Now I’m not the type of person who approves of making everyone out to be a victim. Every human being is capable of making good and bad choices; I believe those who make bad choices ought to suffer the consequences of those choices.
However, as I saw and listened to Seung Hui Cho’s various last messages that were a part of the package he sent to NBC, I heard something familiar. I heard the cries of someone who felt left out, ridiculed, and most importantly, alone. It reminded me of all the strange people I met at my alma mater, Case Western Reserve University (which I thought had the highest concentration of socially awkward people in any one place in America, but I heard MIT is worse). It reminded me of when I felt excluded and alone in high school and college.
Although in many ways, American culture celebrates difference much more than other cultures, I think the materialistic and media-driven nature of our society continuously reiterates the definition of what is cool, what is acceptable, what is “hot”. And if you can’t identify with the artists, the musicians, the jocks, the socialites, the rich, or the beautiful, it becomes painfully apparent that you are abnormal, weird, an outcast, a freak.
What should our country do to respond to what has happened? Some people think we should pass stricter gun laws. I’m not strongly in favor or against gun control, so I don’t know—maybe it’ll help, maybe it won’t. What I do know is that we can start loving people more. What if someone reached out to Cho? What if someone had made more of an effort to befriend him?
I think a lot of people like to exclude others because it gives them a false sense of power and superiority. Some people think cliques are a natural part of being human. That may be true, but I think we can make a choice to stop thinking in terms of cliques and start thinking about people as individuals. I’ve had problems in the past with people thinking it’s okay to have cliques in the context of a church or “Christian” fellowship setting. I think there is no place for that in the church. If churches are going to have various cliques representing the “cool” people, the “beautiful” people and the “nerdy” people, how different is the church from any other institution?
I can guarantee you that there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of people like Cho out there. People who feel so lonely and so excluded from society that they are on the verge of doing something extreme. How do we prevent events like the Virginia Tech massacre from happening in the future? Let’s stop excluding people. Let’s stop looking down on people. Let’s start loving people.
