Shootings Reveal Adult Rebellion

— by Jeanette Faulkner

I wish I could remember who made the only insightful comment I heard in the days after the most recent child massacre. He said that in each of the school shootings, the boys thought they were doing something good, righting a wrong, avenging wrongs done to them.

Unthinkable to the rational adult mind, isn't it?

Not when you approach this tragedy in historical perspective. Francis Schaeffer wrote of us as "momentary man." The people of our time interpret everything in the light of this moment, forgetting what got us here and where our choices will take us.

So, it's awkward to answer questions like "Kids have always had access to guns. Why did they wait until the 90's to start wiping out their classmates?"

As a man thinketh, so he is.

What were they thinking?

They thought what we told them.

American society raises its voice in unison to tell kids that truth is subjective and within. There is no one to say you are right and I am wrong. Everything is relative and I am accountable to no one higher than myself, or the government made up of others like myself.

Multiculturalism is the product of this world view. You believe your myth; I'll believe mine. Who's to say mine is not true? The greatest sin is to not tolerate someone else's myth.

Egalitarianism is another product of this view. It's a long way from knowing that all men are created equal because they were created in the image of God, to all men are entitled to equal results just because they breathe.

Biblical equality applies the same standard to all men, but with unequal results because each person is unique. The egalitarian lie tells kids they are entitled to what everyone else has because…well, just because. And those who are gifted or work hard better give it up for those who weren't and don't.

Author and educator Doug Wilson has identified our dilemma not as a teenage rebellion problem, but as an adult lying problem. We, as a society, told the kids that there is no God. There's not one right answer outside themselves and that the greatest crime on earth is to not be tolerated.

These kids obediently believed us and we are shocked.

For the first few days, the atheistic, humanist psychobabblers had to admit they have no answers to this problem. The few quacks who tried to buffalo their way through the interviews ended up sounding very tinny.

I'm not going to assert there is a simple answer to the dilemma of children gone amuck. But it's getting embarrassing to watch the false prophets whacking away wildly at the branches while tripping over the roots.

The root of the problem is very visible and only the stupor that has come over our nation keeps us from seeing it. Some will complain about what I propose, some will split a rib in laughter, but one Columbine student left me a legacy.

When the gunmen asked who in the room believed in Jesus Christ, she stood up and said, "I do." They shot her point blank. That brave little martyr reminded me it is time to stand up to the lie and speak the truth.

As a nation we must repent. We have sinned against the one, true God. The atheists have been proven wrong only after we squandered away our religious freedom to serve a lesser god of tolerance. Christianity gave us religious tolerance and with true Christianity at the heart of a nation all men are able to believe according to their conviction. You disagree? Try in Iran or China what you can do in America.

Christians must again demand accurate doctrine from their pulpits, another Reformation if you will. Historically, societies fail when the church fails. The heresies of liberal, apostate preachers made the church a laughingstock, for the moment.

Fathers need to reconcile with their wives and sacrificially care for their families again. The family is the basic institution of any civilized society and, like it or not, the man is the head of that institution. Absent a father in the home, single moms need to get help from the church, not the government.

Mothers need to come home. Fathers need to go to work. Children, especially teens, need their mothers, not government workers. There is not a second car, lake cabin or vacation that's worth giving up the few years you have to mold that little life. Single moms again need our help.

Parents must take responsibility for the education of their children. Education is not a savior. Another superfunded government education program will just get us further along the miserable road we are on. God describes them in Ezekiel 12:2, "you live in the midst of a rebellious house, who have eyes to see, but do not see; ears to hear, but do not hear."

When I see the tragedy of our rebellion, I wish I could forget.

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Jeanette Faulkner is a free lance writer in Spokane, Washington.

© May 1999

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