a culture of death

By now, you’ve surely seen some of the coverage about the shootings at Virginia Tech. I was stunned as the news went from one shooting to a mass murder. My heart still aches when I think about the deep trauma suffered by those who lost a loved one and those whose lives were spared.

Dramatic stories are beginning to come out about what happened. Liviu Librescu was an aeronautics engineer and teacher at VTU. The 76-year-old gentleman was also a survivor of the Holocaust. The professor blocked the door with his body while telling his students to jump out the window. He was eventually shot and killed.

There are already critics and finger-pointers looking to place blame. There will certainly be a time to reflect and inspect – but hopefully we will move beyond the immediate cast of characters and look at the deeper issues.

Issues like why we live in a culture that glorifies death and violence. Issues like why we allow toxic video games to pollute the values of our youngest minds. Or why we commercialize music that dehumanizes and incites.

Are any of these the immediate reason why a young man would kill so many? Probably not. But they do explain (in part) why we are seeing an increasing rate of these types of activities.

This is not a political issue; it is a moral issue. It sounds trite, but we really do need to promote a culture of life rather than death. As Christ-followers, let us do our part to hold out hope in the midst of despair.