SLAYING: What have we learned?

The patricide-fratricide that happened in Coeur d’Alene freshly haunts us all. Why? How? And after so much love through housing help from St. Vincent de Paul?

I will never forget getting chewed out by a farrier because my adolescent son had a horse not worth the trouble of his horseshoes. He went on and on about how people have a horse that isn’t good for anything else and what do they do? They breed it.

While I still believe the farrier’s words to be overly harsh and judgmental, I can see his point. Why would someone breed to reproduce when they themselves are unfit or can’t afford offspring? And why are single parents now the norm despite having four times the poverty?

Are we becoming a society with the moral compass of farm animals? Where our sole purpose in life is the goal of being a video game couch potato on disability until we feel the need to breed, but still live with mom to avoid paying child support?

Even our churches struggle to get kids to come unless we entertain them with some rah rah event and then we wonder why being a productive member of society, much less a young adult churchgoer, is left to the non-English speaking immigrant help. In Europe, it’s usually Muslims. In America, it’s Latinos and Asians.

This horrible double murder of his own family allegedly at the hands of a 14-year-old comparing himself to some video game bad-ass character begs more questions than I can answer. But the obvious one is how can we learn from this?

Why did these homeless have firearms and video game machines that I can’t afford, but still given aid?

And why is our society so angry over pornography, but OK with cop-killing video games?

And why are our middle schools populated with girls wearing spray painted on yoga pants revealing every detail, but then we get all huffy over insurance paying for contraception that prevents conception of unwanted pregnancies? Are we going to deny biological urges because boys have the audacity to look at the provocatively dressed attention seeker? Sounds a little double-minded to me.

Some guy named Paul wrote, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” And even if one behaves as a farm animal, and won’t acknowledge God (like that changes God), we still reap what we sow.

And last week Coeur d’Alene reaped the whirlwind.

MIKE RENO

Post Falls