Virginia Tech and its crying need

The cover article of the 23 May edition of Christian Renewal magazine

It is no exaggeration to say that the effects of the April 16 Virginia Tech shootings were felt around the world. The sense of widespread shock was comparable, though to a lesser degree, to the 9/11 terrorist attacks or the Boxing Day tsunamis. Media coverage has been extensive and ongoing, even throughout Europe, Australia, and Eastern Asia.

The President ordered the flag on the White House lowered to half-mast and attended the university's April 17 convocation. Numerous other political figures have offered their condolences.

Universities across the United States and elsewhere have scrambled to re-evaluate their security policies. Students around the world have expressed their solidarity with the students of Virginia Tech using the slogan, 'Today we are all Hokies.'

Advocates of gun control wasted little time to make political use of the shootings. Meanwhile, opponents of gun control argued that the shootings proved that more people should be allowed to carry weapons.

Even the IRS, an institution not generally known as caring and gracious, has granted six-month tax extensions to anyone affected by the murders.

It has been interesting to watch the world's reaction to the shootings. It is no wonder that so many were so disturbed by them: never before has a university campus, a place described by some in the aftermath as a 'hallowed' place of education and personal improvement, been the scene of this level of violence.

Although horror might be the most natural reaction to events like these, thankfulness is an appropriate reaction as well — thankfulness that things like this do not happen more regularly. In some parts of the world, such as Congo, Sudan, Iraq, Sri Lanka, and parts of Indonesia and southern Thailand, there would be nothing uncommon about such a mass murder.

Worse yet, children are both the perpetrators and the victims of such crimes in many parts of the world as there are more than 200,000 child soldiers in Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere. These children have been kidnapped from their homes and villages and forced to kill and maim in the cruellest ways imaginable, their victims sometimes even members of their own family.

One of the most disheartening reactions to the Virginia Tech murders was also one of the 'official' ones. The university called a convocation on April 17, the day after the shootings, to offer those affected an opportunity to express their grief. One of the
convocation's featured speakers was Yolande Cornelia 'Nikki' Giovanni, an award-winning poet, activist, and author and Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech.

In the autumn of 2005, Giovanni had taught the shooter in a poetry course, but had him removed from the class because of his disturbing writings and menacing behaviour. According to an April 18 CNN report, Giovanni said she 'knew when it happened' that the shooter was probably her former student and 'would have been shocked if it wasn't.'

Ms Giovanni delivered a poem at the convocation entitled 'We are Virginia Tech', the full text of which is available here. The poem concludes: 'We are the Hokies. We will prevail. We will prevail. We will prevail. We are Virginia Tech.' As she delivered these lines, the previously somber assembly rose to its feet, applauded, and cheered.

In that dark hour, the assembly certainly needed something to cheer about; no one can fault them for that. What makes this response disheartening is that these words, which could fit just as well into Virginia Tech's fight song, were the best comfort offered to those grieving.

What all those affected by the murders, both those associated with Virginia Tech and those who are not, really need to hear is the gospel.

How can mankind be capable at the same time of both awe-inspiring good and such horrifying evil? How can this earth be so beautiful and yet at time so deadly?

Only the gospel can answer these questions. God created a perfect, beautiful world. He created man in his own image, in his likeness and called him to be a productive caretaker over all creation.

But there was a fall. Only the gospel understands the fall of mankind and explains its effect on the world. The great tragedy of our world is that perfection was made imperfect and immortality was made mortal. Beauty turned into horror, light into darkness, love into hate, productivity into destruction.

The crux of the gospel is that the fall has not left mankind without hope. Rather, through the work of Christ, the effects of the fall have been and are being reversed. Paradise will be regained, the heavens and earth will be made new, light and love will prevail over darkness and hate, and mankind can be restored. The gospel is tragedy undone; it is the perfect comedy (in the literary sense).

What else but the gospel can answer that most painful question, why? Why would this disturbed student slaughter so many people? Why, as Ms Giovanni asks in her poem, does a child in Africa die of AIDS? Why are innocent children are forced to become brutal killers? 'No one deserves a tragedy,' is her only answer.

But the gospel's answer is that God is working every single thing that has ever happened or will ever happen for his own glory and for the good of his people. In Genesis 50, Joseph was able to say of a situation as shocking and diabolical as the Virginia Tech murders: what you meant for evil, God meant for good. And it is only the gospel that can make such a claim of such a tragedy.

Although I know of no one who has expressed his thoughts in exactly these terms, the real question those affected by the shootings are struggling to answer is, what is my only comfort in life and death?

Only someone who understands the gospel can answer, with the Heidelberg Catechism: That I with body and soul, both in life and death, belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live [and even to die!] unto him.

There is no other comfort in life or in death, and the greatest tragedy — greater even than the shootings themselves — is that so many reject it.