The weeks before Easter are rich with ancient images of suffering, sacrifice, death and hard choices. <\/p>\n\n
One of the biblical texts focused on martyrdom, during a Mass two years ago at Saint Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Littleton, Colo. The visiting preacher tried to make this concept come alive. <\/p>\n\n
Imagine that a spiritual war is raging, said Bishop Sam Jacobs of Alexandria, La., as he paced among the pews. What if someone burst into the church with a gun? What if he pointed it at people\u2019s heads and asked if they believed in God? Who would bravely say \u201cyes\u201d? <\/p>\n\n
Youth minister Jim Beckman said the bishop asked the young people: \u201cWhat if someone came into your school with a gun and did that?\u201d <\/p>\n\n
The words didn\u2019t register at the time. But that flock included many of the parish\u2019s 300-plus teens from Columbine High School. They remembered the sermon a few weeks later \u2014 after April 20th. <\/p>\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t understand how anyone can deny the spiritual dimension of what happened at Columbine,\u201d said Beckman. \u201cThe repercussions of the shootings have continued to dominate our ministry here in so many ways. \u2026 Yes, we survived and, yes, we will prevail and, yes, we have hope to carry on, in the name of Jesus Christ. But this tragedy raised spiritual issues that are not going to go away in a few months or even years.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
Many state officials insist that the massacre wasn\u2019t \u201ca God thing.\u201d They can chant this mantra, but the facts cry out that there was more to Columbine than familiar questions about school discipline, mass media and gun control. <\/p>\n\n
The killers wanted to make a statement about good and evil, about morality and anarchy, and they succeeded. The first combatants to march into the church-state minefield at Columbine were Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. <\/p>\n\n
\u201cEric and Dylan told us why they did what they did,\u201d said Wendy Murray Zoba, senior writer at Christianity Today. \u201cThey were acting on the laws they had been taught by their culture. There is no God. You are your own god. There is no eternal law. You make your own law. The material world is all there is. Power is what matters. You just do it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
Thus, Harris wrote on his Web site: \u201cMy belief is that if I say something, it goes. I am the law, if you don\u2019t like it, you die. If I don\u2019t like \u2026 what you want me to do, you die.\u201d In the pre-rampage videos, Harris vowed to shoot Christians in the head. He was furious at Christians who shared their faith with others. Witnesses said he went out of his way to shoot students who were praying out loud. He asked several if they believed in God. <\/p>\n\n
Clearly, said Zoba, \u201cEric Harris had a God problem.\u201d And as their \u201cjudgment day\u201d approached, Klebold looked into a camera lens and said: \u201cWe\u2019re going to have followers because we\u2019re so \u2026 god-like.\u201d He added: \u201cWe\u2019re not exactly human. \u2026 We have bodies, but we\u2019ve evolved \u2026 one step above you.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
In her book \u201cDay of Reckoning,\u201d Zoba writes: \u201cThere is no other way to explain what overtook these boys than to call it raw evil \u2014 not the Hollywood version but the religious kind.\u201d Thus, \u201cColumbine rests uneasily in so many hearts. \u2026 If hell, as it were, opened up and temporarily held sway in those hallways that day, such an occurrence would mean the existence of a spiritual world, and worse, a spiritual battle. And that, to many \u2026 is irrational and creepy.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
If there is spiritual evil, then that also implies that there is spiritual good and that\u2019s a hard equation to discuss on the evening news, in political debates and in classrooms. <\/p>\n\n
\u201cSomething has gone terribly wrong in this culture,\u201d stressed Zoba. \u201cI still think America hasn\u2019t faced the issues that were raised at Columbine, in part because there is always the next shooting, the next controversy, the next something to distract us. \u2026 <\/p>\n\n
\u201cBut there were big spiritual questions raised at Columbine and they will not go away on their own. If the church tries to just move on and get past this, then where will those spiritual questions be answered?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The weeks before Easter are rich with ancient images of suffering, sacrifice, death and hard choices. One of the biblical texts focused on martyrdom, during a Mass two years ago at Saint Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Littleton, Colo. The visiting preacher tried to make this concept come alive. Imagine that a spiritual war is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n