VT Massacre—Who’s to Blame?
Posted on April 18, 2007
Filed Under Worldview |
Although man is deeply complex, that doesn’t preclude the reality that certain absolute statements can be made about him. The biblical Christian worldview understands that man’s heart is “desperately wicked” (Gen 6:5, Jer 17:9). Without the direct constraint of civil law and order or the indirect constraint of cultural pressures or a few other more complicated reasons, man left to himself with no constraints or negative consequences, will act out those sinful desires.
When a culture no longer believes this simple truth claim about man and accepts the notion that his heart is basically good, outbreaks of evil bring forth a rush to find something else to blame, for it certainly couldn’t have its genesis in the individual heart of man.
So it happened with Monday’s tragic slaughter of Virginia Tech professors and students. I listened to a number of broadcasts and read a number of articles and almost all of them are in the mode of finding blame outside of the one who pulled the trigger. This is the natural tendency when one believes that the murderer acted, not because of an inherently sinful nature let loose, but because something external to him brought sufficient cause to tip the goodness of the individual into doing something wrong. We are hearing an earful of this sort of thing. Not that we would deny the impact of secondary causes, but those secondary causes should be viewed in light of how they fail to restrain or bring about internal restraint of those natural tendencies.
There is another belief system at work as well and that springs from the Hegelian and Marxist perspective. This notion holds that all progress results from a crisis. In its classical form, Hegel used the conflict of the “thesis” and the “antithesis” as the necessary catalyst for giving rise to the higher and more desired “synthesis”—a new truth. In its modern, socialistic form, this perspective views any crisis or conflict as not just a necessity for progressive change, but it provides the “opportunity” for progressive change. That is why every tragedy or crisis in our culture today breeds an immediate feeding frenzy for those who seek to capitalize on it. Sometimes, when a natural one is lacking, a false “crisis” will be crafted to achieve the same results. We have some of those in process as we speak. So, we should not be surprised to see the VT tragedy used to gain ground in various political and personal agendas. Monday night I heard it used as evidence in the debate regarding illegal aliens. Yesterday, it was lack of gun control and a myriad of other things. Believe me, the blame game will continue until it has pointed the finger at everything and everyone in whom someone wants radical change.
It is very easy for our culture, once it buys a contrary view of man and life, to use a horrible and tragic situation like what occurred Monday as just the evidence needed to prove one’s point, whatever that point may be. Single acts are rarely sufficient to prove a truth claim and never sufficient to prove a trend. Christians should not use them in that manner either.
However, from a biblical worldview perspective, single acts do provide continued evidence of that which is already established as absolute truth. Although all of the tragic details have not yet been uncovered, let us not lose sight of the simple reality of it all. Evil lurks in the heart of man and it will erupt when it is allowed to act unconstrained.
When it does, that eruption can be breathtaking in its cruelty and leave, in its wake, not only physical destruction, but emotional devastation. As you know from Monday’s blog, I am dealing with the loss of a very dear friend at the moment and I sympathize deeply with those who are struggling to cope with this senseless and heartbreaking tragedy. You are the object of my sincere prayers that God will bring His peace to you in the midst of your sorrow.
(I am sending this blog out to the subscriber’s of the Truth Project E-newsletter. If you are one, forgive the redundancy, I just felt it was an important topic that I wanted to address with them as well.)
Comments
Leave a Reply
Comments are moderated and will not appear on deltackett.com until they've been approved. While we are eager to facilitate conversation by publishing most comments, we may withhold one from time to time if we deem it offensive, vulgar, overly personal, cynical, disrespectful, irrelevant, redundant or unnecessarily contentious. While we encourage you not to make others' misspellings and grammatical mistakes an issue of debate, please do your best to double-check your spelling, use correct capitalization, and use proper grammar.
Dr. Del Tackett is president of the Focus on the Family Institute and Senior Vice President to Focus on the Family. He is also the architect and chief spokesperson for Focus on the Family's The Truth Project--a nationwide initiative designed to bring the Christian worldview to the body of Christ.
Subscribe in a reader
© 2008 Focus on the Family. All rights reserved.