When the unacceptable becomes acceptable we are all in trouble!
Several days ago 17 children and 2 teachers were murdered in cold blood in their classroom, in a small Texas town, by a troubled 18 year old male. The question being asked by those who survived the slaughter and to some degree the Nation as a whole, is why and how could this have happened.
Not to minimize the slaughter of 19 innocent people in Texas, in Chicago the butchering of only 19 people would be considered a good weekend. Every single weekend in Chicago, black gangs slaughter men, women and children in numbers that dwarf the slaughter in Texas. The gangs have turned Chicago into a shooting gallery, with the city’s citizens being the targets, and every single week the death toll piles up. The surviving relatives of those murdered likewise ask why and how could this have happened.
If we step back from the carnage and objectively ask what do these two crises have in common, we are showered with political commentaries laced with self serving political agendas, satisfying only those who mouth them, and those who lack the political resolve to face the problem head on. The simplistic and politically acceptable answer to those individuals on the left would be Guns. However, the facts and reality on the ground do not support that simplistic political agenda. Chicago has one of the toughest gun laws in the nation and they also have one of the highest murder rates in the nation . The answer is more complex and is unfortunately also painfully obvious. What spawned these killers can be broken down to two main causes. The first, being the collapse of the family unit, and the second, being the attack on organized religion, ie the Church.
When the family unit is dysfunctional and broken, then the resulting children will be dysfunctional and broken. When parents fail to act as a family unit and provide parental guidance to their children, then they wIll produce troubled children, who have no understanding of their own worth and the worth of others and no respect or fear of God. The understanding of life as a precious gift, not to be squandered is lost to them. Life then takes on a surreal meaning similarly to watching a video game on their cell phone, only they are in the game.
The emptiness inside these children then becomes filed with rage. Rage over their own inadequacies and those they blame for their situation, and somewhere down the road, they will strike out at whatever reminds them of their own personal torment.
The 18 year old shooter was unable to coup with his school mates because he lacked the social skills to deal with the challenges of growing up and relating to other children. Cast adrift by his family, he became withdrawn and lived in a fantasy world in which he found acceptance. His only authority figure was his grandmother, and when he finally rebelled against her and shot her in the head, at that moment he went all out into his fanticy world, and he was prepared to strike out against the institution he envisioned was the source of his torment. The school that he felt rejection in became the target of his revenge. The shooter may have fantasized going into that Texas school and killing everyone in sight, and may have prepared for his fantasy, but until he thought he had killed his authority figure, then at that moment his fantasy became everyone else’s nightmare. At that singular moment there was no turning back for him, it was his turn for his imagined revenge to become reality.
The Chicago gang banger also comes from a broken family, but in his case the gang becomes his family. It becomes his mother, father and sidings and for him to gain their respect he will do whatever his family asks of him. Hereto, life has no meaning, and the lives of others are worth even less. The gang becomes the most important thing in his life . Similarly to the Texas shooter, the gang banger lives in a surreal world, which only becomes real to him when a bullet passes into his body and the reality of his death befalls him. The hand banger like the Texas shooter is the product of a failed family.
The second element in this social disaster is the collapse of organized religion. We as a nation have become jaded with organized religion. The Church instead of being an instrument of guidance and moral teachings has been under attack. First, from within by the failings of a minority of its leadership, and second, by the political left which views the Church as a foil to their own agenda.
The Church has always been the backbone of our Nation, and without the church to teach right from wrong, morals, the sanctity of life and the importance of the family unit we are all in trouble. It does not matter what religion we practice, or none at all, we all need God to keep our society together, and once that bond is broke then there is nothing left standing in the breach, but reactive institutions . We are then left with our new centurions and ourselves to keep us and our families safe, and whereas, it may at this point in time be all we have left, it is a losing battle until we get to the root of the problem, and that is the reality of the situation we face.