Abbey-Roads2

As facts emerge from the Virginia Tech shootings millions of opinions and analysis is also emerging, along with the inevitable arguments pro and con for gun control.  Of course the country is horrified and devastated, and we all mourn the loss of these men and women in such a senseless massacre.  Voices, seeking to blame someone, are calling for the resignation of the principals involved who had the responsibility of protecting the Virginia Tech students, the Police Chief and the University President.  As if this will erase what happened or make any difference at all.

Psychologists and spiritual leaders will attempt to make sense of what happened, while criminal experts and media will flesh out the time-line and all the other details of what happened.  Nevertheless, it cannot be undone - it is forever imprinted upon the American consciousness, as one more tragic event that marks our decline as a culture.

History will place this event within the context of our age, and will perhaps connect all the dots better than anyone else can right now.  However, if we examine our times closely, with ruthless honesty, maybe we can do something - if only everyone would stop and shut up.

For decades we’ve tolerated a culture wherein life is cheap.  Sacrificing our children in wars, murdering them in the womb, exploiting them sexually, abusing them savagely.  While on the other hand, many of the children we do permit to live, those we nurture lavishly, become spoiled and are often made into selfish uncaring brats, who are accustomed to getting anything they want.  We’ve turned into a hip-hop culture, permitting ourselves to become ‘vulgarized’ by the lowest denominator of popular entertainment and culture, laughing at shock jocks such as Don Imus and Howard Stern, allowing soft-pornography on daily television, on the radio, in our pop music, and fashions, and so on.

We are in essence a morally bankrupt society and culture - even our religious leaders, who lie, molest, cheat and steal, not to mention politicians and business leaders.  As everyone must know, we daily kill our unborn, and quietly murder our sick and lame.  Yet, strangely enough, we can distract ourselves from our crimes through escapes into unreality - whether it be entertainment, or whatever addiction we’ve embraced, including our obsessive-complusive consumerism and materialism, or some other self-medication plan to protect ourselves from experiencing the pain of our purposelessness.

Everyone is going to urge Virginia Tech and those affected by the massacre to bounce back, to be resilient, to survive all of this.  They will preach, “We have to get over it, to move on.”  Just as we did after Columbine, or Waco, or the Oklahoma City bombing, even the 9/11 disaster.  We seem to get over things rather quickly so that we can return to our mind-numbing apathy as we watch the decline and collapse of our civilization on television, rotting from within.

Don’t tell me Virginia Tech has been a wake-up call, since it will only cause most people to roll over and go back to sleep.    

I think we need God right now.