A Parent - On Columbine Child Massacre! - Thursday, April 29, 1999 - Newsletters - http://maxpages.com/ljwbthisweek/A_Parent_Looks_At

By Phillip M. Brown

I find myself puzzled by the turn of events of the past weeks. It seems that the nation is horrified by the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. No one seems to know why this, along with violent incidents at other school locations around the country, is happening. Everyone wants to point at something that is the problem. They should not have access to guns (like the bombs don't kill anyone), their parents should have known what was happening and stopped it, or even better the school officials (teachers or administrators) should have been able to tell what was happening and have stopped it. If only the kids had not picked on those boys, maybe they would not have reacted so violently!

All of these things are possibly true, but they are not what caused these boys to become stone cold killers. Lets try to be objective for a moment and see where it leads us.

First of all our children are raised now with, in a lot of cases, no real moral base. No one teaches them right from wrong and backs it up by good example. After all, what good it is to tell your son that it is wrong to kill when all you watch on your TV or in your movies are R rated movies filled with murder, rape, and foul language.

Second, even if we don't outright teach our children racism, we teach it through the subtle way of blaming someone else for our problems or telling racially slurred jokes amongst ourselves (Oh, of course, they don't mind a little joke, do they?)

Third, and possibly the most damaging and the most overlooked yet, we kill millions of babies every year in the name of convenience. How can a child not look at the fact that we condone killing for convenience sake and start to rationalize that there are circumstances, outside of war, when it is all right to kill. When they get to that point what a little step it is to decide that someone who has wronged them needs to die.

Fourth, we have parents who no longer take responsibility for the actions of their children. They shrug their shoulders as they pronounce that their child will not let them ask them questions. When did we decide that it was all right to allow children to start making the rules? When we did we started on the long road down. Children do not have the experience or the perspective to make those kinds of decisions over their lives. That is why they have parents.

Fifth, and most important of all, we have taken Christianity out of our schools. When it is taught in our schools that Christianity is just another religion and the bible is just another book, then we deny our children the real knowledge of knowing there is a higher authority and that if they do wrong they have to answer to that higher authority.

I would like to close with this one thought. Isn't it strange that all of these things are happening, not in some chaotic manner that would not matter, but in such a well orchestrated way that it has caused little or no impact on people's consciences. It has sneaked up on society until most people do not even realize the full impact it is having until they hear of something like the Littleton massacre. Do you think that it all just happened, all by itself?

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