A Hesitant Observation about the Root Cause for the Charleston Church Shooting

The events in Charleston, SC are among the more confounding and heartbreaking events I can think of. For this reason, I hesitate to comment on these murders given the emotional and spiritual damage this young man has done to his community and our nation. I grieve for the tremendous loss of life.     I know the city of Charleston. I grew up not that far away.

Charleston is not a stone-aged racist city. Long ago Charleston had the good sense to hire Police Chief Reuben Greenberg, its first African American Orthodox Jewish convert Police Chief who served with distinction from 1982 until his retirement in 2005 (see wikipedia article here: http://tinyurl.com/pcsfdyw ). 

This story is not about Charleston, racism, or guns. The sad fact is that there are many Dylann Roofs walking the streets today, ready to detonate. I don't think Dylann Roof is merely a racist. He's worse (if that is possible). He's a narcissist (he loves himself), a nihilist (he's destructive and self-destructive), and a misanthrope (hater of people, besides himself). But he is a symptom of a larger problem that goes beyond racism and gun violence. It's an issue of worldview that pervades our culture. It's valuing self above others to the expense of others.

The problem is not an isolated one and the problem is greater than Dylann Roof. Read articles on this story and you find a disturbing, yet subtle, trend. This excerpt from the associated press provides insight into what I mean. Read it carefully as I don't want to be misunderstood and mislabled (see below).

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- A black drinking buddy of the white man accused of killing nine people at a Charleston church says the suspect told him a week earlier that he planned to shoot up a college campus in the city. The friend, Christon Scriven, told The Associated Press on Friday that he thought Dylann Roof's statements were just drunken bluster. Still, Scriven said he was concerned enough that he and another friend, Joey Meek, went out to Roof's car and retrieved his .45-caliber handgun, hiding it in an air-conditioning vent of a mobile home until they all sobered up.

Later (this is from the same article) Roof told a white friend: 

"He just said he was going to hurt a bunch of people" at the College of Charleston, said Scriven, 22. "I said, `What did you say? Why do you want to hurt those people in Charleston?'" He just said, "In seven days, they all got seven days.'" 

A week later, on Wednesday, authorities say the 21-year-old Roof went into Charleston's historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, sat for nearly an hour at a Bible study class, and then opened fire on the participants. 

The exchange recounted by Scriven matches accounts from other friends of Roof who have been interviewed by the AP... In an interview on Thursday,  (Joey)Meek (who's white) recounted how Roof had complained while getting drunk on vodka that "blacks were taking over the world" and that "someone needed to do something about it for the white race." Meek says Roof also told him he used birthday money from his parents to buy a .45-caliber Glock semi-automatic handgun. 

Later Roof's black friend comments:

"I don't think the church was his primary target because he told us he was going for the school," Scriven said Friday. "But I think he couldn't get into the school because of the security ... so I think he just settled for the church." 

Now, let's go back and time and across the country to Colorado and James Holmes and the theater shooting. Read the article carefully.

Centennial, Colorado (CNN)A psychiatrist who treated James Holmes described him Tuesday as an anxious, anti-social oddball who thought obsessively about killing people in the months before he opened fire in a crowded movie theater in the Denver suburbs, killing 12 and wounding 70. Dr. Lynne Fenton testified before a packed courtroom that Holmes told her in March 2012 that he had "homicidal thoughts" -- as often as three or four times a day. As his treatment progressed, he told her his obsession with killing was only getting worse. 

And yet, Fenton told a jury there was little she could do because Holmes never talked about specifics.

In both cases, you have a shooter. One is more or less a self-absorbed little thug. The other is likely a full-blown lunatic. The crimes they committed are horrific and will leave scars in their surviving victims for years and years to come. In both cases you have a shooter who gives plenty of indication that he's going to do something terrible. They tell friends and others. And what happens next? Those they confess their intentions to take some sort of action to protect themselves or limit their own exposure. Nobody takes steps beyond self-preservation. Nobody had compassion on "victims-to-be." 

Re-read the Associated Press excerpt. Roof had black drinking buddies and white drinking buddies. He told the black drinking buddies he was going to shoot up a bunch of students at the College of Charleston, where mostly wealthy white students attend. Later Roof indicated to his white drinking buddies that he was going to kill black people. Indications are that this young man was disturbed and frustrated and intended to kill a bunch of people and then kill himself, going out in a blaze of glory, only he lost his nerve when it came to taking his own life. 

He chose his final target according to his African-American friend is to be believed based on convenience (see above). Holmes was similar. Both thought through their actions. Both planned the carnage they committed. Both are accountable. Both deserve the death penalty. 

Each case was preventable and avoidable in that the shooters' accomplices (Roof's white and black drinking buddies and Holmes' psychiatrist and girlfriend, to name two) effectively did nothing. Their friends were alarmed by their behavior and threats and took certain steps. But no one stepped up to save the lives of strangers they didn't know. 

 We live in a culture where the individual is valued above all others. We watch out for number one. What we have is a problem of worldview.

We live in a culture of entitlement where people think they are entitled to be 'happy.' And when those who feel entitled to whatever makes them happy don't get it: people pay. Often people die. We saw this at Columbine. We see this now in Charleston. 

We live in an increasingly secularized society that tells us all that we are accidents or freaks of nature, here by random chance and that life is meaningless. We live in a society that worships nature and sees mankind not as a spiritual being created in the image and likeness of God, members of a single race: the human race but as a virus disturbing "Mother Earth." 

This is how children are being educated in schools and universities and this is what our children are being taught in the media (movies, TV, internet, etc.). Consequently, hearts have grown cold. The Dylann Roofs can shoot up churches, Holmes can wreak havoc in a movie theater, and the Columbine Shooters can shoot up schools. The instruments they employ are incidental to the larger problem: godlessness. Our society's problem is godlessness. 

 And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false  prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:10-14 ESV)

No, this  is not some end time prophetic vision I'm sharing. It's a diagnosis of our culture's problems. If we can marginlize God, then we are free to act as our own god and minimize and marginalize the lives and well-being of others as it suits us. What we have is a problem of worldview and it will take a miracle to change it because it is so engrained in our schools, colleges, universities, institutions, and media. Pray for that miracle. The government can't change it. The educational system won't change it. Gun control won't change it, either. It's a God thing. Pray for the God thing.