Another week, another massacre on the grounds of one of our schools, this time so close to home, at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. Five are dead, six counting the murderer. It is eerie when such a massacre happens at a place one knows so well. You picture in your mind the times you have been at the kill zones, thanking God that Valentine’s Day this year wasn’t one of them.

We’ll send out an army of ‘grief counselors’ and, like Claude Raines in Casablanca, round up the usual suspects. There will be calls for more gun control, dealing with bullies, watching for warning signs, blah, blah, blah…and it is all so futile. When my father went to elementary and high school in rural Alabama and Mississippi they had gun racks for the students. The sight of a kid coming to school with a gun evoked a sense of security, not of terror. Bullies have ever been with us; predictably routine massacres on school grounds have not. Taking action because someone is constantly acting in a bizarre manner is no longer considered prudence, but discrimination. Rounding up the usual suspects is accomplishing nothing but keeping the grief counseling business brisk.

There will be some who say that this is God’s punishment for our sins. I’m not big on that either. I suspect God hits the ‘smite’ button on His Mac very rarely. Rather, I think He is more like the loving parent who warns us not to get too close to the edge of the cliff. When we fall off the edge it is not His punishment; our own actions created the damage. He was lovingly trying to protect us from the harm we might inflict on ourselves. So rather than continuing to flail away at the branches of this problem, why not try to get to the root?

It is written that we will reap what we sow. There is a sickness in our culture. We are reaping it in many places, perhaps most dramatically on our school grounds. There are three prime reasons we have come to this pass:

1) The prevalent belief that God is dead. Man worries constantly about finding meaning in his life. If God is dead, the only way to achieve any sort of immortality is to do something notably great – or notably terrible. There is despair here.

2) A tragic misunderstanding of man’s fundamental nature. Modern liberal democracies treat man as fundamentally a consumer – an animal who, once his needs are met, will be content. But man is fundamentally a creator. He recaptures the transcendent joy and wonder of childhood only when he is lost in the work of his own hands. When policy constrains his ability to create and treats him as a mere rapacious animal one should not be surprised when some act like rapacious animals. There is despair here

3) The culture of death. The rise of legalized abortion and the pressure for legalized euthanasia have almost destroyed the notion that a person has worth for his very self. How can survivors of the aborted generation believe they are loved for themselves? They know they are random survivors of that brutal gauntlet, the womb. Everyone sometimes feels useless and failed. As we progressively define life on utilitarian grounds, why are we surprised that some who feel useless act randomly and chaotically to our increasingly random and chaotic definition of life, itself. There is a great despair here.

This is not a moral tirade. It is a plea to look at what we have became and change course.

God created man in His image; in the divine image He created him; male and female He created them. If man was created in the very image of God, then he is imbued with a unique and divine dignity, not because of what he does but because of who he is. With malice he can mar that dignity, perhaps even forfeit it. Barring that, it inheres to him regardless of his transient utility. If he is created in the image of God, then man must share in His fundamental nature – which is as creator, not consumer. This is the doctrine that gave rise to freedom: that restrained (if not always stopped) the hands of even kings and despots. It is the fundamental teaching that gave rise to the classically liberal institutions that made real freedom possible, giving man hope and his life meaning.

We can call for new gun laws; we can enact legislation against bullying; we might even redefine intervening when people behave bizarrely as prudence rather than discrimination. But unless we recover reverence for the dignity and value of life itself, acknowledging man’s authentic fundamental nature, we won’t be able to train enough counselors to keep up with our grief.

We have tottered at the edge of the cliff for far too long now. We must neither stay here nor think that God is punishing us for disobedience. Rather, we must hear His call, His call to come back to what gave us freedom and filled our lives with meaning. Otherwise our nihilistic nightmare can only get worse.
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Charlie Johnston is a political analyst for The Chicago Daily Observer and a member of its editorial board.