Like all of you, I am sitting here endeavoring to make sense of the senseless and to reason my way through that which can only be described as horrifically unreasonable.
As of the most recent information, thirty-three people were killed today on the campus of Virginia Tech University. One of the people who died was a young man who, for reasons unknown, walked into one of the buildings on campus carrying a couple of handguns and opened fire on students and faculty, killing many before finally turning one of his weapons on himself.
I have no easy answers for people who ask “Why?” Theological platitudes and spiritual sound bites fall woefully short, as they always do. All that I have to offer is the broken heart of a pastor who believes with all of his soul that we live in the steadfast presence of an intimate God who weeps with us when we weep, who breaks and bleeds with us when we break and bleed.
Of course, I also live in the abiding conviction that ours is a God who specializes in resurrection, a God who loves to take hold of death and despair for the purpose of transforming it into new life and new hope. Not even the carnage of what took place at Virginia Tech is beyond the scope of God’s redemptive grace.
Allow me to share with you the content of my broken heart.
I am heartbroken that a young man, for whatever reason, would make the decision to wage such a starkly violent and deadly campaign. What would lead a person to such a dreadful decision? A mental collapse? An intersection of desperate circumstances? I’m sure that we will learn more about the shooter in the days ahead. But no amount of speculation or investigation will provide all of the details concerning the tragic mystery of a young man’s journey into mass murder.
I am heartbroken over this day’s news coverage and my own addiction to it. All day long, television reporters have interviewed people and officials, practically begging for information long before there was anything official or meaningful to say. I try to tell myself that these reporters are merely doing their job, that they are responsible journalists who are faithfully attempting to keep the public informed of a tragedy with national implications. I fear, however, that the reporters’ desperate and (at times) irresponsible prodding is an intentional appeal to the pathological voyeurism of our culture. To put it as simply as I can put it, violence is a seductive and addictive spectacle. Am I watching the news right now for the purpose of deepening my compassion and prayer? Or am I watching simply to satisfy my lust for more lurid details?
I am heartbroken for the families and friends of the victims, all of whom are attempting to process the profundity of this tragedy, even as I type these words. I have been praying for them all day long, even though I don’t know who they are. Prayer is strange that way, isn’t it? It is a discipline that enables me to experience spiritual intimacy and connectedness with people I have never met.
I am heartbroken for the police officers and medical teams and surviving victims who will no doubt be haunted by the painful and vivid memories of what they have seen today. I am praying for them as well.
Perhaps most of all, I am heartbroken by the horrendous distortion of God’s design for human relationship that today’s violence represents.
Tonight, I write as a heartbroken pastor in deep prayer. I am confident, however, that God will do what God does best. Where there is despair, God will be at work to generate hope. Where there is a need for community and prayer, God will open doors so that the church’s people might bring the ministry of Christ. Where there is brokenness, God will initiate a journey toward healing and wholeness.
After all, at the very heart of the narrative that undergirds our faith is the journey from a cross to an empty tomb, the journey from crucifixion to resurrection. With all of my heart and soul, I believe that our resurrecting God is already redemptively at work on the campus of Virginia Tech and in the homes of the victims’ families and friends. God weeps with those who are weeping tonight. But weeping is not the end of the story. Through divine tears, God is looking toward the redemptive future into which this tragedy will unfold and into which God by grace will lead us all.
Thank you for tenderly addressing this recent tragedy. All of us are in prayer for all the victims as well as the family of the shooter. Have we as society failed and ignored the mentally challenged to the point that they have no one to turn to in the darkenss of their lives? As far as the news media - they are doing their jobs - but at what cost!
God is there and here, consoling our hearts and minds as we pray for those that are alone and vunerable. Thank you Eric for your words of wisdom, putting words to our thoughts. God help us. God help us to open our eyes, our minds, and our hearts to those who need it.
Thoughtful and prayerful; thanks for that.
Eric…thank you for your words. Suffering from mental illness, I know all too well how confusing and dark life can become. As someone who has once put a gun to his own head, and begged God to make sense out of pain, I too pray for those who feel they have no hope.
How do we prevent the dark night of the soul from becoming violent rage? Are we as a society, immersed in violence, to blame? I feel for the victim’s and their families and for all in that community whose lives will never be the same. But my own experience has taught me about the redemptive and healing love of God. At the end of the day, that’s all we really have.
Hi Eric,
Heartbroken is a word I have heard so many times since this event took place. So many students and witnesses and parents have using it to describe their feelings. It got me thinking about it’s meaning while at the same time trying to put a label on my own feelings.
I was at work while this event was unfolding so I could only grab bits and pieces of the story as the day went on. On the way home, I found myself excited to know that I was going to be able to sit down in front of the TV and get the whole story. That excitement made me very ashamed. It sickened me because I knew that it was much more than legitimate information seeking. It was also that sick morbid curiousity rearing its ugly head.
I wondered why events like this or 9/11 or plane crashes or whatever the tragedy du jour is, captivates me and so many others.
Is it our way of avoiding the broken heart by simply becoming consumed in the barrage of information and images? or is it our way of coming to terms with it collectively as a human race instead of alone.
As our family watched that night, we were moved by the images of the students filled with grief and disbelief, at the same time. We were angered by the blame game already being played, at the same time. We were shaking our heads at the insanity of it all, at the same time. The unison movement of our hearts helped us to know that our feelings were valid, and by that when OUR feelings were moved to grief, we knew that that also was valid, even though we know not one person there.
In that way, the compassion and prayer that you mentioned above WAS deepened for me and my family.
I know though, that that was NOT my intended purpose for staying glued to the TV. That’s I guess where God’s redemption comes. He took a selfish and unhealthy “lust for the lurid details” and used it to bring us back to the realization of our most basic blessings. While we were ALL safe in our home, we realized that there were parents on their way to the campus not knowing if their child was alive or dead. While we were together in our pain, there were kids who had to cope with the fear and the shock and the grief without the arms of their families around them. While our family’s innocence is intact (despite the murder of my cousin last summer), the innocence of those students and faculty has been destroyed.
Many ask, where was God through this? Inside the walls of my house, God was busy making us know how beautifully we are blessed. That realization was proportional to our level of pain and grief and sadness.
Where will God be for the families of those who lost their loved ones? or those who survived it or witnessed it? Well,I think that if God is allowed to work in their lives as they struggle through this tragedy, He will bless them in much much deeper ways. Proportional to their level of pain and sadness and grief.
This brings me back to the question of a broken heart. Like a broken bone that is healing the wrong way, sometimes the doctor must rebreak it, set it straight and allow healing to begin.
Perhaps when our heart breaks, if we let Him, God steps in, sets it straight and allows healing to begin. The healing this time though is a healing that brings a sense of peace, a much deeper faith and a closer relationship with Him.