Letter from my attorney friend in India on Va. Tech --and My Response

Hello Barb. Ma'am !!
Its me John
..... I heard and read about the Korean student on a shooting rampage killing
33 innocent students for some personal grudge. I say that he was always a
potential fanatic and those who knew him should have taken due care to avoid
him. I'd go a step further in formulation of preventive arrests of potential
and dangerous-minded people. In most cases these people reveal their plan to
their peers who simply brush off the matter as fantasy. Two families from
India were told that [their]children who were victims shall soon be dispatched
to their homes for rites. Imagine being the parent of a child who set off
for a distant land for higher and better studies; and to forget about their
ever being there in the first place, they will never be seen again. It's . .
. it's very very sad, Ma'am.

Did the people fail to show sufficient love to the young boy, or was it
political hatred, or a host of combined reasons? Being a student of
psychology, we look for reasons as to what prompts these killers to go on
such a rampage, harming those with whom they never had strained relations --absolute strangers.

The consequences of such acts are felt by several families, some of whom are
unable to take it.

The message is simple. We must be prepared to lose our dear ones if and when
we have to. We must practice detatchment deep within our minds with those
who we love and feel for and care for. We must practice calmness of the mind
and avoid displaying our emotions publicly.
________________________

Dear John,

Yes, how very sad for the families --all of them --who sent their children to college at V. Tech with high hopes --so many very bright and beloved students and teachers. One was from Toledo here, a Catholic school grad, an exemplary student and person, now a prof at Va. Tech, who had worked on solutions for handicapped people and had much accomplishment to his name and left behind wife and 3 children.

About your last paragraph, which is Hindu philosophy, is it not? not only can we NOT detach from people we love, but according to the great teacher, Jesus, we should not detach in the way you describe. Detachment to me means distancing oneself --being remote from someone emotionally. The killer did that. That was his problem. He would not speak even to those who were trying to be friendly to him. He had come here as an Asian child at 8 and experienced ridicule from cruel school kids in elementary school for his difference (including language difficulty). His detachment led him to be totally self-focused and emotionally dead to the feelings of others --and sociopathic as a result. We should be on the lookout for such people but not to avoid them. As you said, he didn't know his victims, for the most part. The ridicule of him PLUS the detachment FROM him for his painful inability to relate-- both helped to push him over the edge. The angels weep. God weeps, for this was not HIs plan for this child or the others.

I can't imagine living as a dormitory suite mate with someone who would never speak to you or have courteous, polite exchange. I would want to do an intervention --and force him to receive caring interest --overwhelm him with genuine kindness and concern. I don't hear that anyone really tried very persistently to reach through his hateful, remote exterior. Instead, he retreated from people and was so scary in his isolation that they retreated--which is what you seem to be recommending as a solution. But just avoiding him did not help. He turned his wrath on strangers --just to make a statement. His real statement was: "I am sick! And I hate you all for not caring about me! I'll show YOU and the world that I was significant!"

Jesus called sinners the "sick who need the Physician" and said that was why he hung out sometimes with blatant sinners of his Hebrew culture--the "winebibbers and the harlots." For He was the Great Physician --the healer of our hurts, the forgiver of our sins.

In John 4:6, there is a story in which Jesus spoke to a woman at a well who was not a Jew, but a Samaritan, (sort of like Shia vs. Sunnis --because both claimed Abraham and Jacob as religious/cultural forefathers.) He told her HE knew she lived with a series of 5 husbands, the present man not being her husband. From that, SHE knew He was a prophet --for otherwise, she was a stranger to him. Yet he spoke knowledge of her life and also gave words of life to her about the Living water that only He could give.

He knows each of us the way He knew the Samaritan woman at the well. To her and to us, He says, "whosoever drinks the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life."

Jesus said to her, "You worship you know not what; we [Jews] know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth for the Father seeks such to worship him. God is a Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth."

The woman said unto Him, "I know that the Messiah is to come who is called Christ; when He is come, He will tell us all things."

Jesus replied: "I that speak unto you am HE."

The tragedy from a Christian perspective is that people die everyday without being reconciled to God because they did not believe in Christ. The Creator sends His Living Word, His Living Message, in Jesus --His Son, the only begotten of the Father --the ONLY Savior --and tells the world to spread the news, that our escape from mortality is through believing in Jesus and confessing our sinful state to Him, in faith believing that He hears through His Holy Spirit present on the earth and in the hearts of believers.

This same Jesus tells us to NOT be detached from troublesome people but to love enemies, brothers, neighbors. We can never be snobbish, thinking ourselves better than others, and please God. We must NOT transcend beyond troublesome people through meditation --but, intstead, be PRO-ACTIVE; love them in Jesus' name --to tell them about HIM, so they may recognize their need and experience His love and forgiveness--for eternal life beyond the grave.

"Because I live, you shall also live." --said Jesus, to those who believe and receive. "I am the way, the Truth, and the Life; no man comes to the Father except by me." He is the Shepherd and the Gate, the Cornerstone of the Church and of LIfe.

We've all been given this choice and a greater tragedy than U.Va's is that so many of us are rejecting this free gift of salvation --choosing instead to join the mockers and the scornful who refused to believe even though they saw His miraculous powers and heard His claims and teachings.

the woman at the well? she believed --and ran home to bring the others to meet Jesus and he spent 2 days with these Samaritans--and they believed --and were saved by their faith.

The Samaritan woman? An unlikely missionary whose faith planted a church!