Looking for Answers in All the Wrong Places

LOOKING FOR ANSWERS IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES

On the anniversary of the Columbine killings, there were many articles trying to figure out why these middle-class teenagers committed these heinous crimes. Most of these articles posited some sensible-sounding psychobabble that avoided the root problem, which is the fallen nature of our world.

One long insert in the Los Angeles Times entitled, “When the Shooting Stops” (04/22/ 00) described another teenage killer, Jamie Rouse, who killed two people and seriously wounded another at his school in Lynnville, Tenn. The answers as to why he committed these acts were buried deep in the interviews in the article, but never explored in depth by the author, Richard E. Meyer.

For instance, in the article, Jamie’s mother, Cheryl, said that Jamie started seeing ghosts when he was six or seven. Jamie mentions that he was into Marilyn Manson and other ultra-violent music. In fact, he decided to become a true devil worshiper and “carve an inverted cross on [his] forehead.” Then, of course, there were the video games, which he played constantly. These little tidbits buried in this eight-page article represent the pattern of all these killers, according to one Christian psychologist in Denver, a pattern that the secular press often misses.

Another pattern, which the secular press misses, at least among the killers that survive, is that they accept Jesus Christ. As Jamie says, “The way my childhood was and stuff in high school–it programmed me to think and act in certain ways, and when that was all broken down, the way I built it up–God is the one who let me build it up around his words. The Bible calls it a new creature, and that’s what I am.”

Funny how secular journalists and historians miss the one thing that has been a force of good here on earth than any other–the Gospel of Jesus Christ.