Cho's World was rooted in a Christian Tradition
In the Aug. 26 Roanoke Times, reporter Duncan Adams had a news story that succinctly wrapped up what we knew about Seung-Hui Cho at that point, before the Virginia Tech Independent Review Panel released its final report. The article, "There was something evil aiding him," answered some old questions and highlighted some that have yet to be answered.
What really struck me, as a medievalist and researcher in the history of religion, was the section titled "Demon spirits" and specifically the comments of Pastor Dong Cheol Lee from One Mind Church in Cho's hometown of Woodbridge. Cho and his family didn't attend that church, but the pastor felt compelled to reach out to Cho on the recommendation of a neighbor.
Lee believes Cho was basically a good person but that he was possessed by the devil or some sort of "demonic spirit" when he murdered all those people. This raises a significant point, one thus far generally overlooked in the reporting about the events of April 16 -- the role of religion in motivating Cho to do what he did.
I suggested this in a June 6 commentary, "Cho's violent crusade ripped from the Middle Ages." Look again through this and the rest of the coverage of Cho's manifesto. Look how often he evoked God/Jesus. And look again at these new snippets: the Bible as Literature class that he felt so "content" in, his contact with a particular type of Christianity during his upbringing, how he told the literature professor, Nikki Giovanni, she was going to hell.
Reporter Adams may have been more right than he knew when he ended his story with: "During one session, Giovanni described having once eaten turtle soup. Students shared experiences of consuming other unusual animal fare. Cho's poem the next week lashed Giovanni and the class. 'He told us we were going to hell,' said [fellow student Tara] Marciniak-McGuire. During Cho's short, tortured life, he knew that territory well."
Cho's mental illness made him live in a world of his own creation, but that world was one with recognizable roots in the Christian tradition -- a world populated by God and the devil, in which they are both still active forces in the world; a world where Cho could choose sides in this struggle and think that he was doing God's work; a world where violence in the name of religion is justified because the stakes, one's immortal soul, are so high.
Cho likely thought himself to be a "soldier of Christ," like the crusaders; like the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda; like Eric Rudolph and Paul Jennings Hill, who killed to stop abortion. Mainstream Christianity does not -- and the vast majority of Christians may not -- condone such actions, but perhaps it's time to stop burying our head in the sand, pretending that such ideas aren't ultimately understandable, if still unfortunately familiar.
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Originally published in <em>The Roanoke Times</em>, 9/11/07
Source: <a href="http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/wb/xp-131592">http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/wb/xp-131592</a>
Matthew Gabriele
2008-01-08
Matthew Gabriele
eng
Cho's Violent Crusade Ripped from the Middle Ages
As a medieval historian, one rarely feels that his expertise can shed some light on a current debate. But I teach at Virginia Tech.
Now that the semester is over and there is time to reflect, I have been struck by how "medieval" the events of this past April seem -- both Seung-Hui Cho's violence and our collective revulsion to it.
In the snippets of Cho's "manifesto" that have been released to the public, there is rhetoric of (likely imagined) persecution of the innocent, violent defense of the helpless, and Cho's perception of himself as a martyr by appropriating explicitly Christian imagery -- Jesus himself, the cross, and even the torments the saints endured for their faith (burning like St. Polycarp, suffocating like St. Cecilia and beheading like St. Denis, etc.).
Even Cho's oft-repeated statement that "Jesus loves crucifying me" reinforces the idea of martyrdom, suggesting, as countless biographies of the saints have, that God triumphs through the martyr's sacrifice.
Taken alone, these statements might be interesting from a purely academic standpoint. Unfortunately, we all know what followed Cho's statements.
So, it's this combination of language and action that's most "medieval," since the essential elements of Cho's manifesto mirror Pope Urban II's speech at Clermont (in modern France) in 1095 that launched the First Crusade.
From what we can reconstruct of that speech, Urban first railed against the sins of his listeners. But then, when the hellfires beckoned, Urban offered them a way out -- a path to heaven.
Go to Jerusalem. Reclaim the land where Jesus was crucified and where he would return in triumph. This land rightfully belongs to us, Urban continued, so emulate the suffering of Christ and "take up [your] cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23).
Defend your fellow Christians who suffer under (an imagined) oppression by God's enemies. Become a "soldier of Christ" and destroy "the enemy." God would reward you with martyrdom if you died. Jesus. The cross. Suffering. Martyrdom. Defense of the innocent. Violence.
Cries of "God wills it!" rang through the crowd. More than 100,000 people, many of whom had never left their village, decided to walk the 4,000 miles to Jerusalem. Again, we all know what came next.
It's important to note that neither of the events of 1095 or 2007 "just happened." There are explanations, even if they're not comfortable ones.
Urban's message met a receptive audience because long-held ideas and traditions in the West came together just so. So too with Cho.
He created a mental world, which only rarely touched reality, drawn from our culture's obsession with violence and guns as well as a radical Christianity, likely generated by his upbringing and continued interest in the religion, witnessed by the number of courses on religious topics that he took here at Tech.
This particular Christianity isn't unlike that unleashed during the First Crusade, even if such language of violence can still be found at places in our own, modern society.
Cho's mental world divided everything between good and evil and called for the oppressed to rise and take vengeance. Cho's mental illness made him cross a line and act upon these ideas. Unfortunately, it did not generate the ideas themselves, though.
But just as Cho was, in a way, an heir to the ideas of the First Crusade, so too are the rest of us for, in addition to violence and intolerance, the First Crusade was also about peace -- true, lasting peace.
As conceived in 1095, the violent reconquest of Jerusalem would hasten the arrival of God's kingdom on Earth, an earthly paradise in which all would share.
Later in the Middle Ages, the influential thought of Joachim of Fiore changed this tradition, stripping away the violence that preceded this kingdom, saying that all would peacefully -- peacefully -- come together.
And just as Urban's vision has endured, so too has Joachim's. The world, without hesitation, now condemns actions like Cho's. Violence is not normative anymore.
If nothing else, the Middle Ages show us how the intellectual path we're on isn't the only one available. In 1095, 100,000 people thought that violence could bring peace. In 2007, Cho believed the same and the world cried out in horror.
Cho took one path from 1095 and the vast majority took the other. In and of itself, and in the middle of all this sadness, this is a reason to look forward with hope.
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Originally published in _The Roanoke Times_, 6/2/07
Source: <a href="http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/wb/xp-119117">http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/wb/xp-119117</a>
Matthew Gabriele
2008-01-08
Matthew Gabriele
eng
Peace in a World of Massacre
<i>What Jesus calls us to when we're most frightened.</i>
Mark Galli | posted 4/17/2007 11:35AM
<i>When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you."</i>
—John 20:19-21
Hiding is an inescapable part of the human condition, and it started early:
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden (Gen. 3:8).
In last Sunday's lectionary reading from the Gospels, we see a similar pattern. The disciples hide in a house behind locked doors, because they are afraid of the authorities who had just murdered their master.
After Monday's horrific massacre in Virginia, most of us will want to go and do likewise. We'll want to hide from God, from others, and from ourselves. The massacre disturbs us not because it's unusual but because it reminds us of the many slaughters inflicted on innocents everyday across the globe. It is a frightening icon of our vulnerability and mortality.
We are right to be afraid. The enlightened, scientific, rational ethos that pervades our culture hypnotizes us into believing that with every biomedical breakthrough and fresh psychological insight we are progressing as a species. That's a lie. Psychologists work mightily to shape relationships and convince us we really are "safe." But we're not safe. It's as simple as that. We're vulnerable. And we know it. And so we hide.
* * *
The man and woman hid themselves "among the trees in the garden." That pristine garden. A perfect garden. That spot "among the trees" must have been beautiful.
The disciples hid themselves in a house. They did not escape into the wilderness, but entered a home, a beautiful place of security, family, and love.
Some of us dash to an ugly place to escape our fears—into drinking or drugs or sexual addictions. Anything to dull the pain, to escape thinking about the things that frightens us. But most of us choose to hide in a beautiful place.
I have a friend who hides in busyness, productivity, and accomplishments. While at work, he rarely lifts his head from his desk—he's in e-mail and phone conversations all day. At home, he's mowing the lawn, sweeping the porch, repainting the bedroom, or doing the dishes. Accomplishments are beautiful things. A resume full of great deeds done is something to be admired. My friend gets a lot of deserved praise for his productivity.
But he admitted to me one day that he bustled about because when he stopped and tried to enjoy his garden in the cool of the day, he started hearing things—thoughts about his troubled marriage, his wayward kids, and his own mortality. He dashed back into productivity as quickly as possible.
Some hide in organization because they fear chaos. Some hide in spontaneity because they abhor the accountability that organization demands. Some hide in frugalness because they're frightened of poverty. Some hide in vitamins and exercise and a low trans-fat diet because they believe they can forestall their mortality, or at least Alzheimer's.
After this week, we'll want to hide. Some will hide in safety. This is a beautiful thing, something we rightly desire. We use helmets and seatbelts and stand in long lines to throw ourselves in front of metal detectors because we want to be safe. Maybe in the coming months, we'll come up with "more effective means of keeping our schools safe." No inconvenience, no humiliation will seem too great if it means safety at the other end.
Some will hide in the public's welfare. We'll debate whether there are too many guns out there, or not enough. We'll argue about how much freedom we should give up in the name of security. And we'll preach mightily what is best for the nation.
Others will hide in righteous anger at the failure of authorities to warn students. We'll demand accountability until someone's head rolls.
But wherever we choose to hide, we'll all be hiding from the same thing: our vulnerability, our mortality, the suddenness with which life can be snatched from us or our loved ones. Safety and public policy and righteous anger—these are good and necessary things. But they can also turn into places to hide, where we crouch in the dark, trembling and alone.
* * *
If hiding is an escapable part of the human condition, longing to be found is a universal human desire.
As children, we relish the game of hide and seek in part, I suspect, because it is rehearsal for the game we play in life. Most of us want to be hiders; we love to find secure places where the seeker can never discover us. Some of us are really good hiders, and it takes a long time to be found. After a while, we get restless and lonely, and we yearn to hear the magical phrase, "Olly, olly, oxen free!" — the invitation to come out of hiding and to rejoin our friends.
When Jesus appears to his hiding disciples and says, "Peace be with you," he is saying, "Olly, olly, oxen free! You don't have to hide anymore. You don't have to be stuck in isolation and loneliness and fear."
Then he shows them the wounds in his hands and his side, as if to say, "I understand your fear. I've been there. I've sweated blood in prayer. I've hung on a cross. I know what it's like to die."
This seems to me to be a word to Christians, who add to the many hiding places our culture offers an especially religious one. Sometimes we use faith to mask our deepest fears, to fool ourselves and our brothers and sisters into believing that, really, we are confident and bold in the face of death. This next Sunday we may smile and lift our hands in praise, never daring to suggest that we, too, have been shaken by the massacre of innocents.
Rather than scold us for shallow and fickle faith, Jesus comes to us today as he came to his disciples. But today he comes to us in his body, the church. He reveals himself again and again in the bread and wine, in his body and blood — the wounds in his hands and side: "I understand your fear. I know what it's like to feel vulnerable and exposed and to stare into death's face. You're not alone."
And at various points in worship, he offers us his peace, from the simple greeting we give one another—"Peace be with you"—to the benediction: "May the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord make his face to shine upon you; may the Lord lift of his countenance upon you and give you peace."
In this community, he encourages us to admit our fears, to confess our sins to one another (James 5:16), to come out of hiding and rejoin our friends in the fellowship of suffering. "You don't have to hide alone anymore. Olly, olly, oxen free!"
* * *
It would be wonderful to end here—such a note of hope and comfort! But Jesus does not stop here. Instead he blesses the disciples again — "Peace be with you" — as if he's about to tell them something really frightening.
"As the Father has sent me, so I send you."
Jesus was sent by the Father into Jerusalem, into Judea, into the very arena where authorities came to despise and finally kill him. And he tells the disciples that the very thing that frightens them and has compelled them to hide—well, that's the place he is sending them.
If hiding from fear is the universal human condition, then stepping out into the place of fear is at the heart of Christ's call on us.
In one scene in the HBO series <i>Band of Brothers</i>, the platoon assaults a town the Germans are holding. As they begin the attack, the Germans unleash a torrent of bullets and artillery. We see two soldiers rush up to the edge of town and then fall behind a stone wall. The platoon leader orders them to move out, to storm the town. But they just sit there, grasping their rifles in fear. Finally, the platoon leader grabs them by their uniforms, pulls them to their feet, and shoves them out into the field of battle, into the place that frightens them to death.
That's what Jesus does to the disciples. The disciples want to hunker down behind closed doors, but Jesus grabs them by their discipleship uniforms and shoves them outside to face bullets and artillery and maybe even death.
We often wonder how we are to discern the will of Jesus for our lives, wishing he would write his will in the sky or whisper it into our ears. All the while, he is shouting to us through our deepest fears — "As the Father sent me, so I send you!" — sending us into the very situation from which he are hiding.
In the coming weeks, parents will be more anxious than ever about the safety of their children. Students will wonder if they'll ever feel safe again. And all of us will feel vulnerable and exposed to the sudden and arbitrary nature of death. These are the very places Jesus calls us to go into. The place may be a physical place, like a school campus. Or it may be an interior place, where one is called to face one's mortality as never before. But wherever the arena is, that's likely where we are called to venture next.
Make no mistake: There is no promise of safety in Jesus' call. As he calls us into the frightening arena, he points to the wounds in his hands and side, as if to remind us that we are afraid for good reason. It really is a dangerous world. It really does wound us. Eventually, it kills us.
But while he does not promise us safety, Jesus does give us his peace. "Peace be with you." This is not the peace of pleasant feelings, of course, but the peace that comes from knowing we are in God's purpose and presence no matter what bullets may fly around us.
The hymn "They Cast Their Nets in Galilee" describes the simple life enjoyed by John and Peter before they met Jesus — "before they ever knew the peace of God that filled their hearts brimful, and broke them too." Though John died homeless in Patmos, and Peter was crucified upside down, the hymn concludes,
The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod,
Yet let us pray for but one thing — the marvelous peace of God.
The world continues to groan as it awaits its redemption; wailing is heard from one end of the earth to the other. How much more blood must be spilled before the one who was mistaken as a gardener on Easter morning replants the new garden? God only knows.
In the meantime, we can know the paradoxical peace Jesus provides, a peace that gives us courage to face the very things that frighten us — until the day we find ourselves in a garden once again, this time with no reason to hide.
<i>Mark Galli is managing editor of </i>Christianity Today<i> and author of </i><a href="http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/product/469892373?p=1006327">Jesus Mean and Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untameable God</a><i> (Baker). This article was adapted from a sermon given at Church of the Resurrection, Glen Ellyn, Illinois, on April 15, 2007. You are welcome to comment on this article below or on Mark's <a href="http://www.markgalli.com/galliblog">blog</a>.</i>
Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today.
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Used by permission, Christianity Today 2007
Original Source: <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/aprilweb-only/116-23.0.html">http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/aprilweb-only/116-23.0.html</a>
Mark Galli
2007-06-18
Brent Jesiek
Becky Custer, Editorial Coordinator (bcuster@christianitytoday.com)
eng
Asking Why
<i>Christian fellowship helps survivors of the Virginia Tech shootings deal with larger issues.</i>
Deann Alford in Blacksburg, Virginia | posted 4/23/2007 09:50AM
<b>F</b>our former Columbine students worshiped with Virginia Tech's New Life Christian Fellowship (NLCF) yesterday. It was the church's first Sunday worship gathering since the April 16 massacre that claimed 33 lives, including gunman Seung-Hui Cho.
Christians were among the victims. Two NLCF members died, and 10 other victims were connected in some way to the church. Church leaders honored the dead, prayed for their families, and addressed why-and-how questions that went beyond forensics.
The four Christians who as adolescents survived the massacre at Columbine High School almost eight years ago traveled to the southwestern Virginia campus to guide church leaders and minister to students processing grief, anger, and sorrow.
Wendy Chinn, a counseling graduate student who leads NLCF's women's ministry, acknowledged that everyone is weary of the question, "How are you doing?"
"Some lost someone extremely close. Others lost an acquaintance," Chinn said to the almost 400 people and network television cameras in the full auditorium. "Others still had a class in Norris, lived in A-J [West Ambler Johnston dormitory]. We remember where we were when it happened. We all grieve very differently. We're all going through it together. We know this is hard, know it's going to take time."
Chris Backert, one of three NLCF pastors, referred to Mark 4, where Christ's disciples were caught in a boat during a storm. "We have all been through a storm. Why was it her? Why was it him? It could have been me." Backert noted that Jesus did not cause the storm. All the world's evil, he said, is sin that results when people choose to rebel against God. "When that tragedy strikes us, it also strikes God."
Congregation members submitted written questions asking whether Monday's massacre was part of God's plan, what forgiveness of Cho would look like, and what the church is doing to help. One student asked whether he could have prevented Cho's actions by being more in-tune with God. Another asked whether it was okay to be mad at God.
Pastors answered the questions by explaining that God gives each person free will. Forgiveness, they said, would look different for each person. Concerning whether the massacre could have been prevented, co-pastor Matt Rogers said that each person is responsible for his or her own action. However, he told the congregation, "Not one verse of Scripture says you're responsible for what happened."
Concerning anger at God, co-pastor Jim Pace referred to Job, who responded at first with praise and then with anger to the calamity that befell him. So, where was God when the Virginia Tech massacre happened? Pace answered, "God was in us, being heroic in the face of incredible fear."
Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today.
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Used by permission, Christianity Today 2007
Original Source: <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/aprilweb-only/117-12.0.html">http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/aprilweb-only/117-12.0.html</a>
Deann Alford
2007-06-18
Brent Jesiek
Becky Custer, Editorial Coordinator (bcuster@christianitytoday.com)
eng
Where Is God When It Hurts?
<i>A sermon given on the Virginia Tech campus two weeks after the shootings.</i>
Philip Yancey | posted 6/06/2007 05:31PM
<b>W</b>e gather here still trying to make sense of what happened in Blacksburg, still trying to process the unprocessable. We come together in this place, as a Christian community, partly because we know of no better place to bring our questions and our grief and partly because we don't know where else to turn. As the apostle Peter once said to Jesus, at a moment of confusion and doubt, "Lord, to whom else can we go?"
In considering how to begin today, I found myself following two different threads. The first thread is what I would <i>like</i> to say, the words I wish I could say. The second thread is the truth.
I wish I could say that the pain you feel will disappear, vanish, never to return. I'm sure you've heard comments like these from parents and others: "Things will get better." "You'll get past this." "This too shall pass." Those who offer such comfort mean well, and it's true that what you feel now you will not always feel. Yet it's also true that what happened on April 16, 2007, will stay with you forever. You are a different person because of that day, because of one troubled young man's actions.
I remember one year when three of my friends died. In my thirties then, I had little experience with death. In the midst of my grief, I came across these lines from George Herbert that gave me solace: "Grief melts away / Like snow in May / As if there were no such cold thing." I clung to that hope even as grief smothered me like an avalanche. Indeed, the grief did melt away, but like snow it also came back, in fierce and unexpected ways, triggered by a sound, a smell, some fragment of memory of my friends.
So I cannot say what I want to say, that this too shall pass. Instead, I point to the pain you feel, and will continue to feel, as a sign of life and love. I'm wearing a neck brace because I broke my neck in an auto accident. For the first few hours as I lay strapped to a body board, medical workers refused to give me pain medication because they needed my response. The doctor kept probing, moving my limbs, asking, "Does this hurt? Do you feel that?" The correct answer, the answer both he and I desperately wanted, was, "Yes. It hurts. I can feel it." Each sensation gave proof that my spinal cord had not been severed. Pain offered proof of life, of connection—a sign that my body remained whole.
<b>Love and Pain</b>
In grief, love and pain converge. Cho felt no grief as he gunned down your classmates because he felt no love for them. You feel grief because you did have a connection. Some of you had closer ties to the victims, but all of you belong to a body to which they too belonged. When that body suffers, you suffer. Remember that as you cope with the pain. Don't try to numb it. Instead, acknowledge it as a perception of life and of love.
Medical students will tell you that in a deep wound, two kinds of tissue must heal: the connective tissue beneath the surface and the outer, protective layer of skin. If the protective tissue heals too quickly, the connective tissue will not heal properly, leading to complications later on. The reason this church and other ministries on campus offer counseling and hold services like this one is to help the deep, connective tissue heal. Only later will the protective layer of tissue grow back in the form of a scar.
We gather here as Christians, and as such we aspire to follow a man who came from God 2,000 years ago. Read through the Gospels, and you'll find only one scene in which someone addresses Jesus directly as God: "My Lord and my God!" Do you know who said that? It was doubting Thomas, the disciple stuck in grief, the last holdout against believing the incredible news of the Resurrection.
In a tender scene, Jesus appeared to Thomas in his newly transformed body, obliterating Thomas's doubts. What prompted that outburst of belief, however—"My Lord and my God!"—was the presence of Jesus' scars. "Feel my hands," Jesus told him. "Touch my side." In a flash of revelation, Thomas saw the wonder of Almighty God, the Lord of the universe, stooping to take on our pain.
God doesn't exempt even himself from pain. God joined us and shared our human condition, including its great grief. Thomas recognized in that pattern the most foundational truth of the universe: that God is love. To love means to hurt, to grieve. Pain is a mark of life.
The Jews, schooled in the Old Testament, had a saying: "Where Messiah is, there is no misery." After Jesus, you could change that saying to: "Where misery is, there is the Messiah." "Blessed are the poor," Jesus said, "and those who hunger and thirst, and those who mourn, and those who are persecuted." Jesus voluntarily embraced every one of these hurts.
So where is God when it hurts? We know where God is because he came to earth and showed us his face. You need only follow Jesus around and note how he responded to the tragedies of his day: with compassion—which simply means "to suffer with"—and with comfort and healing.
I would also like to answer the question why? Why this campus rather than Virginia Commonwealth or William and Mary? Why these 33 people? I cannot tell you, and I encourage you to resist anyone who offers a confident answer. God himself did not answer that question for Job, nor did Jesus answer why questions. We have hints, but no one knows the full answer. What we do know, with full confidence, is how God feels. We know how God looks on the campus of Virginia Tech right now because God gave us a face, a face that was streaked with tears. Where misery is, there is the Messiah.
Not everyone will find that answer sufficient. When we hurt, sometimes we want revenge. We want a more decisive answer. Frederick Buechner said, "I am not the Almighty God, but if I were, maybe I would in mercy either heal the unutterable pain of the world or in mercy kick the world to pieces in its pain." God did neither. He sent Jesus. God joined our world in all its unutterable pain in order to set in motion a slower, less dramatic solution, one that involves us.
One day a man said to me, "You wrote a book called <i>Where Is God When It Hurts</i>, right?" Yes. "Well, I don't have much time to read. Can you just answer that question for me in a sentence or two?" I thought for a second and said, "I guess I'd have to answer that with another question: 'Where is the church when it hurts?'"
The eyes of the world are trained on this campus. You've seen satellite trucks parked around town, reporters prowling the grounds of your school. Last fall, I visited Amish country near the site of the Nickel Mines school shootings. As happened here, reporters from every major country swarmed the hills of Pennsylvania, looking for an angle. They came to report on evil and instead ended up reporting on the church. The Amish were not asking, "Where is God when it hurts?" They knew where God was. With their long history of persecution, the Amish weren't for a minute surprised by an outbreak of evil. They rallied together, embraced the killer's family, ministered to each other, and healed wounds by relying on a sense of community strengthened over centuries.
Something similar has taken place here in Blacksburg. You have shown outrage against the evil deed, yes, but you've also shown sympathy and sadness for the family of the one who committed it. Cho, too, has a memorial on this campus.
<b>Life Matters</b>
The future lies ahead, and you're just awakening to the fact that you are an independent moral being. Until now, other people have been running your life. Your parents told you what to do and made decisions for you. Teachers ordered you around in grammar school, and the pattern continued in high school and even into college. You now inhabit a kind of halfway house on the way to adulthood, waiting for the real life of career and perhaps marriage and children to begin.
What happened in Blacksburg on April 16 demonstrates beyond all doubt that your life—the decisions you make, the kind of person you are—matters <i>now</i>. There are 28 students and 5 faculty members who have no future in this world.
That reality came starkly home to me nine weeks ago today when I was driving on a winding road in Colorado. Suddenly, I missed a curve and my Ford Explorer slipped off the pavement and started tumbling side to side at 60 miles per hour. An ambulance appeared, and I spent the next seven hours strapped to a body board, with duct tape across my head to keep it from moving. A cat scan showed that a vertebra high on my neck had been shattered, and sharp bone fragments were poking out next to a major artery. The hospital had a jet to fly me to Denver for emergency surgery.
I had one arm free, with a cell phone and little battery time left. I spent those tense hours calling people close to me, knowing it might be the last time I would ever hear their voices. It was an odd sensation to lie there helpless, aware that though I was fully conscious, at any moment I could die.
Samuel Johnson said when a man is about to be hanged, "it concentrates his mind wonderfully." When you're strapped to a body board after a serious accident, it concentrates the mind. When you survive a massacre at Virginia Tech, it concentrates the mind. I realized how much of my life focused on trivial things. During those seven hours, I didn't think about how many books I had sold or what kind of car I drove (it was being towed to a junkyard anyway). All that mattered boiled down to four questions. <i>Whom do I love? Whom will I miss? What have I done with my life? And am I ready for what's next?</i> Ever since that day, I've tried to live with those questions at the forefront.
I would like to promise you a long, pain-free life, but I cannot. God has not promised us that. Rather, the Christian view of the world reduces everything to this formula: The world is good. The world has fallen. The world will be redeemed. Creation, the Fall, redemption—that's the Christian story in a nutshell.
You know that the world is good. Look around you at the blaze of spring in the hills of Virginia. Look around you at the friends you love. Though overwhelmed with grief right now, you will learn to laugh again, to play again, to climb up mountains and kayak down rivers again, to love, to rear children. The world is good.
You know, too, that the world has fallen. Here at Virginia Tech, you know that as acutely as anyone on this planet.
I ask you also to trust that the world, your world, will be redeemed. This is not the world God wants or is satisfied with. God has promised a time when evil will be defeated, when events like the shootings at Nickel Mines and Columbine and Virginia Tech will come to an end. More, God has promised that even the scars we accumulate on this fallen planet will be redeemed, as Jesus demonstrated to Thomas.
I once was part of a small group with a Christian leader whose name you would likely recognize. He went through a hard time as his adult children got into trouble, bringing him sleepless nights and expensive attorney fees. Worse, my friend was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Nothing in his life seemed to work out. "I have no problem believing in a good God," he said to us one night. "My question is, 'What is God good for?'" We listened to his complaints and tried various responses, but he batted them all away.
A few weeks later, I came across a little phrase by Dallas Willard: "For those who love God, nothing irredeemable can happen to you." I went back to my friend. "What about that?" I asked. "Is God good for that promise?"
I would like to promise you an end to pain and grief, a guarantee that you will never again hurt as you hurt now. I cannot. I can, however, stand behind the promise that the apostle Paul made in Romans 8, that <i>all</i> things can be redeemed, can work together for your good. In another passage, Paul spells out some of the things he encountered, which included beatings, imprisonment, and shipwreck. As he looked back, he could see that somehow God had redeemed even those crisis events in his life.
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us," Paul concluded. "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:37-39). God's love is the foundational truth of the universe.
<b>Clinging to Hope</b>
Trust a God who can redeem what now seems unredeemable. Ten days before the shootings on this campus, Christians around the world remembered the darkest day of human history, the day in which evil human beings violently rose up against God's Son and murdered the only truly innocent human being who has ever lived. We remember that day not as Dark Friday, Tragic Friday, or Disaster Friday—but rather as <i>Good</i> Friday. That awful day led to the salvation of the world and to Easter, an echo in advance of God's bright promise to make all things new.
Honor the grief you feel. The pain is a way of honoring those who died, your friends and classmates and professors. It represents life and love. The pain will fade over time, but it will never fully disappear.
Do not attempt healing alone. The real healing, of deep connective tissue, takes place in community. Where is God when it hurts? Where God's people are. Where misery is, there is the Messiah, and on this earth, the Messiah takes form in the shape of his church. That's what the body of Christ means.
Finally, cling to the hope that nothing that happens, not even this terrible tragedy, is irredeemable. We serve a God who has vowed to make all things new. J. R. R. Tolkien once spoke of "joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief." You know well the poignancy of grief. As healing progresses, may you know, too, that joy, a foretaste of the world redeemed.
<i>Philip Yancey is a CT editor at large.</i>
Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today.
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Used by permission, Christianity Today 2007
Original Source: <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/june/14.55.html">http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/june/14.55.html</a>
Philip Yancey
2007-06-18
Brent Jesiek
Becky Custer, Editorial Coordinator (bcuster@christianitytoday.com)
eng
'Nightmare of Nightmares'
<i>Virginia Tech's Korean Christians wrestle with the aftermath of a massacre.</i>
Deann Alford | posted 6/06/2007 08:02AM
<b>T</b>he alert that two students had been shot on campus blipped into Jong Nam Lee's e-mail inbox around 9:30 that fateful Monday morning, April 16, as the Virginia Tech research scientist was writing a paper. Months earlier, a gunman had been loose on campus, and within the past two weeks, there had been two bomb threats.
Still, the warning prompted the soft-spoken engineer, who serves as an adviser to Virginia Tech's Korea Campus Crusade for Christ (KCCC), to check on his son, a student at the university. Josh Lee was safe. His morning class had been canceled.
But within minutes, Lee's wife, Mi Oak, shared the unimaginable news with her husband. A suicidal gunman had killed 32 and injured 28 on campus before putting a gun to his own head. Quickly, Lee and dozens of other campus ministry leaders and their student leaders pulled out all the stops to respond. Ninety miles away in Lynchburg, David Chung, pastor of Blacksburg's Korean Baptist Church and a professor in Liberty University's Korean-language seminary, heard the news while on class break. Immediately, he canceled class, packed a bag, and made a beeline for Blacksburg. Korea Campus Crusade is based at Korean Baptist Church, a Korean-language congregation. Worship is held Sunday afternoons at the 155-year-old Blacksburg Baptist Church, across the street from the sprawling Virginia Tech campus.
Nearly every congregation and on-campus ministry was hit in some way. "Cru"—as Campus Crusade for Christ is known at Virginia Tech—had four student fatalities. Baptist Collegiate Ministries lost one student. New Life Christian Fellowship, a student-oriented startup church, had two fatalities and ten student attenders injured. One graduate student affiliated with Korean Baptist took bullets in his hand and arm.
<b>One of Their Own—Lost in America</b>
The day after the slaughter, Korean American leaders realized the tragedy had gone beyond the unimaginable. The shooter was Korean. Seung-Hui Cho was a 23-year-old South Korean immigrant with permanent resident status in the United States and a Virginia Tech senior English major. Inside Cho's dorm suite, police found a long-winded rant in which the mentally unstable student railed against rich kids, women, and religion. During Cho's nine-minute shooting rampage, he was supposed to be in a "Bible as Literature" class.
For the Korean American community, Cho was not a faceless perpetrator. He was one of their own who had lost himself. Working the phones, Lee and Chung talked to Korean Christians around the nation and in South Korea to ensure that Christian leaders received an accurate account of what had happened. "Everybody is in shock," Chung said, concerning his own congregation.
Later, South Korea's president issued a personal apology. Lee Tae Sik, South Korea's ambassador to the United States and a Christian, called on his fellow citizens to fast for 32 days to honor each of Cho's victims. Condolences and flowers poured into campus buildings from across the nation and the world. Among them were 32 identical bouquets flanking the center aisle of Virginia Tech's War Memorial Chapel. Tags revealed that the sender was the Korean Church Association of Austin, Texas.
For many Americans, the empathy of the global Korean community for all 33 who died was a struggle to comprehend. For Soo-Chan Steven Kang, a Korean American associate professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, it was perfectly understandable. Korean culture instills a sense of group identity and strong feelings and fears about shame. Also, many Koreans believe they are lumped together in public perception for good or for ill.
In America, Koreans are Christian or attend church at nearly three times the rate found in their mother country. Some 25 percent of Koreans in South Korea identify themselves as Christian. But about 70 percent of Koreans in the United States are affiliated with a church, if not for spiritual guidance, then at least for cultural connection. Within the U.S. population of 300 million, there are only about 1 million Koreans, and they are concentrated in gateway cities such as Los Angeles. Only 10 percent of the 10.2 million Asians in the U.S. are Korean.
As a result, immigrant Koreans often stick together. Kang said this "stick-togetherness" helps them whether they are first generation (having arrived in the United States after age 16 or so) or "1.5 generation" (having immigrated as children, sometimes old enough to remember their lives in Korea).
<b>Fear and Wonder</b>
In the days after the shooting, classes were canceled. Most Korean American students went home to their parents. One reason was fear of ethnic reprisals. In the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Koreans suffered violence and property damage after a Korean American shot an African American.
Some Korean Americans across the country feared a similar reaction. But Chung said that most Korean students who remained in Blacksburg were not worried about a backlash. Instead, they were asking deep questions:
• What do we need to learn from this tragedy?
• What is God telling us?
• What should my life's priority be?
By Thursday, Korean American pastors from throughout the East Coast and Korean seminary students from Liberty planned to come pray on campus. But amid attempts to cope with the crisis, the entire campus involuntarily had become a reality TV show. Satellite trucks ringed Virginia Tech's Drillfield. One Christian leader called the media crush a "second trauma" for students.
The situation became abusive and manipulative. One KCCC leader told CT, "They were just leading us to say what they want[ed] us to say, trying to ask a lot of nosy questions that seemed irrelevant and could hurt a lot of people."
Church leaders were anxious. "We were worried about our pure motive for our prayer meeting being distorted," Chung said. He canceled the event.
Chung had been asking himself and others: "What role should we play in light of this rampage?" "I'm still asking God's wisdom," he said.
"I believe there will be a message from God. God is saying something—isn't he?—when he allows a tragedy of this size to happen in Blacksburg," Chung said. "This is happening in our front yard."
Concerning Cho, Chung told CT, "We need to pray for his parents and his sister [enduring] the worst nightmare of nightmares. To find strength to live, joy of living ... will be almost impossible without Christ."
Korean Baptist Church, a first-generation immigrant church established in the early 1980s, is a congregation of 250.
Blacksburg's other Korean church, Cornerstone Christian Fellowship, is a 1.5- and second-generation church that favors English-language worship. Korea Campus Crusade for Christ, the Baptist church's de facto student outreach arm, arrived at Virginia Tech about 10 years ago. Perhaps a quarter of the 90 students involved with KCCC are "seekers"—young people interested in knowing more about a relationship with Christ.
The dynamic within the Korean American community is not unlike that of many American communities. University students leave their families, which range in faith from unchurched and uninterested to devoutly Christian. Like other students, they are dealing with identity issues and deciding where God and the church fit into their lives.
Korean American Christian leaders focus on relational dynamics. They fellowship over familiar Korean foods, share their faith, and strengthen each other's walk with Christ.
Each fall, Virginia Tech's KCCC "servants" (as leaders are called) dig through freshman rosters, looking for Korean names. Going two by two, they visit dorm rooms and leave fliers with contact information and invitations to a cookout, fellowships, and Bible studies. They help newcomers by taking them shopping and helping them move into their dorms. All hear the gospel eventually.
According to Gordon-Conwell's Kang, that kind of gospel-centered support is vital to overcoming a strong sense of isolation. Because Korean parents come to the United States eager to provide materially for their children in ways they believed they could not in Korea, mothers and fathers often work 60 hours a week or more. "The younger generation is left alone to grow up by themselves [and] figure out their life by themselves, whether at home or at the church," Kang said.
Because many 1.5-generation and second-generation children adopt American culture and English as their preferred language, he said, parents and children find communication increasingly difficult as the years go by. Cho himself was a 1.5-generation child.
At Virginia Tech, a system is in place to make such students feel welcomed into a community. "We ask, 'Do you need anything? Is there anything we can do for you?'" said Eun Sook Ji, a Virginia Tech sophomore and KCCC member. Student reaction is typically appreciative, though sometimes KCCC students hear, "Thanks, but no thanks."
Like many Christians at Virginia Tech, Ji wonders how Cho never connected with the Korean Christian community. There has been no shortage of introspection on that issue. Kang said that since 70 percent of Korean Americans say they attend church regularly, he knew "from the get-go" that Cho was probably part of the church, at least growing up. But Korean American churches sometimes find it hard to reach out to troubled members. Smaller churches, such as the northern Virginia Presbyterian church that Cho's family occasionally attended, usually have only one full-time pastor. In addition, Peter Cha, an associate professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, told CT that shame often deters Asian families from seeking outside professional help.
In the meantime, Korean Americans continue to grapple with the massacre. Korean Baptist's Chung quotes Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who wrote, "The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."
Kang said the fundamental issue is the problem of evil. "We ask, 'Why does God allow these things to happen?'" he said, "rather than seeing this as the natural consequences of sinful society that Christ came to redeem.
"Western Christians struggle to make meaning of what happens in America because we're insulated. It's a dying and degenerate world. We're [experiencing] the consequences of sin."
Asked whether Cho had slipped through the cracks, Jim Pace, a pastor of Virginia Tech's New Life Christian Fellowship, answered, "Ultimately, yeah." Even so, he said, "You can't assume responsibility for someone's free will."
Six days after the bloodbath, on a cool but sunny Sunday afternoon, Chung preached at Korean Baptist using Psalm 13 as his text. His congregation was half its normal size. Many regulars had gone home, and only a few new faces appeared in the congregation.
"We have to pray that we are ready to be used by God," he told them. "We need to pray that we can be used as God's tool to share his loving-kindness to the community of Blacksburg."
Chung told CT that David's lament in Psalm 13 perfectly fit their situation. "Satan is working," he said. "We are devastated. God doesn't seem to be around. Like David, we have to seek his loving-kindness."
<i>Deann Alford is a senior writer for Christianity Today.</i>
Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today.
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Used by permission, Christianity Today 2007
Original Source: <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/june/16.52.html">http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/june/16.52.html</a>
Deann Alford
2007-06-18
Brent Jesiek
Becky Custer, Editorial Coordinator
(bcuster@christianitytoday.com)
eng
A Gray Haze over Everything
<i>Campus life after the tragedy at Virginia Tech.</i>
Philip Yancey | posted 6/06/2007 08:01AM
"April is the cruellest month." When T. S. Eliot penned that opening line to "The Waste Land" in 1921, he had no idea how it would resound in modern America. Oklahoma City, Columbine High School, and Virginia Tech—our calendars mark all three within a span of five days, a week soaked in grief.
"As a youth minister, you anticipate weddings, not funerals," said Matt Rogers of New Life Christian Fellowship (NLCF), a Christian community that meets in the Student Center at Virginia Tech. "We have no playbook for something like this."
I spoke at NLCF two weeks after the tragedy, accompanied by the Ruegsegger family, whose daughter Kacey survived gunshot wounds at Columbine High School eight years ago. "Very few people know what you're going through," Kacey told the students gathered for the somber service. "We've been there."
The news media portrayed yet another mass killing on a U.S. campus. What greeted the visitor, though, was an overwhelming display of national solidarity. Banners and posters hung in many school buildings, covered with tens of thousands of handwritten messages of support. And a cluster of spontaneous memorials appeared around campus. Each day, visitors filed past the mounds of mementoes—a baseball, a Starbucks cup, a teddy bear, a favorite novel—that gave individuality to the 33 who'd died.
Spring arrived late in western Virginia. As April faded into May, redbud and wild dogwood trees dotted the surrounding hills. Tulips and daffodils set off the gray stone university buildings. "It's usually such a happy time," mused one student. "We pack our books and stereos and head home, some of us with diplomas. This year, a gray haze hangs over everything."
Before departing, many students paid one last visit to Norris Hall, blocked off with a green fence and yellow police tape. Where they used to attend classes, state patrolmen now stood guard.
Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today.
--
Used by permission, Christianity Today 2007
Original Source: <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/june/15.56.html">http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/june/15.56.html</a>
Philip Yancey
2007-06-18
Brent Jesiek
Becky Custer, Editorial Coordinator (bcuster@christianitytoday.com)
eng
Weeping At The Mount
Weeping At the Mount
The Lord is weeping at the mount
What has happened to his dreams?
He prayed and prayed for a single purpose
That we would live in peace
After generations and generations we have forgotten
That little thing called love
While God chose his Son, one and only begotten
So that we may simply come
Instead we choose to see ourselves
Instead of looking out
Light turns a dark shade of greed
We have turned from love, without a doubt
Taking what isn't ours, what others need
Lives, money, property and jewels
Like honey to our eyes
We turn from wisdom, and become great fools
While the Lord is weeping at the mount
What happened to what we shared?
Everyday is new, let's turn around
Let's show each other extra love and care!
*Every time a murder or robbery happens, we're throwing stones at Jesus on the cross! Don't brush this off, because hate, jealousy and anger we hold on to are also forms of throwing stones!
Kelly Warren
2007-05-02
Kelly Warren
eng