Stan Rodda

April 17, 2007

Virginia Tech runs deeper!

What do a white man's racist comments and a young man's murderous rampage have in common?

By now all of America has heard, and the entire world knows about the horrific events that took place at Virginia Tech early on Monday morning. The world saw a young man, who was at the end of his rope, give in to some major issues in his life. He took the situation into his own hands, followed through on some of his english papers, and ended up murdering 32 people before 10 am and ending his own life as the police officers were getting close.

The other day my wife was watching Oprah (please forgive her), but the issue actually caught my attention. I was impressed with the boldness of some of her guests as they discussed a very different issue than the circumstances at Virginia Tech. There was a panel of men and women discussing how certain forms of rap and hip-hop music are grafting into our very culture the demeaning of women. So many issues were discussed, from how some of these same people who are putting these messages out in their music, are also putting out pornographic videos as well. Many of those on the panel, and a group of young women from a prestigious university, were actually close to having the heart of the issue pinned down.

Then Monday morning, the massacre at Virginia Tech happened. A young man, who was obviously missing something in his life, murdered 32 other people, affecting hundreds of families and their friends. These issues on the surface aren't anywhere related. You have an issue that arose from Don Imus and his racist, sexist comments, and the other scene where a South Korean young man goes on a murderous rampage. Aren't these issues completely unrelated? I mean, on the surface they have nothing to do with each other, do they?

You're right, on the surface they don't. But we have to look under the surface to see the real problem. The real problem is that humanity has a sin problem. We are messed up, every single one of us. You may be the Lead Minister at a wonderful, growing church , or you may be the thief living in a dark alley on the streets of New York, it doesn't matter, we're all messed up. In our world, we have tried to get rid of all standards. This is the basis of the philosophy that says, 'All roads lead to heaven'. If you remove the standard by which our morals are judged, then it doesn't matter which way you go from there. Therefore, you can murder someone with no thought for humanity because there is no standard, no right or wrong. You can rap about pimps, hos and all the other demeaning terms, sell it and market it to kids for millions of dollars in profit, and call it free speech or living the American dream. How? We have taken away the Source by which we judge what is good, rght and moral. We are breeding and raising a generation and culture of people who believe there is no moral standard and therefore the situations and circumstances will keep coming and never go away. Do I want to see mass murder on our nation's college campuses? Absolutely not. Do I want to see demeaning and derogatory language used in our nation's accepted cultural music? Absolutely not. But this type of stuff will continue in our nation until the moral standard, the Source of right and wrong, is put back in place.

This is not a difficult problem to solve. Both of these circumstances, while completely unrelated on the surface, are absolutely, 100% connected at their root. Humans are a mess. We have sinned, and we have messed up the world. The solution is to realize that we need God. Our nation needs God, humans need God, our world needs God. And God has opened Himself up to us, and provided a way for us to come to Him. The sin problem will never be fully solved until Christ comes back someday, but for now, the closest we can get it to live our lives according to a standard that gives us right and wrong. And that standard is provided by God.

1 John 1:8-9