Information Related to "Terror and Tragedy at Columbine High School"
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Kids Killing Kids: What Does It Mean?
"We do not hold anyone else responsible for our actions. This is the way we want
to go out."--Suicide note from Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
"I live in Denver, and I would love to kill almost all of its residents. You all
better hide in your houses because I'm coming for everyone and I will shoot to kill
and I will kill everything."--Internet message attributed to Eric Harris
by Scott Ashley
"Turn on the TV," came my wife's
voice over the phone. "There's been a shooting at one of the high schools near here."
Her anxiety came through loud and clear in her voice.
All the Denver stations were broadcasting reports from near Columbine High School
in a Denver suburb. Over the following hours a parade of surreal images painted a
ghastly and horrifying story: Two students, aged 17 and 18, brought an arsenal of
four guns and some 30 homemade bombs to the school at lunchtime, then indiscriminately
opened fire on students and faculty members who crossed their paths.
A final tally wasn't available until the next day. The gunmen had killed 12 of their
fellow students and a teacher-coach and wounded 23 others before taking their own
lives. Authorities hadn't been able to release a definite count of casualties--initial
estimates ranged as high as 25--simply because the carnage was so great. Victims
had to be dispersed among six hospitals.
In a parting touch of madness, the teenage gunmen scattered bombs around the school
and among the bodies, some with timers set to go off several hours after the shooting
stopped. Some grief-stricken families had to wait more than a day for the removal
of their children's bodies while officers painstakingly searched for and disarmed
unexploded bombs.
One of the dead was the girls' volleyball-team captain, a senior many thought would
be the class valedictorian at graduation a few weeks later. The teacher was shot
as he tried to help others escape to safety.
Media and Memorials
When I visited the area the next day, black-uniformed SWAT teams and other officers
were keeping visitors and the press several hundred yards from the battered school.
An officer told me it would take at least several days to investigate and clear the
building before visitors would be allowed in; law enforcers feared other undetonated
bombs might have been stashed in other students' cars in the school parking lot.
(The next day authorities found a powerful bomb in the school kitchen; apparently
the pair intended to blow up the cafeteria and burn down the 2,000-student school.)
Members of the news media, unable to get near the school, swarmed over the huge adjacent
public park. The tragedy had entranced the world. A forest of satellite dishes and
antennas sprouted from a growing thicket of news vans and trucks. Technicians strung
cables and phone lines. Several carpenters hammered away, building a small sound
stage for one of the major news networks. Around me I heard reporters speaking in
Spanish, German, French and other languages.
Students were everywhere, some crying, some sobbing, many simply dazed. Hundreds
brought flowers, cards and the occasional stuffed animal for several makeshift memorials
springing up in the park. Many students embraced, holding hands and clinging to each
other as though afraid of losing another friend. Students from other area schools,
reaching out in the only way they knew how, added cards and posters to the growing
mounds of flowers.
Baseball to Bombs
Slowly, details of the background of the suspected killers leaked out. Both were
from outwardly stable homes; one family was noticeably wealthy. The boys, both seniors,
were described as bright and intelligent. One had played baseball in Little League.
The other had been a Boy Scout.
But somewhere along the way something happened. Their interests changed from baseball
and Boy Scouts to homemade bombs and Adolf Hitler. They became part of a school clique
known as the Trench Coat Mafia, whose members wore long, black coats and sometimes
exchanged stiff-armed salutes and decorated their clothing with Nazi symbols.
Some of the group's members said they prided themselves on being social outcasts.
In the 1998 school yearbook, the caption accompanying a photo of the black-garbed
group reads: "Who says we're different? Insanity's healthy!"
Other warning signs were evident. The pair developed a passion for violent video
and computer games. One reportedly created his own Web site on which he discussed
how to formulate napalm, construct pipe bombs and store explosives. A hand-drawn
image on the site showed a gun-and-sword-wielding figure atop a mound of burning
skulls and another figure gunning down a bloody victim.
The duo had juvenile criminal records for having broken into and stolen electronic
equipment and tools from a van. One had been suspended from school for hacking into
a school computer. One had been reported to authorities for threatening to kill another
student. A classmate in a video-production class reported that the two made a video
in which they fantasized about walking down the school's hallways firing weapons
at other students.
A neighbor heard the pair breaking glass in one's garage the morning before the massacre.
"I assumed it was some weird art project," he said. Police later told him the two
were likely creating deadly glass shrapnel for their bombs.
Why Such Horror?
When confronted with such horror, we naturally wonder what could lead to two
teenage boys cold-heartedly and calculatingly inflicting such suffering on others.
It's also natural for us to ask why God, who tells us He is both almighty and all-loving,
would allow such a tragedy to take place.
Both questions have the same answer, but our thinking is so much more limited than
our Creator's view that we have difficulty understanding the answer, much less accepting
it. His perspective is much different from ours. "For My thoughts are not your
thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," He tells us. "For as the heavens are higher
than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts"
(Isaiah 55:8-9).
Our problem is that we simply fail to understand God's purpose, plan, method and
timetable for dealing with humanity's shortcomings. Without that understanding, we
are at a loss to understand why such horror exists and why God doesn't intervene
to stop it. Many become so bewildered by what they perceive as inexplicable contradictions
that they lose faith in God.
For example, the horror of two world wars, in which two generations of European manhood
and countless civilians were slaughtered in the trenches, battlefields and death
camps, eroded religious faith throughout Europe. Belief and confidence in God perished
along with millions of young fighting men. To this day much of the Continent is agnostic,
unsure whether God exists or whether He cares what happens among His children. Therefore
it is crucial that we come to understand why God allows human carnage and suffering
to continue.
A Matter of Choice
Certainly God could intervene to prevent such tragedies. "The Lord's arm is not
too short to save nor his ear too dull to hear," He tells us (Isaiah 59:1, Revised
English Bible).
Why, then, doesn't He intervene to put an end to misery? In the next verse He points
out the reason: ". . . It is your iniquities that raise a barrier between
you and your God; it is your sins that veil his face, so that he does not hear" (REB).
There is a wall between humans and God. He didn't create the barrier. We
did--individually and collectively. We've been adding to it, brick by brick, for
thousands of years.
God, you see, gives us all freedom of choice. He has dealt with mankind this way
from the beginning. He offered Adam and Eve a paradise in which to live and an opportunity
to build a relationship with Him that would lead to eternal life. But He didn't force
them to make that choice.
Given this opportunity, what decision did they make? Rejecting God's explicit instruction
regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they opted to do things their
own way. They believed they could find a better way, that they could, through experimentation
and human reasoning, choose for themselves the best way to live (see "The Real Star
Wars," page 4).
They set a pattern that all but a handful have followed ever since.
A History of Wrong Choices
Within a few generations after Adam and Eve, conditions had so degenerated that
God decided to start over with Noah and his family. For a time, after the great flood,
the world experienced peace through this righteous man. But it was not to last. Man
again descended into barbarism.
Later God chose an entire nation, the Israelites, and brought them out of slavery
to establish them as a role model for the nations around them. Concerning the laws
God gave them, Moses told them: "Observe them carefully, for thereby you will display
your wisdom and understanding to other peoples. When they hear about all these statutes,
they will say, 'What a wise and understanding people this great nation is!' . . .
"What great nation is there whose statutes and laws are so just, as is all this code
of laws which I am setting before you today? . . . Do not let them pass
from your minds as long as you live, but teach them to your children and to your
children's children" (Deuteronomy 4:6-9, REB).
God urged Israel to make the right choice, to "choose life, that both you and your
descendants may live" (Deuteronomy 30:19). But, like Adam and Eve and like Noah's
descendants, Israel also chose its own way.
God tells us: ". . . I gave them my rules and made clear to them my orders,
which, if a man keeps them, will be life to him . . . But the children
would not be controlled by me; they were not guided by my rules, and they did not
keep and do my orders" (Ezekiel 20:11,21, REB). They brought on themselves devastating
consequences: invaders, massacres and exile into faraway lands.
Later God sent His own Son, Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah. What did those who heard
Him choose to do? They murdered not only Him, but many of His followers. Christ warned
His disciples that the world would hate them because it hated Him (John 15:18-19).
God's way would never be easy or popular (Matthew 7:13-14).
The Bible shows that God rarely interferes with man's ability to make choices, and
mankind has a long history of making bad decisions. Truly, as God's Word tells us,
"there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death" (Proverbs 14:12; 16:25).
Choices Bring Consequences
Tragically, humanity has lost sight of the connection between choices and actions
and their consequences. God told ancient Israel--and by extension the people of all
nations--of the consequences and benefits of obeying and disobeying His laws (Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28). He tells us plainly, "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked;
for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap" (Galatians 6:7).
What kind of seed have we as a society sown?
Today's teenagers have easy access to glorified depictions of murder and mayhem--and
sadly what is on the screen is beginning to spill over into reality. All too often
the entertainment industry glorifies guns and gore in movies such as Natural Born
Killers and The Basketball Diaries--the latter in which a black-coated
teen brutally shoots down students in a classroom with a shotgun.
Studies indicate that, by the time the average American teen graduates from high
school, he will have seen some 16,000 violent deaths and thousands more illicit sexual
scenes on television. The music industry chips in with songs that glorify masochism,
violence, premarital and perverted sex and, at times, even the murder of policemen.
The teenage gunmen in Colorado reportedly were enthralled with Doom, a computer
game. Notice how Doom and its variations are advertised on its manufacturers' Internet
Web site: "The ever addictive and frighteningly realistic world of Doom is back.
It's bloodier. And it's deadlier than ever . . . You're a space marine
armed with a mere pistol. Your mission is to locate more substantial firepower (and)
blow your way through an onslaught of undead marines and mutant demons from hell
. . ."
When teens--and even preteens--feed on such a diet of violence and filth, what should
we expect? Why should we think they will react differently when they encounter conflicts
with others?
We find it convenient to blame youths for bad decisions and choices they make. But
adults--even national leaders--shoulder a big share of the blame. After all, it is
often leaders--including our legislators and judges--who have initiated and upheld
such actions as banning prayer from schools and firing teachers for keeping a Bible
openly displayed in the classroom.
Little wonder that the biblical prophet Hosea spoke of a universal principle applicable
to all societies, and especially to one whose motto "In God We Trust" is found on
its national coinage. Well over 2,500 years ago He was inspired to render God's assessment
of the national condition. "There is no truth or mercy or knowledge of God in the
land. By swearing and lying, killing and stealing and committing adultery,
they break all restraint, with bloodshed upon bloodshed" (Hosea 4:1-2, emphasis
added).
Does this passage not describe much of our Western world today? Just a few verses
later this Hebrew prophet goes on to sum up our national plight. "My people are destroyed
for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you
. . . Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget
your children" (verse 6).
Apparently willingly ignorant of the knowledge of God and His way of life, we
are the ones who set the moral tone and direction of our societies. Then we wonder
why things can go so horribly wrong at a quiet suburban school. We need to face our
own contribution to such problems. We need to see what we need to change.
An End to Sorrow and Suffering
God gives us the freedom to make choices--and to make decisions that often are
an affront to Him. He allows us to build our societies and civilizations, write our
laws and choose for ourselves what we consider to be good and what we think is evil.
But He also allows us to suffer the consequences when our choices turn out to be
horribly wrong. Regrettably, bad decisions have a way of devastating innocent bystanders,
as happened to the dozens of victims and hundreds of family members and friends affected
by the Columbine High School shooting.
But with little regard for--if not outright rejection of--the biblical principles
that gave our nation a sound moral foundation, our generation is choosing a path
that inevitably leads to such heartbreaking tragedies.
Yet God is not an unconcerned bystander. The world will not always be this way. God
reveals that He plans to intervene to stop the horrors that bring so much pain and
sorrow.
The time is drawing nearer when people's decisions will bring mankind to the brink
of annihilation (Matthew 24:21-22). Like the teenage gunmen who shattered the lives
of dozens of families, world leaders will seek to solve their problems through a
chain of events that will bring unparalleled anguish, violence and destruction (Revelation 9,13,17). That is the time God has chosen to send Jesus Christ to intervene on
a global scale to save us from ourselves (Revelation 19:11-16; Matthew 24:21-33).
The Word of God makes it plain that it will take such earth-shattering events to
humble humans to the point they will look to Him for solutions to their problems.
Mankind will repent of their love affair with self-determination only when forced
to admit that thousands of years of going our own way has brought us only face to
face with our own extinction.
The Scriptures contain the promise that Jesus Christ will return to usher in a new
world and establish the Kingdom of God. Then and only then will mankind find lasting
peace and safety. "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain," God
promises, "for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters
cover the sea" (Isaiah 11:9).
In a transformed world the grief and pain those affected by the shootings at Columbine
High, and others who have experienced similar tragedies, will become a distant and
fading memory. No wonder Christ tells us to earnestly pray for the time when that
kingdom will become a reality (Matthew 6:9-10).
Recommended Reading
God has an overall timetable for dealing with humanity. The Bible tells us what
lies ahead for our troubled world. You'll find many eye-opening answers in The
Gospel of the Kingdom, yours free for the asking when you contact us at the office
in your country, or the country nearest you, listed on page 2. You can also find
it in the literature library of our Web site at www.ucg.org.
Be sure to also request your free copy of What Happens After Death? In it
you'll discover the reassuring truth of what God has in store both for the two troubled
gunmen as well as their victims in this tragedy. You'll be amazed at what the Bible
really says.
Sidebar: Parenting and Social Responsibility
"Am I my brother's keeper?" retorted Cain when God questioned him concerning
the whereabouts of his brother Abel, whom Cain had just murdered.
Cain's age-old response to God started mankind down a path that has had major ramifications
for our societies and civilizations. When we reject a sense of responsibility for
the welfare of our fellowman, we're reduced to savagery in a struggle for dominance
and the survival of the fittest. When we accept a shared responsibility with and
for one another, we are then able to work together for the common good.
In spite of the abundance of warning signs in the behavior of Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold--including an obsession with violent video games, strange music, black clothing,
Adolf Hitler and guns and explosives--the two boys marched unimpeded toward orchestrating
their personal Armageddon.
The two obtained a small arsenal of guns and ammunition and materials to construct
more than 60 bombs--some of them extremely sophisticated--apparently without their
families' knowledge or intervention. Fifteen people lost their lives and 23 others
were wounded because no one intervened to put a stop to a tragedy in the making.
What does this say about the state of modern families?
Dave DeForest-Stalls, executive director of an activity center for Denver teens and
older youth, expressed the problem this way: "What it all comes down to is, Who's
listening to these kids? Who is spending enough time to listen to them? Who knows
them?"
Research has shown the links between broken homes and the increased likelihood of
eventual criminal behavior. Yet the Columbine High catastrophe is a dramatic wake-up
call to all families. These two students came from apparently stable, middle-class-
and wealthy families. But, in a society in which the norm is that parents hold down
one or more jobs outside the home, as was the case here, there isn't enough time
to go around.
When we analyze our society as a whole the picture becomes clear. "We don't spend
enough time with kids, and we've taught them they're not valued," Mr. DeForest-Stalls
said. "We'll give them a check, a credit card, a car before we give them our time."
Material possessions--cars, computers, gadgets and a generous allowance--are no substitute
for the priceless gift of time spent with our children.
"We have to focus on our own behavior and neglect rather than on what's so wrong
with kids these days," he continued. "We have to let them know their lives have value
. . ."
God expects parents to instill proper values in their children. When He gave His
laws to ancient Israel, He knew the family was the building block of a safe and decent
society. Immediately after He revealed the Ten Commandments, notice His instruction
to parents:
"Keep these words, which I say to you this day, deep in your hearts; teaching them
to your children with all care, talking of them when you are at rest in your house
or walking by the way, when you go to sleep and when you get up" (Deuteronomy 6:6-7,
Bible in Basic English).
Several fundamental principles for maintaining an orderly society come clear in these
verses.
First, parents are to learn God's laws and allow His Word to guide their thoughts
and conduct. The words and deeds of parents are the most effective teacher in instilling
proper values.
Second, parents are to teach God's laws to their children "with all care." They are
to make this one of their highest priorities. No parent should excuse himself from
this God-given responsibility.
Third, parents must regularly discuss God's laws and His Word with their children.
Parents should teach their children, through real-life examples we see in the news
and all around us, how obedience to godly laws brings blessings and disobedience
brings pain and sorrow. The tragedy at Columbine High School is a powerful example
of how obsession with evil leads to indescribable anguish to everyone involved. Far
too many of the adults and peers who interacted with Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
had lost touch with the way they were thinking.
Fourth, this passage clearly tells parents regularly to spend time with their children--to
converse with them, know what they are thinking and let them know they are loved,
valued and appreciated, both by their parents and by their Creator. Parents should
know how their children think and feelñwhat they enjoy and what causes them pain
and hurt. Parents should be there to guide them in dealing with anger and coping
with frustration and rejection.
If you would like to learn how obedience to God's laws leads to a safer and healthier
society, be sure to request your free copy of
While you're at it, request free copies for your friends and loved ones. You'll find
this 80-page booklet to be a wonderful guide for teaching God's laws to your children.
Call or write our office in your country (or the country nearest you) listed on page
2. This booklet is also available in the literature library of our Web site at www.ucg.org
.© 1999-2022 United Church of God, an International
Association
Related Information:
Sidebar: Individual Rights Vs. Societal Rights
Table of Contents that includes "Terror and Tragedy at Columbine High School"
Other Articles by Scott Ashley
Origin of article "Terror and Tragedy at Columbine High School"
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