'Where is the compassion for the Cho family?'
By John David Powell (04/20/07)
No sympathy for the Devil - This will not be popular, but it must be said: Thirty-three students lost their lives this week in those horrible minutes on the Virginia Tech campus. Thirty-three sets of parents lost their children, and many siblings lost their brothers or sisters.
The official count sets the number at 32. An addendum to the accounting tells us the killer took his own life and brought the number of dead to 33. But, we all know by now, just as we knew within hours, that the person who committed the largest single act of murder on a U.S. university campus was also a student.
Thirty- three dead in Virginia.
Each day and each night the purveyors of news and information help us relive the events of April 16. We see the scenes of carnage, we gaze at the innocent faces of those now forever young, and we reach into our hearts for prayers to comfort their families and ourselves.
This will not be popular, but it must be asked: Who mourns for the family of Cho Seung-Hui? Who mourns for parents who lost their child to a killer, for a sister who lost her brother to a person now forever known as a monster? When we watch the seemingly endless loops of video, when we stare into the eyes of evil, do we reach into ourselves to find comfort for his family?
There is no sympathy for the Devil, it seems.
During Eastern Orthodox services on the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday before Easter, there is a passage that gives me cold chills. It implores God to “heap more evils” on his servants. The chanter repeats the plea many times. The prayer serves as a reminder that God strengthens our faith through trials and tribulations. I, for one, could do without more of the bad stuff.
God, as usual, did not consult me, and so we find evil where we least expect it, such as the presumed sanctuary of the academy.
I believe demons wander around looking for temporary places to dwell, individuals in whom they can hide and bide their time until they strike with malice and terror. In time, after working their malevolence, they move on to other unsuspecting souls.
My wife’s stepfather was such a victim. I truly believe God and Satan waged a war within him.
Ben was a preacher, a minister by calling and by trade. He had a dark and evil side, though, seen only by those closest to him. He finally sought psychiatric help, but not before my mother-in-law divorced him and he lost his family.
After a few years, Ben got another church and a third wife. But, the demons had not finished with him. He almost tried to kill his new wife not long after he separated from her. He stopped himself before his hands could do the murderous bidding of whatever dwelt inside. A few hours later, he hanged himself to keep the evil within from coming out.
“I feel worthless and no good,” he wrote that night. “I'm tired of coping and struggling. My patience has worn thin, my mind is nearly broken, my self-love and self-esteem is nil.”
That night I lost a friend, children lost a father, and evil moved on to another unwary victim.
Ben left Scriptures to be read at his memorial service. One was the story of Christ and the man with unclean spirits called Legion because they were so many, which Christ cast into swine.
The existence of evil is as old as time, but our sophisticated society refuses to see evil for what it is. The first two listings for evil in my thesaurus show affliction and ailment. Evil is simply evil.
Anthony of Egypt, a fourth-century saint wrote: "When the soul ... separates itself from God, evil demons enter its thought processes and suggest unholy acts to it: adultery, murder, robbery, sacrilege and other such demonic acts . . . Evil clings closely to one's nature, just as verdigris to copper and dirt to the body. But the coppersmith does not create the verdigris, nor do parents create the dirt. Likewise, it is not God who has created evil. He has given man knowledge and discrimination so that he may avoid evil."
This will not be popular, but it must be said: The parents of Cho Seung-Hui did not create the evil that took the children of 33 sets of parents, just as they did not create the dirt upon which the killer walked to commit his acts. But, God has given us knowledge and discrimination so that we may reach into our souls and find one more seed of sympathy to sow to assuage the sorrow of the parents of the killer’s final victim.
John David Powell
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