Friday, April 27, 2007

We have now had a few weeks to gain some perspective on the shootings at Virginia Tech. During that time my thoughts, like many others I’m sure, have run the gamut and changed many times. As I try to sort through them here is what I have come to:

  • Are we to take Proverbs 22:6 (Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.) as an absolute, unconditional promise? I ask this because reports from the media give strong indications that Cho came from a family of believers who spent a lot of time praying for and agonizing over him, even before the shootings. Because his life ended in the most unthinkable way, are we to assume that he was not trained properly by his parents? How are we to explain the number of our students that have had great, godly parents, only to see the student become rebellious. While we can hold out hope that they will turn back, is the Proverbs passage a guarantee that they will? Cho didn’t. If we hold to the passage as an absolute promise that every child who was trained correctly will turn out well, I think we can do more harm than good because they don’t always turn out well. And I really think that leaves parents unnecessarily open to judgmentalism and guilt. Rather than an absolute promise, perhaps this passage is merely providing guidance on child rearing. The literary use of proverbs typically isn’t seen as absolute. (“An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” can both be true but non-absolute, right?) I think in our school we need to be very careful about making judgments on parents and casting aspersions on them because of how their children turn out, even in the long run. It is God who chooses to make out of the same lump of clay both pots for noble purposes and pots for ignoble purposes.

  • The power of words came forcefully to my mind. Cho was clearly a person who had suffered verbal abuse from peers and those words took a terrible toll on him. I say this not to exonerate him, but to highlight the potency of the spoken word. God spoke the universe and life itself into existence. He takes it away in the same manner. As people made in God’s image, it would seem that human words have the same type of power, different only in degree but not in kind. As teachers who speak and use words every day as the tools of our trade, this has significant ramifications. We have the ability to extend life to our students, or to restrict it. Not in the ultimate sense - of course, that is God’s prerogative alone - but certainly in the temporal sense.


  • The brutal results of a lack of forgiveness, jealousy, and narcissism were laid out for all to see. Is it any wonder why scripture commands us to forgive, and to be content, and to think of others ahead of ourselves? We were not made to hold the rage that comes from doing otherwise. The command to forgive is for our own good as much as for the good of others. Cho’s unwillingness to abide by that command destroyed him and 32 others. People cannot live with impunity in a way contrary to the order God has established without suffering repercussions, even brutal ones. What a juxtaposition between Cho and the young lady who twice placed a stone remembrance out for him on the school lawn and urged her fellow students to forgive.

    Just thinking. What are your thoughts?

2 Comments:

At 5:45 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Your thoughts on Proverbs are great. If they were absolute guarantees, then they wouldn't be "proverbial" at all.

If we took the entire book of Proverbs as literal guarantees, then we would be immortal through command keeping and all adulterers' livers would be pierced with arrows.

 
At 7:25 AM, Blogger Troy McIntosh said...

Had not thought of the liver piercing comparison, but point well taken.

 

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