Hell on Earth:

A second look at the events at Virginia Tech

Eques


We Americans are problem solvers and fixers. We are pragmatic and practical. Our technologies afford us an unprecedented standard of living that nearly stretches to he outer margins of our society. It is true that poverty stubbornly exists in our nation; however, it traps a smaller proportion of our neighbors than at anytime in history. We are among the wealthiest nations. By classic military reckoning, we are the most powerful nation in history. We have seldom been afraid to tackle big problems. Our success has been phenomenal, our development in historical terms, rapid. Yes, these are generalities, but generally, they are true.


We are however an impatient people, this is a result of our sudden successes. We expect to do everything quickly and efficiently. We complain when we have to wait in line for anything. Our lightening victory in the Gulf War led us to believe that we could achieve similar victory in the Gulf War II. Our military actually completed its mission, despite communication difficulties, confusing and problematic ROE (Rules of Engagement), troop, and equipment shortages, preparation for conventional tank warfare with the Republican Guard, while having to fight asymmetrical warfare with the Fedeyen of Saddam Hussein.
Unfortunately, the nation builders it seems made disastrous decisions after the rapid fall of Baghdad, such as total demobilization and dissolution of the Iraqi army and antiseptic de-Bathification of the civil service. These decisions are painfully pulling defeat from the jaws of victory.



Presently, our collective impatience is on display in the aftermath of the hellacious slaughter of 32 Virginia Tech (VTech) students with their professors and the wounding of 15 others. Commencing only hours after this hellacious event, we rushed to explain why or how something like this could happen in Blacksburg, Virginia. How could this happen on a college campus? How could this happen in the USA? The day following this heinous act, news commentators were already reporting our desire to put this hellacious historical moment behind and move on. Grieving is a process, healthiest when neither rushed nor prolonged.


Immediately and collectively, we looked for someone or “someone’s” to blame. The State of Virginia failed us; it does not have tough enough gun laws. The VTech administration failed us; it waited too long to alert the campus. The courts failed us; they did not commit the subject to a psychiatric hospital. The perpetrator’s parents failed us; they did a lousy job raising him. America failed us; it is a violent fascist society. This approach is neither helpful nor healing. None of these answers is even close to satisfactory. Worse, they lead us in the wrong direction. Assessing blame does not solve the problem. Society’s eagerness to place blame on someone, to punish someone, is its attempt to regain the illusion of control over its environment. Will this somehow give us closure and make us safe? Will it bring healing and peace?



No, it will not. It is humanly impossible to provide the degree of safety that we are presently demanding from whomever we consider responsible for such arrangements. For example, the security protocols that are now in place intended to make our air flights safe from terrorists are little more than placebos. Build a better mousetrap and you educate the mice. United Flight 93 did more to make flying safe than all of the ground security and technology, which was impotent to prevent airliners from flying into the intended targets of suicidal terrorists. Do any of us believe that the locks we place on the doors of our homes really make us safe? They give us a feeling of security but it is an illusion. Such things do not deter the determined thief. Locks help keep honest people honest. True, we should not rush to dismiss their anxiety relieving properties. They enable us to function in a world that seems so randomly dangerous. However, our pursuit of perfect safety is problematic when we engage in pathological hunts for scapegoats. We need understanding not blame. Blame is not a healing balm.

There is only one person responsible for the hellacious murders at VTech. Cho Seung –Hui pulled the trigger he is responsible. The question we need to answer is how did this young man become the greatest mass murderer in the history of our nation? The pursuit of greater understanding and the answer to this question requires a very different approach and a very different analytical tool. Theology is that tool. This is essentially a theological and anthropological question.


We live in an increasingly secularized culture. Let us define the term “secularized” as a set of values, mores, and behaviors biased against any public role for theology, religion, or God. Western culture, the putative culture of Europe, the United States, Canada, and Mexico increasingly marginalizes and decreasingly refers to its Christian roots for determining its mores and values. (I do not believe this is so in other South American countries.) As a people, we in the USA find it evermore difficult to acknowledge the historical reality that our nation once had a moral consensus based on the Judeo-Christian tradition; it was actually a bible-based ethic. This cultural disintegration is even further along in the nations of the European Union.


It was on the strength of this traditional ethic that Thomas Jefferson claimed the unalienable rights of the Declaration of Independence. It is on this traditional ethic that the founding fathers constructed our republican form of government enshrined in the US Constitution. It was to this ethic the abolitionist movement appealed. It was on this ethic that Martin Luther King, Jr. based his claims for civil rights “for all God’s Children.” It is on this ethic that anti-abortion pro-life voices base their hope. Certainly, our moral consensus is now shattered. As Alasdair Mac Intyre points out in After Virtue, the West has experienced a cultural cataclysm that somehow went unnoticed. We now live on the shattered remains of Western Christian culture. Does this biblical Judeo-Christian tradition, preserved by the remnant, still have anything to offer us in these morally desperate times? Can it assist us in our attempts to understand the significance of the hellacious murders at VTech on the morning of April 16, 2007? It most certainly can.
Purposely and continually, we have referred here to the murders of that day as “hellacious.” For that is exactly what they are. They are a manifestation of Hell on earth. For those 32 people who faced the muzzle of a gun in the last moments of their lives, for the 15 others who were wounded, and could have been murdered, for the parents, siblings, extended families, friends, and fellow students of those who were slaughtered and wounded and for the nation it was and is hellacious.

“Hellacious” how was it so? Metaphorically, yes but far more than that. What is hell? Does hell exist? Yes, Hell exists if there is a God. However, there is a God. Therefore, hell exists. Those who are in absolute union with God are “in heaven.” More precisely, they are in the “state of being” in union with infinite love, which is God. Those absolutely separated from God are “in hell.” More precisely, they are in the “state of being” absolutely separated from infinite love, which is God. We can experience heaven and hell on earth. We are not only rational beings. We are also relational beings. God fashioned us in His image. According to Christian theology, God is an infinite Trinitarian relationship of love among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God created us in his own image for loving relationships with one another and Him. Christ commanded us to live in this love.

The secular authorities seek to lay blame. Who was responsible? How many were involved? What should they have done? All of this is accomplished with 20/20 hindsight. What was unpredictable is infallibly explained. Secular experts rely on sociological and psychological sciences to provide rational answers. They point out that the perpetrator acted irrationally. They declare he who acts in this manner as mentally ill. They affix an appropriately label and prescribe a course of treatment. The professionals may attempt an explanation of the etiology of this particular pathology, pointing to genetics or environment, the old nature versus nurture debate is restated. However, they cannot tell us exactly why other similarly afflicted folks do not act out in a similar fashion. They cannot answer this question accurately, because mental illness is not the ultimate cause of this hellacious behavior.

There are other factors involved that secular scholars cannot address. These factors belong to the spiritual realm. They lie just beyond the grasp of sociological and psychological analysis. Theology alone is capable of examining these spiritual factors and providing answers to the ultimate question, why. Theology provides the possibility of a deeper more satisfactory explanation. The examination of the reality of Sin in creation, which God declared “good,” is beyond the scope of social science. The theological concept of Original Sin is capable of making evil intelligible and providing a remedial diagnosis. Original Sin is a perfectly rational theological explanation for the presence of evil in the world. We have the ability under the rubric of Original Sin to understand the presence of evil in our hearts and in a world created by a loving God. Original Sin, the original willful disobedience of Adam and Eve separated them and their progeny from God. Sin is a separator. We have been separated from God by Original Sin and our personal sins. Therefore, the entire world and we stand in need of Salvation. We need a Savior. God Himself promised that He would send one. Christians believe that Jesus Christ, the son of God is that Savior.

The founding fathers of our national independence and our constitution at a minimum were sympathetic to this theology, if not believers themselves. The Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were fashioned by men who understood both the strength and weaknesses of their fellow citizens. The Declaration of Independence pointed out the abuses of power and the violation of their rights by the British Crown. The Constitution was an inspired attempt to establish ordered liberty, in which freedom of religion could flourish. This right was so important that it was specifically enumerated in the first of ten amendments in the Bill of Rights. However, even this noble document was infected. Although, many founding fathers understood the inherit evil, they felt the need to compromise for the sake of the commonweal. It would take a bitter bloody civil war to right this wrong of constitutionally sanctioned slavery.

Even with a Savior, we are still able by our own choices to separate ourselves form God and to do so absolutely. This is the definition of Hell. Total separation form love, which is God. God does not condemn us to Hell, everlasting separation from Him; we sentence ourselves by our own choices.



Cho Seung-Hui was an example of a human being who was already in hell on earth in as much as he had separated himself from all relationships with God and with humanity. He had separated himself from love. Sources consistently described him as completely isolated. High school classmates of Cho, whose name they did not know, never observed him speaking to anyone nor acknowledging the presence of others around him. Reportedly, he associated with no one during his high school years. Those who saw him in high school and later at VTech saw him as a young man without any friends whatsoever. Not even the three students who shared the dormitory quad with him at VTech knew his name. He signed into class with a question mark (?). The little he participated in his classes frightened and disturbed others.



It is difficult for us to imagine the torment in which Cho lived. We all know how it feels to loose a friend due to a misunderstanding or an offence perceived or real. We have all felt isolated or unloved at times. Have we ever been alone without any relationships? Cho lived in this void for most of his life, if the facts related are accurate. He was utterly alone. He experienced hell on earth. He was in a hellacious state of being. His choices put him there long before he pulled the triggers of his semi-automatic pistols. He had literally excommunicated himself from the company of God and man. Was he irredeemable? It is too late to know. However, it seems that he was on an irreversible course for several years.


His total isolation tormented him. Cho blamed those around him for this excruciating spiritual pain. Eventually this agony became insufferable. He had to end it. His pain had reached critical mass. He desired self-annihilation. He planed his death. Some theologians reason that the greatest suffering for the devil is its being. The evil one sees in its being the image of being itself, which is God. The devil would self annihilate if it could, in order to destroy the image of God in its own being. As a spiritual being, it cannot. Therefore, the evil one seeks to destroy the image of God in creation, in us. Cho desired to destroy himself and to take with him his perceived tormentors.


He left us a record of his “justification” that accused his fellow students as self-centered debauchers, the cause of his pain, and the reason for his actions. It was their fault. He accused them before God. They would pay.
“Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: ‘Now have salvation and power come, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Anointed. For the accuser of our brothers is cast out, who accuses them before our God day and night.’” Rev 12:10 NAB



Cho Seung-Hui purchased his weapons, planned the day, and with complete detachment and inexorable determination executed 32, wounded 15 then he calmly turned the weapon on himself. It is highly unlikely that anyone could have anticipated exactly what form this young man’s self-destructive behavior would take. However, if we can make room for theological thought and analysis in the public forum, as once our founding fathers did, we will (I believe) be better able to recognize in others and ourselves the signs of the spiritual darkness that surrounded and separated this young man from God and his fellow human beings. It provides us with a vocabulary that will enable us to describe, discuss, and understand the otherwise indescribable and incomprehensible. Why are there suffering, tragedy, and death in the world? Why did these young people suffer such a horrible death?


Suffering and death entered the world with Sin, not as a punishment but consequently. God did not create us to suffer and die, but to live with one another and with Him in love forever. Sin disrupted God’s plan for us and for all creation. Suffering became necessary for our salvation.

“For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. “ 2Cor 5:21

Bad things happen to good people, because Sin has entered the world. People do not always treat one another with love as Christ taught. Sin is corrupting. It does not destroy our nature, but it greatly affects it. Sin isolates us form our true self, form one another and from God. Ultimately, all suffering is due to Sin, often because of sinful men, at other times due to disharmony in nature. Original Sin has affected all creation and all creation was redeemed in Christ.
“For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God; for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” Rom 8:19-23

The corruption of Sin also has entered creation. It is no longer a harmonious whole subject to the spirit of God. A disconnect exists as in man qua man with God. Man is part of nature; therefore, nature as well is disconnected from God. In man, body wars against intellect and intellect against man’s will and his will against God. The proper harmony and hierarchy can only be restored by grace through Christ, who is God’s son become man and thus part of creation as well. What has been assumed by the incarnation has been redeemed.

The consequences of Sin appear in the headlines of our daily paper and are now visible 24 hours a day on cable news stations. We usually fail to recognize the underlying evil and sinfulness until an event of monstrous proportions such as this one wrenches us from our spiritual unconsciousness. Theological analysis of culture and current events has the potential also to facilitate constructive engagement with adversaries. As it, assisted Gandhi and the cause of independence for India, and as it assisted Martin Luther King Jr. in his righteous civil rights movement.

Obviously, we live in a culture that rejects too readily the things of the spirit as having no relevance to our civic lives. Our nation’s history and hellacious events such as these make the opposite claim in a terrifyingly powerful way.