JAMES TOEWS
The heart of darkness

“What kind of a person is capable of such a crime?” This question has been asked countless times since the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado in 1999. This shooting is even more horrible because of the long list of similar shootings in the 1990s: Jonesboro, Fayetteville, Springfield, Moses Lake, Olivehurst. . . . Children from apparently good families and nice neigbourhoods are plotting and carrying out crimes which we would like to associate with the criminally insane.

The calls for stable families and social funding begin to sound hollow when it is children from middle-class families and neigbourhoods that are shooting their classmates in cold blood. This was supposed to be an inner-city problem.

The Bible actually teaches that human hearts, including your heart and mine, are pits of potential and actual horrors.

So now what do we do? Actually, the response is quite predictable. Having exhausted the list of “solutions”, we have decided instead to demonize the perpetrators: “Something must have been seriously wrong with these two men and their families. I and those I love would never do such a thing!”

And we all nod our heads in agreement. After all, two murderous high school students have more in common with Adolf Hitler than with you and me, right?

It may not be pleasant to consider this, but the Bible claims that this assumption is incorrect. In fact, the Bible teaches that human hearts, including your heart and mine, are pits of potential and actual horrors. Jesus Christ describes it this way: “Out of men’s hearts come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly” (Mark 7:21-22, the Bible).

This is why the “solutions to school violence” that are being bandied about in the aftermath of Columbine sound so hollow. Down inside, we all know that while instituting programs to teach children to be considerate to each other may have merit, they will never prevent school massacres. We must, of course, never stop looking for ways to foster a safe and civilized society. But, alongside that social scrutiny, it is also worthwhile to look inside ourselves for the roots of the same disease which took over in Littleton.

Very few people will ever take part in a massacre, but we all are part of the environment which develops those who take those terrifying steps. We can pretend that the two young men who walked into Columbine High School on their murderous mission are monsters. That may be a comforting illusion, but it is indeed an illusion.

There really is only one solution – a solution offered by God through the Bible: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). Personally accepting this offer from God is the only real answer to the evil in the world.