Not in
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Not in
Vain
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April is the cruellest month, breeding T.S. Eliot: “The Waste Land” (1922).
1. The Burial of the Dead |
April 10, 1994: Hutu extremists in Rwanda murder 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days.
April, 2004: The National Islamic Front Government Army kills 1000 black Sudanese a week, more than 30,000 dead to date.
April 18, 2004: services in the National Cathedral observe the 89th anniversary of the Armenian genocide in 1915 that killed 1.5 million Armenian Christians.
April 10, 2004: Senator George V. Voinovich (R), Ohio, calls for the replacement of the U.N. Chief in Kosovo (Harri Holkeri). Reason: he refuses to suppress organized violence against Serbs, with killings and burning of homes and Serbian Orthodox churches.
April 2004: Resistance to our forces in Iraq increases daily. Fallujah under siege.
April 23, 2004: Army Ranger Pat Tillman, who gave up his professional football career and a $3.5 million contract, dies while on combat patrol in Afghanistan.
April 18, 2004: Israeli solders kill Hamas Leader Abdel Aziz al Rentissi.
April 20, 2004: Families and friends place flowers beneath the 13 crosses that represent the 12 students and one teacher who died in the Columbine High School massacre, April 20, 1999.
April 28, 2004: CBS 60 Minutes II makes public photos of prisoner abuse in Iraq.
T. S. Eliot may have been right in his
assertion that April is the “cruellest month”. Cruelty dominates on all fronts. Where do we look for hope?
One answer might lay in the aftermath of Columbine and in the life of Darrell Scott, father of Rachel Joy Scott. You recall that when she laid wounded, one of the killers, Eric Harris, asked her if she still believed in God. “You know I do,” she replied. Eric shot her in the head.
A month after the massacre, Darrell Scott testified before the U. S. Congress that the blood shed at Columbine “cries out for answers.” “Their deaths must not be in vain.”
He told Congress, “Columbine was not just a tragedy; it was a spiritual event that should be forcing us to look at where the real blame lies.”
“We have refused to honor God and have opened the doors to hatred and violence. The real villain lies within our own hearts. Political posturing and restrictive laws are not the answer. The young people of our nation hold the key,” he told Congress.
Darrell Scott has spent the last five years talking in schools all over the country, often under the auspices of Youth for Christ. He travels six days a week, presenting a non-violence program.
He continues to describe Columbine as “a spiritual event” ordained by God.
His conversations with Rachel and examination of her writings and drawings reveal her closeness to God. They also show that she anticipated her death.
Darrell Scott believes Rachel died for a purpose.
Darrell preaches responsibility and urges commitment to God. He deplores the ban of prayer from schools, citing that grace was forbidden before lunch at Columbine High School. He contends that banning prayer violates First Amendment rights.
“The Bible was the primary textbook in the schools for years and its presence was fully within the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” he continues.
Further on prayer, Darrell Scott wrote in the book Rachel’s
Tears, based on Rachel’s writings, “I have attended a number of legislative sessions around the country in the past year. Many of these sessions open with prayer, but the same
legislators who sit in these sessions won’t allow their kids to pray in school. Does that sound like hypocrisy to anybody besides me?”
Scott has a staff of ten that maintains the Rachel Joy Scott website (www.racheljoyscott.com) and produces videos and other resource materials. Rachel’s older sister, Dana, sometimes travels with him but also talks separately at school assemblies, delivering her message of kindness to one another as a way to overcome violence all over the country.
Shortly after her daughter’s death, Rachel’s mother, Beth Nimmo, and husband Larry went on a mission trip to South Africa and Angola to help with feeding programs, going in place of Rachel who had hoped to be a missionary.
In the ensuing years, Beth has traveled in the U. S. and abroad to challenge young people with the message of God’s love included in Rachel’s writings.
Beth and author Debra Kingsport have put words from Rachel’s diaries into The Journals of Rachel Scott. It offers a guidebook for teenagers to make decisions about their lives.
“Go after God,” Rachel wrote. “Whatever it takes, do it. And do not give the excuse: I’m just a teenager or I’ll do that when I grow up, because it doesn’t work that way. God wants to know you now.”
Co-author Kingsport writes, “She left such an interior roadmap to her soul, that writing in the first-person (as Debra does in the book) didn’t feel like a challenge: it was a joy.”
When I talked to Darrell Scott a year ago, he said that Rachel had died for a purpose, God’s purpose. That’s why he was called to leave a management position with a food company to tell teenagers about Rachel’s love for God and to inspire them to follow her example.
Lectures by Darrell Scott, Dana Scott, and Beth Nimmo. Books with Rachel’s writings and drawings. DVDs and Videos. An active website. These media have inspired hundreds of thousands youth and adults to follow Rachel Scott’s commitment to God.
A cruel tragedy in the cruellest month has become the vehicle for spreading God’s love. “A Spiritual Event.” The 13 who died at Columbine did not die in vain.
Joe Polhemus will retire June 30, 2004 after 15 years as editor of The Congregationalist. Material for this article came from videos and books about Columbine and from an interview with Darrell Scott.
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“Bowling for Columbine”
I watched “Bowling for Columbine” after writing the accompanying article. The 2002 film, winner of the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and of an Academy Award, uses the Columbine tragedy as a springboard to describe what Moore calls a “culture of fear.” While Scott exonerates the National Rifle Association from direct responsibility, Moore blames, but only partially, the ready availability of guns. “Why,” Moore asks, “does Canada, with more guns proportionally, have one-twelfth the violent death rate?” According to Moore, our “Culture of Fear” is spawned by media excesses and political demagoguery, unlike moderate counterparts in Canada. A “Bowling for Columbine” cartoon clip shows the Pilgrims escaping violence only to inflict violence on the Native Americans and on their own at Salem. On the other hand, Scott sees Columbine as “a spiritual event” leading to redemption . . . another contrast. Moore points fingers but offers no solutions. I wonder why Moore did not interview Darrell Scott in his documentary movie to get another viewpoint. —JBP |
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Both Darrell Scott and Michael Moore blame our culture
for the violence of Columbine and similar tragedies. But they differ in their analyses.