These mid-week blog posts are journal entries I made years ago. In this one, I tried to make sense of the Columbine School shooting in 1999 from the perspective of the theist, not the naturalist, and was written after this previous blog post of mine about theism vs. naturalism: http://scifichristianguy.blogspot.com/2012/02/case-for-theism-and-why-its-better-than.html
All of this is merely an attempt to
understand why two teenagers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, launched a mass
attack against their high school, Columbine, in Littleton, Colorado, that
resulted in the deaths of twelve of their fellow students, one of their
teachers, and themselves from self-inflicted gunshots, as well as many others
wounded physically, and a nation scarred with pain, grief, loss, and tragedy.
 |
| Image from http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19990503,00.html |
A
lot has been said about this tragedy already, and everybody has their
opinion. It has affected the whole
nation. Why did they do it? Weren’t there warning signs, and if so, why
didn’t somebody heed them? What will
happen now? Where does God fit into a
senseless tragedy like this? Everybody
seems to have an answer to these questions, as do I, but first, let me shed
some light on the naturalist’s view of this travesty, and why I think it is incorrect, for as I said before,
although there is more to this world than meets the eye, God did set this world
up with a series of rigid physical laws that actually do dictate much of our
existence.
If
this world were strictly physical, the way the naturalists believe, then none
of us are to blame for what happened, including Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold. In this model, the massacre was
just the outcome of the events that led up to it. We can’t blame their fellow students who
shunned them, or their parents, teachers, community, government, justice
system, media, or even the boys themselves.
Everybody simply acted the way they did based on their personalities
shaped by their DNA passed down from their parents and their past experiences,
like a row of falling dominoes.
Maybe
the parents should have been more aware, or should have tried to intercede with
their sons, but they didn’t. Maybe the
hate spewing German metal bands the boys idolized should have thought about the
possible negative impact their music might have on disaffected, unfeeling, and
unremorseful kids, but they didn’t, and used the usual artist’s cry of freedom
of expression, no matter what that expression might be, or how
irresponsible. Maybe the authorities
should have identified and heeded the warning signs of what was about to go
down, but they didn’t. Maybe the kids at
that school should have been a little more accepting of differences rather than
running in the usual cliques and treating these two human time bombs as
funguses, but they didn’t. Maybe Eric
Harris and Dylan Klebold really needed God in their lives, but they didn’t have
Him. In the naturalist’s view of things,
none of these things could have happened, because the chain of cause and effect
didn’t allow for “should” and “maybe.”
In the naturalist’s view, there was only one way things could
have turned out, and that is the way things did turn out.
So
no one is to blame in the naturalist’s opinion.
However, in my opinion, since I believe in God, and concepts of right
and wrong and responsibility, there can be blame. People must be held responsible for their
actions and the consequences of those actions, because the choice to do right
or wrong was not just cause and effect, but a God given ability to choose one
or the other. Why, even in the naturalist’s
world of cause and effect, there must still be societal structure, including
blame, responsibility, and laws, even if they are only man made, and part of this whole cause and effect chain. Each effect becomes a new cause
producing new effects. Certain causes
produced the effect of the Columbine massacre, and that bloody rampage became a
new cause producing new effects. What
naturalists will tell you is that, like studying all the aspects of horse
racing, all the causes and effects are predictable, if only we knew enough
information about what led up to them.
So
everything that happened after this worst school shooting in the nation’s
history was predictable according to the naturalist, and even I could have told
you the media would go wild, with constant coverage on the news examining every
angle possible in daily investigative pieces, even going so far as to send Dan
Rather, Peter Jennings, and Katie Couric to Colorado to report live across the
nation from the front lawn of Columbine High School. Political figures predictably used this as an
opportunity for sound bites about the state of America. Experts and social analysts launched attacks
on the bands the boys listened to and the violent video games they played for
hours, and the movies they liked, and anyone with half a brain could have
foreseen the artists who produced this stuff defending themselves and their
freedom of speech, explaining that they were not the cause, or to blame in any
way, issuing condolences to the hurting family and friends of the children who
were mercilessly slain. Howard Stern, in
his bluntly unfeeling callousness, created a huge movement to get his insensitive
butt thrown off the air when he made a filthy comment about the female
victims. Based on the past, I predict
that his popularity will falter, but only to a certain point, and then he will bounce back
stronger than ever, riding an underground wave of popularity as the king of liberal authority haters. I could have told you
that nutcases would have crawled out of the woodwork, calling in bomb threats,
committing copycat crimes, or claiming to have been involved when they weren’t. It was also easy to predict that some people
would turn to God.
So
when we ask the question, “Where does God fit in?” that would be a very good
answer. The way I see it, there are
several possible answers to that very question:
1.
Satan
is as real as God, and can and does manipulate this world.
2. There
are over 5 billion people on this earth, and horrendous tragedies take place
every single day, and have throughout history.
God and angels may live in heaven, and hell may be populated with Satan
and his demons, but man is somewhere between angels and demons, and is quite often
a bloody creature. Again, evil exists
because God gave us free-will to pick right over wrong, good over evil, and if
there was no evil here, and our only choice was to pick good, then what’s the
point of existing here? If there were
nothing here but love and good, then this would be a world with no pain,
suffering, or tragedy. Well, excuse me,
but isn’t that what the next life is supposed to be, in Heaven? This life is a primer for the next one, and
what we learn here, and the choices we make, will have an effect on where we
wind up in the afterlife, so we better learn well, and make wise choices. Wisdom can only exist when choice is present.
3. We
cannot understand God. I equate our
relationship to God to that of a fictional character’s relationship to his
author. Now, I’ve read a lot of stories,
and seen a lot of narratives on TV and in movies, and I’ve even written a few of
my own, and no matter how skilled a writer or actor is at breathing life into
a character and making him or her seem real, the simple fact is that they are not
real, not like we are. Fictional
characters in books only truly exist in the minds of the writers and the
readers, and are really nothing more than thoughts and ideas in the mind, and
physical words on a page. And like a
story created by an author, so too was this existence, this world, created by our
author, God. John 1:1 calls Jesus the
Word: “In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” If God is the author, Jesus is the Words he
used to create this existence, and we are his work in progress, but the book is
not finished; it is still being written.
We cannot understand God any more than any of our fictional characters
would be able to understand their own authors.
 |
| Image from http://booksncpl.blogspot.com/2011/10/metamorphosis-by-franz-kafka.html |
And
Gregor Samsa was in pain! The rotted
apple in his back was really starting to hurt!
With all the strength he had left, he tried to look up, but being a sow
bug, he couldn’t look up very far.
“Why
did this happen?” he shouted to his walls and ceiling.
Out
in the family room, he overheard his sister exclaim to his parents, “Listen, do
you hear? He’s starting in again with
that incessant bug chattering!” But
Gregor didn’t care. He wanted answers!
“I
don’t understand!” he shouted. “Why have
I become a sow bug? What have I done to
deserve this? Can’t you see I’m in
agony, God? I beg of you, please end my
suffering!” And so he remained there,
the apple in his back stinging, and he being able to do nothing about it. He sat there in silence for quite some time
in torment and misery, not only from the rotted apple, or his predicament of no
longer being human, but of receiving no answer from God for why these things
had happened.
Then,
when he had just about resolved himself to never knowing why this had happened,
he heard the voice of his creator coming from somewhere, but he knew not
where. It seemed to be all around him,
and even inside him.
“Oh,
Gregor, Gregor!” the voice said, “My poor, poor, tormented soul! As my creation, I love you! I really do! Don’t you know how much I really love
you? I created you as you are, a poor,
miserable creature, because that is simply what was required.”
“Required
for what?” Gregor shouted back, confused and angry.
“For the story,” the voice of
Gregor’s creator replied. “You see, the reason why
you are what you are, a human turned into some disgusting sow bug, is all for the
story. I am your creator. My name is Franz Kafka, and I am a writer; the writer of your very story
‘The Metamorphosis.’ You were created
simply to make a point about the plight of the common man, but more than that,
I’m just trying to tell a story and perhaps earn a living at the same time.”
No comments:
Post a Comment