Three School Shootings and School Prayer

Five (so far) dead in a shooting in Amish country where the man apparently planned on sexually molesting the girls he had taken hostage.

Principal killed by a student in Wisconsin when the principal had suspended the student for tobacco.

One hostage and the shooter dead in Colorado, where the assailant actually did sexually molest the girls he kept hostage.

And now, there's a plan in Wilson County to add a Bible class where it's not taught as Scripture but as curriculum.

Here's where it gets interesting. In the comments of the Tennessean article, there are people who are saying, "Well of course there are shootings now. We took God out of the schools and so naturally there's more violence. We need to reinstate God and all the problems will be solved." Or to qoute directly... "I want to thank people like the young lady who has come forward to have a bible class. That is the problem today more christians will not stand up for what is right. Until a few years ago we had prayer in our schools and could speak more freely about things, and you didnt see any school shootings then. I know times has changed but God is the same God and He NEVER changes. I agree that all things start at home but you should also be allowed to let children speak freely at schools."

Here's the thing. Society has changed GREATLY in the past 50 years. Violence has become institutionalized and celebrated, even though we act shocked when violence occurs outside of whistles (see, Haynesworth, Albert). We have over sexualized our children and made pornography so available that during the last 5 minutes of the Colbert Report, there's a long commercial for Girls Gone Wild. We've made sexualization such a part of life that some people consider oral sex no more than what a kiss was to me back in high school.

"Reinstating God" back into the mix isn't going to fix this like switching off a light switch. It's going to take a societal shift. It's going to take the business of selling violence and sex not selling any more. It's going to take parents putting forth healthy sexuality to their children and demystifying it. Making kids pray in schools isn't going to solve this. Making people read the Bible isn't going to work, just as making people go to church hasn't solved this. The infamous BTK killer in Kansas was the president of his church, for Pete's sake.

Honestly while these shootings dismay me, I'm not suprised by them. I'm surprised that in our world where we glorify sex and violence that it doesn't happen more (and I'm not talking about homicides and sexual victimization in general; I know those happen daily; I'm talking about them in our schools). To be an agent of reconciliation calls us to a greater calling than to surrender to the world and its definitions. Followers of Christ are called to this. And even that's not a cure-all. It's hard work.

The world is broken, but we have to trust that God is going to fix it and be willing to partner with Him to do that. We have to do it in our relationships with our families, with our neighbors, with our co-workers, with the strangers who we are in contact with daily. Anything less and we're not followers of Christ. It's as simple as that.