In the 1960s Bill Roberts forever abandoned youthful innocence for the
killing fields of Vietnam. Not long ago something happened to Bill that
brought back the terror he felt years ago in guerrilla warfare.
His recent brush with death was not in a war in Southeast Asia. It
happened in Portland, Oregon, a prosperous city of a million and a half
people. The enemy wasn't Vietnamese guerrillas but gun-toting gang
members in a school yard.
Mr. Roberts serves as principal of a school attended by my children. He
is still a soldier, but his fight is with the explosion of youth
violence that began 20 years ago in America.
With the American prison population up to 1,800,000 from 750,000 in
only 10 years, violence among young people affects every stratum of
American life.
Easy solutions are hard to come by because the problem with youth
violence is not a trend fueled primarily by desperation and poverty. It
is driven by powerful forces and influences that lead some children to
treat other human beings as if they are of no more value than the
electronic video-game figures they mindlessly kill off by the hour
for amusement.
With the lines between fantasy and reality confused and blurred, some
American youths have received the unmistakable message that it is
entertaining to kill. The two teenaged gunmen who killed and maimed 35
students and teachers at Colorado's Columbine High School in May laughed
as they roamed the classrooms and hallways and gunned down
their victims.
Does our culture teach children that killing people is not a big deal?
Violent movies, video and computer games, and many television shows
certainly send that message.
Strangely, many violent teenagers are possessed of a sense of
invincibility. Not only do they evince no fear of God, they have little
fear or understanding that they could be killed as easily as the
fictional characters on a video-game screen.
Explosive Violence
After a 15-year-old boy confessed to the May 1998 shooting of 22
students and his parents in Springfield, Oregon, commentators pointed
out that explosive violence had crept from the poor, inner-city
communities of the 1980s and early '90s onto the manicured lawns
of suburbia.
Not only is homicide one of the greatest risks to our youngsters, says the
U.S.
Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, it has progressively permeated
the national landscape. The epidemic of gun violence began to peak among
youth in the late 1980s, ravaging a predominately poor minority
generation of inner-city residents, according to James Garbarino,
director of the Family Life Development Center at Cornell University.
National Council on Crime and Delinquency president Barry Krisberg
notes a difference in today's profile of youth violence. Recent
mass-murder attempts and episodes “had nothing to do with drugs or
guns,” he said. “Some were from affluent communities and
intact families.”
In the last six years 11 of 12 mass shootings with multiple victims
took place in cities with populations under 80,000. The Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention report nine of these were municipalities
with a smaller population than 52,000.
Initial studies indicate a shift in violent youth behavior out of the
low socioeconomic stereotype. Harvard School of Public Health professor
Deborah Prothrow-Stith characterizes the movement of youth violence from
poor urban communities to the rest of the population and regions as an
effect similar to any other epidemic. “It's the second wave,” she said.
“First [it strikes] the most vulnerable community, and then it spreads.”
Copy acts have also proliferated. In one study 25 percent of young
violent felons said they got the specific idea for their violent
activity directly from television. “I can do that” is the remark
attributed to the 15-year-old Oregon shooter in a conversation two
months earlier to his school-bus driver when he heard about the school
massacre by two youths in Paducah, Kentucky.
Murders committed by teens ages 14 to 17 tripled between 1976 and 1993,
then dropped somewhat, according to University of Oregon sociology
department chairman Robert O'Brien. However, observers point out that
upward trends in youth violence may be masked somewhat by imprisonment,
aggressive policing and a dynamic national economy.
A Childhood Jungle
Youth violence is, at its core, an outgrowth of an American crisis of
values. Successful child-raising requires values flowing from a firm
commitment to children—a commitment that requires time, attention and
resources. In their absence, children grow up in a veritable jungle.
It doesn't have to be so.
Consistent, loving guidance of children works. Demonstrating concern
works. These parental commitments help stop violence by preventing it.
They require a child-centered approach that touches the spirit of the
child rather than a manipulation of material circumstances masquerading
as attention.
A central message of Jesus Christ regarding children is that they are
to be loved because “of such is the Kingdom of God.” He showed that true
love works. The explosion of youth violence is a clear warning that
time is running out to begin practicing Christ's approach before it's
too late.
Most youthful violence emanates from environments in which brutal adult
behavior is modeled and acted out in what National Council on Crime and
Delinquency president Krisberg calls a “nihilistic culture that does
not promote community and social values.”
Not only are right values ignored, but wrong values are often
celebrated. “Go to the movies and listen to the music,” says Mr.
Krisberg. “It's violent, it has misogynist content. There's gross
materialism and no ennobling values celebrated.”
A New Battleground
The war of youth violence is waged in many communities. On Mr. Roberts'
Portland school ground, a battle almost erupted because a 12-year-old
student had grabbed a basketball away from a gang member.
A few days later school was just letting out when the gang members
arrived with revolvers under their coats and dozens of umbrellas tipped
with blades. They were ready for the boy.
What surprised Mr. Roberts and led him to instinctively sense he might
witness a murder was the bizarre willingness of the 12-year-old with no
violent history to take on the gang single-handedly.
As the boy raced out the front door toward the gang, Mr. Roberts
grabbed him, handing him over to two assistants who restrained him in
Mr. Roberts' office while Mr. Roberts confronted the gang.
In schools across the nation, principals experience such potentially
deadly conflicts. Although this situation passed without harm, Mr.
Roberts says he feels sure he will see similar problems again. He fears
that America, with its random, bloody explosions of violence, is in some
ways repeating the frightening guerrilla warfare of Vietnam.
The tentacles of youth violence have traveled across the Atlantic and
the Pacific into most other parts of the Western World. Consider the
United Kingdom. In some British schools youth violence and disrespect
for authority are out of control. An East Anglian instructor wrote an
article, “How We Teachers Have Lost Control of the Classroom” (
Sunday Telegraph ) in which he said only one goal matters: “reducing violence in schools.”
Need for Spiritually Motivated Love
Former
U.S. Army general Colin Powell, whose
leadership helped the American military and its allies emerge victorious
in 1991's Operation Desert Storm, says the problem of troubled youth is
the greatest threat to the future of the United States.
Youth violence has its roots in a parental culture that has spiritually
abandoned them. More money, expensive schools and government programs
run by well-meaning bureaucrats cannot substitute for parental love.
Western nations so often look to institutional programs for salvation
from social crises, but this is one money can't buy.
The 15 million children living in poverty are not alone in a landscape
of emotional, interpersonal and spiritual impoverishment. Many children
in prosperous nations grow up without enriching values conveyed by the
intimacy of sacrificial parental love.
Many of them have no concept of the sanctity of life, even their own.
“This is the way we want to go out,” read the suicide note from
Columbine High School gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who between
them killed 13 people in a rampage of bullets and homemade bombs before
they turned their guns on themselves.
With materialism substituted for love, many children have no
comprehension of an overriding purpose for life, no sense that life is
anything more than a quest for instant gratification. They have scarce
knowledge of a Higher Power with endless love who reveals a meaningful
purpose and destiny for every man, woman and child.
The discouraging social forces affect almost all of society. Even
people who profess to be Christian aren't immune, with divorce and abuse
rampant. Too many political and religious leaders have abandoned belief
in absolute standards such as those that flow from the immutable law of
God. God's standards condemn both lack of and abuse of parental
authority as well as the sexual promiscuity that almost always leads
to single-parenthood.
As a result, children absorb a chaos of relativistic values that mingle hedonism with self-destructive and aggressive behavior.
Serious Consequences
The Creator of mankind has the authority to define right and wrong. And
He warns that He will reject a nation whose mothers and fathers reject
the spiritual knowledge revealed in the law of God.
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge,” declares the Creator God. “Because you have
rejected knowledge, I also will
reject you . . . Because you have
forgotten the law of your God, I also will
forget your children” (
Hosea 4:6, emphasis added).
Youth violence is not a mystery. It is a mistake, a sin and a tragedy
for all concerned. But the good news is that the spiritual principles
that have always worked still work. Families, communities and nations
don't have to be destroyed if they will seek the spiritual knowledge
that shows them how to express godly love.
Societies and cultures can change. In the case of America's crisis of
youth violence, the problem begins in the home. It is there that parents
must learn about and then begin to foster a family culture based on
biblical values. Love, if it is genuine, always works.
GN
