BLACKSBURG, Va. (ABP) — Christian leaders have begun to respond to the April 16 tragedy at Virginia Tech with words of solace — while a few blame the tragedy on America's 'godlessness.'
Most haven't attempted to explain the massacre, saying simply that God is greatly grieved by the killings. But at least one conservative Christian group says the massacre happened because America kicked God out of public schools and permitted abortion, leading to the ruination of American culture.
Meanwhile, Baptist seminary president Paige Patterson suggested an attack of that magnitude wouldn't happen at his school because the male students would overwhelm an attacker after the first shots were fired — even if they died trying.
A more typical response came from T.D. Jakes, pastor of Dallas megachurch the Potter's House, who participated in an April 18 Internet panel discussion that appeared on the Washington Post website. In his comments, Jakes said that in his 30 years of ministry, he has learned that he is simply not able to explain such tragedies.
“Jesus doesn't attempt to explain death even when Lazarus, his friend, died,” Jakes said. “He simply weeps with those who weep. It is not so important that we have answers as it is that we have compassion.”
Jakes said he can't answer why such tragedies as the Virginia Tech shooting occur, but he suggested that people denounce “the bickering and pettiness, loathing and hatred, that opens the way for such activities by learning how to agree and, yes, how to disagree and yet maintain some core values and respect for each other….”
Retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who won the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize for his work against racial injustice in South Africa, attributed the tragedy to God-given freedom.
Tutu, who likewise posted his comments on the Post website, said humans inhabit a universe that has order and laws, including the gift of freedom. “Our God, who is omnipotent, is also weak in that God has imposed limitations on God's omnipotence to give us the space to have a real autonomy,” Tutu said.
“We have the freedom to choose, and some of our choices as such lead to incidents such as this tragedy. God could not intervene without nullifying the freedom of the perpetrator.”
Along with that freedom, Tutu continued, God is very present in the world, with an intense concern for human suffering.
“God does not give advice from a safe distance but enters the fiery furnace of our anguish, and God wipes away our tears — this God who knows us by name, from whom nothing, not even death, can separate us,” he said.
Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said in his Post essay that the Virginia tragedy reminds people of Jesus' sacrifice for them. A central tenet of the Christian faith, Mohler said, is the claim that Jesus willingly suffered the “full force of evil, even unto death” and through that sacrifice created victory over death and evil.
“The Virginia Tech horror reminds us all what human beings can do to each other,” Mohler said. “The cross of Christ reminds us of what Jesus did for sinners in bearing the full punishment for this sin.”
Jim Wallis, in an essay for Sojourners magazine, said mourners should focus not on placing blame for the killings but on healing and growing. Sorrow can sometimes prove redemptive in ways no one could have imagined beforehand, he said. Wallis is an evangelical anti-poverty activist and the founding editor of Sojourners.
“This is not a time to seek easy answers or to assign blame,” he said. “It is, rather, a time to pray, mourn, and reflect. It's time to let sorrow do its reflective and redemptive work, to hold the hands that need to be held, to let our tears open our hearts to change those things that lead to such tragedy, and to trust our pain to the loving arms of God.”
Other responses from conservative Christian leaders and groups have taken a different tone, however.
Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, told students in an April 19 chapel sermon that if a shooter attacked the Fort Worth, Texas, school, students should “rush him.”
Patterson told the male students in the crowd to raise their hands and told the men, “I'm counting on you.”
“See, all you had to do was have six or eight rush him right at that time, and 32 people wouldn't have died,” Patterson said. “Now folks, let's make up our minds. I know we live in America where nobody gets involved in anybody else's situation. That shall not be the rule here. Does everybody understand? You say, 'Well, I may be shot.' Well, yeah, you may. Are you saved? You're going to heaven. You know, it's better than earth.”
And an anti-gay group infamous for protesting at the funerals of U.S. soldiers has announced plans to picket the funerals of the Virginia victims.
Members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., said the shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, was doing God's will by punishing non-Christians, CBS News reported. A church news release added: “God is punishing America for her sodomite sins. The 33 massacred at Virginia Tech died for America's sins against [Westboro Baptist Church].”
The tiny church, whose paster if Fred Phelps, is not affiliated with any national Baptist convention. The CBS News report said police are expected to break up any such protest. Funerals and memorial services are included in Virginia's disorderly conduct statute.
American Family Radio has raised a similar battle cry, claiming in a video that events leading to recent years' school shootings in places like Jonesboro, Ark., Springfield, Ore., Littleton Colo., and Blacksburg, Va., “started when Madalyn Murray O'Hair complained she didn't want any prayer in our schools, and we said 'O.K.'” That is an apparent reference to Supreme Court decisions that have outlawed government-sanctioned prayer and devotional Bible reading in public schools.
The video's narrator then listed cultural and historical events in the years since the 1960s — from the demise of corporal punishment to the legalization of abortion to condom distribution, presidential immorality and rap music — as reasons why “our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong.”
The video — a DVD of which is for sale for $5 on the group's website and is also posted on YouTube — ends by saying, “surely it has a great deal to do with 'we reap what we sow.'”
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Chapel presentation at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (4/20/2007)