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The Elephant in the Sanctuary
Mary Beth McCandless
Observations on the tragedy of Virginia Tech
Littleton, Colorado killers Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, went on their Columbine High School shooting rampage April 20, 1999. If they were alive, today Harris would be 26 and Klebold would be 25.
Blacksburg, Virginia killer Seung-Hui Cho, 23, went on his shooting rampage April 16, 2007. At the time of the Columbine massacre, Cho would have been 15.
Cho, a 2003 graduate of Westfield High School in Chantilly, Virginia at the age of about 19. He was probably a freshman in high school (albeit a couple of years older than most of his classmates) when Columbine happened.
People on the news and on Internet message boards have been trying to make a case for a connection between Cho and Columbine killers Harris and Klebold since April 16 and then with heightened intensity after Cho’s so-called “manifesto” with comments about Harris and Klebold being martyrs was made public.
To me the connection seems fairly obvious.
Several reports of interviews with middle and high school classmates of Cho have painted him as one who was already a loner and potentially troubled. When the publicity was 24/7 following Columbine, Cho was fifteen years old. High schools across the United States talked about it for days.
For a troubled and somewhat “invisible” young man, I’m guessing that the actions of Harris and Klebold and their “reasons” or “excuses” for their acts of terror must have struck a resonant chord. Much of the rhetoric from Cho’s writing mirrors the hate-filled diatribe that Harris and Klebold spewed in private and public venues. And, much of the same glorification (whether intended or not) came to the Columbine killers through the media attention given to their videos and writings following that event.
The result of the public’s (and media’s) desire to understand what motivated the Columbine killers was an inordinate amount of attention given to what went on “inside the mind of a killer.” For Cho—already struggling—he seemed to have seen those two as models for overcoming his invisibility and the world’s ignorance of or blindness to his pain.
None of the above is brilliant deduction—it is obvious. What is not obvious is how we identify the invisible 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds (and with all probability some even younger) who sit in our schools and churches today making that same perverse connection with Cho that Cho made with Harris and Klebold.
At least most of the mainstream media has stopped with the constant images of Cho in the context of his self-constructed memorial of a murderer (his so-called “manifesto”) but unfortunately, it is still available for anyone with a computer to find and view again and again.
Will we keep our eyes, ears, minds and hearts open enough to identify similar pain as we encounter it? Will we be forward thinking enough to realize that the next perpetrator could as easily be female as male? (A walk through most public middle schools is enough to realize this if you don’t already.)
Will we have a more effective way to both help and halt the person(s) we fear might have this same potential within?
So why the title, “The Elephant in the Sanctuary”? While I am, of course, concerned with the safety and well-being of my own children and with the safety and well-being of our community’s children, I have a greater concern. My greater concern is regarding how we as Christ-followers and the community of believers called First Presbyterian Church in Elizabethtown, Kentucky can identify those who live in the pain and brokenness that we have seen so visible in recent weeks and how—or if—we will choose to respond.
It is easy to come worship, learn and fellowship without acknowledging our call and responsibility to those in our lives who live with such hopelessness that they turn to either outward or inward violence to somehow bring meaning to their existence. We acknowledge this in our prayers and confessions and also in the “sending” part of our worship. But what do we do when we walk from the sanctuary to the concourse and from the concourse to the fellowship hall and on out the doors into our day-to-day lives?
Two issues rise to the top of this tragedy and potential future tragedies: mental/emotional brokenness and spiritual brokenness. Both types of brokenness are intertwined and can hardly be observed independently of the other. The roads to healing and rebuilding that brokenness are also difficult to separate. The one remedy or connecting path between brokenness and wholeness seems to me to be relationship(s). Building relationships is something we, as church, must be highly focused on.
Building relationships—with each other, within our families of origin, within our broader church family, with our friends, our sisters and brothers in Christ—and through those relationships, providing the space and time for building relationship with God—that is what we must be about. As our congregation continues the journey toward becoming the congregation God has created her to be, let us remember that programs and playgrounds, defined ministries and missions, buildings and busses are all but tools—the means—toward relationship with God, with each other, with our community and with our world.
The “how” we can respond is all around us—in Scripture, in relationships. The “if” of responding is up to each of us as individuals and is also up to us collectively as this church and the Church.
May we never loose sight of the who and the why behind all of our doing. Let us actively seek out the brokenhearted and bear one another’s burdens.
Be Church. Magnify Christ. Do this so that God, and God alone, may be glorified.
Mary Beth McCandless is coordinator for Family Ministries at First Presbyterian Church in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.
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