destroy the security of all law-abiding Americans, leaving them defenseless at the hands of criminals. Perhaps if some of the law-abiding students and faculty of Virginia Tech had been carrying their own weapons, this tragedy could have been avoided.
One of the heroes of Monday morning was Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor and lecturer in engineering science and mathematics. At age 76, Librescu held shut the door of his classroom while students escaped out of the windows. The Lord only knows how many lives were saved by this man of courage who gave his own life that others might live. Unfortunately, we live in a culture of emasculated manhood where such courage is a rare thing. Thankfully, Liviu Librescu was a product of a previous generation which more clearly understood the great sacrifice that is often required by men of good will to stop those with evil intent.
What a contrast was the reaction of most of the students who ran for their lives or hid cowering in fear, not caring what may happen to others. According to reports of eyewitnesses, when the shooting started, whole classes of students dropped from their desks to lay on the floor, passively hoping that the next bullet would not find them. Have we become so impotent?
How does one man with two guns kill thirty two people, mostly young and able-bodied, without any resistance? In a sense these people were murdered by a culture which teaches men to forsake their God-given responsibility to sacrifice their own lives, if need be, to protect others. Instead we are taught to respond to violence by laying down like sheep for the slaughter, waiting for police who only show up after the shooting stops. These young people are the products of their selfish parents, ungodly schools and apostate churches which teach them to be completely dependent on the government for their security and well-being. Imagine how history would be different if this generation had been called to fight the battle of Bunker Hill, the Alamo, or Iwo Jima? Imagine if these college students had been on United Airlines Flight 93 instead of Todd Beamer and Jeffery Glick? These men understood their responsibility and carried it out courageously. You wouldn't see them cowering under a desk or laying on the floor waiting to be shot.
But we, as a culture, will not learn these lessons from this tragedy. We will call on government to take away our liberty and give us more security, because we are unwilling to protect ourselves. As a result, we will have neither liberty nor security. We will continue to teach evolution as fact, despite its negative moral conclusions and lack of scientific basis. We will continue to devalue life by murdering thousands of helpless, unborn children every day. As a result, our children will believe that they and their peers are merely animals without dignity or purpose and will behave as such. And we will continue to say, "This is all a part of God's plan" and ask, "What is God trying to teach us in these circumstances?"
Or will you stand with those of us who reject this culture of dependence and fight for the godly principles of the dignity of man and the natural rights of self-protection and self-determination?
Richard Church is the pastor of the Friendship Congregational Bible Church in Friendship, Wisconsin.
