SHOOTINGS: Look for actual cause

Today it’s hard to read a newspaper or watch a newscast without some story of a violent shooting spree or a vicious assault somewhere:

Shootings at a shopping mall in Kenya and a D.C. Navy yard, drive-by gunshots in Coeur d’Alene, an old man beaten to death in north Spokane, a college student murdered while jogging in Oklahoma. You can’t just blame guns (Remember Delbert Belton’s attack in Spokane?) or say it’s American kids out of control.

Before Newtown, the three worst single-gunman K-12 school shootings were in Germany (2) and Scotland. The root cause, I believe, is that these violent perpetrators, mostly single young men, are getting mixed messages from the culture. While they spend hours playing heinous video games and watching movies full of mayhem, they aren’t allowed to have the influence of God in schools, with prayers or other displays of faith in classrooms or other school events. In other public places, it’s become verboten to view a Ten Commandments display, a cross or even a Christmas tree on government property.

When a human soul lacks any meaningful spiritual input, something else must fill the vacuum. The results we see all too often on the paper’s front page and the 5 p.m. news.

DALE ROLOFF

Spokane