Pastor's Perspective - Rush to Judgment

Dear FCC Family & Friends,

A ‘Rush’ to judgment?

I shook my head when I read today that conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh on his April 19th broadcast identified Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui-Cho as “a liberal” repeatedly. Though I like Limbaugh, even as a fellow conservative, I just can not support him on this one.

Like many of you I was deeply disturbed by the media coverage of the massacre. While thirty-two bodies were yet to be identified and thirty-two families yet to be notified, fingers were already being pointed. Someone had to be blamed. Before the full blow of the news was allowed to resonate and grief to marinade, the college president and campus police were in the media crosshairs. Now, a week later, we are somehow led to believe that Cho did what he heinously did because of his misguided political persuasion. I just don’t buy it..

Friends, this was the worst mass shooting in US history! We’re still dealing with it – even in California. This is not the time to point fingers. It’s still too early. Let’s all be humans and grieve properly. This is not the time to blame or use a national tragedy as ratings-boosting fodder. These were real lives, cut way too short. The shooter’s political ideology and identification are irrelevant.

Want somebody or something to blame? Here’s my humble preacher’s opinion. Ready? Cho did what he did because he was a sin-fallen, sin-poisoned, and sin-perpetuating person living on a sin-fallen planet, processing through a sin-diseased brain sin-filled cultural and relational (mis)information, willfully manifested in the most senseless and sinful of ways.

Through self-imposed alienation from healthy, loving and meaningful relationships with Jesus Christ and others, he walked smack dab into the devil’s most proven and fatal of traps – isolation.

Rush, I just can’t get your back on this one. The deadly effect of festering isolation is not exclusive to conservatives or liberals. Satan is an equal opportunity bipartisan destroyer.

In the Fight,

Steve Kiefer
www.1stchristianchurch.org