First, thanks to Gospelcom.net content editor, Andy Rau, for the helpful package of resources in dealing with the Virginia Tech killings just one week ago today. (Being able to respond to crises almost in real time—I had resources on my blog within ten minutes of the news—is just one of the benefits of the Intenet.)
Second, Christian polster George Barna provides these observations on the tragedy by focusing on the parents, rather than all the other popular targets: lax gun laws, lack of mental health resources, etc. etc.
In Barna’s research, he finds:
• By the time an American child is 23 years old, as was the killer in Virginia, he will have seen countless murders among the more than 30,000 acts of violence to which he is exposed through television, movies and video games.
• By the age of 23, the average American will have viewed thousands of hours of pornographic images, which diminish the dignity and value of human life.
• After nearly a quarter century on earth, the typical American will have listened to hundreds of hours of music that fosters anger, hatred, disrespect for authority, selfishness, and radical independence.
• The typical worldview of a person in their early twenties promotes self-centeredness, the right to happiness and fulfillment, the importance of personal expression in all forms, the necessity of tolerating aberrant or immoral points of views, allows for disrespect of other people and use of profanity, and advances forms of generic spirituality that dismiss the validity of the Judeo-Christian faith. Largely propelled by postmodern thought, the typical worldview of young people does not facilitate respect for life, acceptance of the rule of law, or the necessity of hard work, personal sacrifice, paying the dues or contributing to the common good. Barna noted that only about 2% of today’s teenagers possess a biblical worldview that acknowledges the existence of God, Satan and sin, the availability of forgiveness and grace through Jesus Christ, and the existence of absolute moral principles provided in the Bible.
• Growing numbers of children seek to make their way through an increasingly complex life without the traditional safety net comprised of a loving and supportive family, a stable circle of supportive peers, teachers who know and help nurture the child, and a community of faith that assists in giving meaning to life and a sense of belonging.
Barna concludes that spiritual training is vital, but monitoring children’s media exposure is also crucial:
“The issue of media management was also evident in the families Barna studied. “An overwhelming majority of these successful parents believed that the media have a significant influence on the lives of children. Consequently, they limited, monitored and mediated the media content to which their children were exposed. They often refused to give permission to the kids to watch particular programs or to listen to certain music, and regularly had discussions with their children about the content of the media they consumed. Those discussions were not always comfortable or pleasant, but were deemed to be very important in making standards real for their children.”
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April 23, 2007 at 14:32
In general, I agree with Barna. While I do not want to see massive government intervention in freedom of speech or expression, there are common sense ways to righteously “infringe” on public profanity, displays of sexuality, high decibels, etc. Those can and should be limited to PRIVATE expression between fully consenting adults, so I don’t have to share in them. I refuse to turn a TV on for a child unless it is for the purpose of viewing a SPECIFIC program, i.e. not just to watch TV. But I question the narrow focus of
“Barna noted that only about 2% of today’s teenagers possess a biblical worldview that acknowledges the existence of God, Satan and sin, the availability of forgiveness and grace through Jesus Christ, and the existence of absolute moral principles provided in the Bible.”
Orthodox Jewish families, who are very good on raising wholesome children to adulthood, acknowledge the existence of God, have the original Biblical worldview, but have a different understanding of sin, a VERY different understanding of Satan, to not seek grace through Jesus Christ… likewise, Muslim families get back handed high marks from the most evangelical Christians for the moral atmosphere in their homes, but don’t match ALL of Barna’s criteria.
The real point is to agree on the moral standards God expects of us, and that we owe to other human beings, THROUGH whatever specific doctrines each of us embraces. Doctrine is mortal man’s pitifully inadequate attempt to put God into a box the human mind can comprehend.
April 23, 2007 at 16:20
Interesting research. However, I don’t agree on certain points. For example, one of the first things I read online was the blame on video games for the Horrific murders at VT. There were a lot of uncertainties (there still are), but they jumped the gun and directly blamed video games (by the way, the shooter had no connections to video games). My brother is a die hard gamer in his late 30s and he was furious. He event mentioned that there was going to be a rally of video game players in NY letting the government know that video game players are not murderers. I heard and understood his point of view.
Now, I try to see both ends of the coin. I got saved in my late 20’s and I know that I have seen my fare share of violence, sexual scenes, perversions and played violent video games before I knew the Lord. But murder and suicide were never on my mental “to-do” list. Maybe the first question we ask is what the state of the mind of this young man was before being “persuaded” by next-generation entertainment. Sometimes we are too quick to put the blame on certain things without being fair.
Now, I wouldn’t completely rule out that the media has a great influence on our children, but I think there is a moral standard in each individual and there comes a point where we make a decision on acting on certain impulses. Personally, I think the perversion of the human heart is showing its true face and there is only hope in living a purpose filled life in the Gospel.
Any human being is able to do what this young man did. We would be quick to say otherwise, but everyone has a limit. When the limit is exceeded, we make irrational decisions and do “crazy” things. There were no sexual scenes, murder on TV, or violent video games in the early days and yet, Cain killed Able. first murderer in the Bible. King David, took someone’s wife, killed her husband, lied and went above and beyond what a “normal, moral” human being is supposed to do. I think it lives in our fallen nature. Jars of Clay has a good album called “Good Monsters” where they basically say that we are monsters by nature, but Christians are the good monsters… but monsters nevertheless. To end, I say that we as parents can and should do everything possible to protect our children, but I don’t know that I would blame the murderer’s parents for his actions.
April 23, 2007 at 19:22
I would completely agree that the parents are the most vital role in how a child turns out.
We learned that the Columbine killers has bombs in their rooms, as well as guns, diaries, computer websites, all loaded with details about what they planned to do.
If their parents had been doing their job, that tragedy, as well as all the rest of school shootings, could possibly have been avoided.
The parents need to do their jobs, ask questions, be there, snoop through their rooms and closets, check their pc’s history.
I love my sons, I trust them, but I would be failing them as a parent if I did not search their rooms and ask them questions about where they go, who their friends are etc, and monitor what they watch on television.
But we cannot blame video games and movies alone. The nightly news is some of the most violent images on any tv set anywhere.
April 23, 2007 at 20:06
“By the age of 23, the average American will have viewed thousands of hours of pornographic images, which diminish the dignity and value of human life.”
Thousands of hours?
April 23, 2007 at 22:04
I wonder how an annihilist view of human life (i.e. no conciouss eternity) as is prevalent in the secular west (at least as far as NZ is conserned) has influenced the value people put on the lives of others and themselves. If death can be seen as no respecter of conciousness, without consequence from the way in which we lived this life, does that increase the likelihood that people would be willing to kill others? Themselves?
Not that I am a fan of traditional approaches to Hell/ Heaven, but perhaps these doctrines have gone some ways towards increasing the gravity/ importance which folks place on the consequences of takign away life.
Of course others might argue that these doctrines have de-valued life (dualism). . . . So perhaps the question is moot.
April 24, 2007 at 07:14
I can’t believe the insensitivity of Barna blaming the parents for this and the bad choice or propagating here on this site.
I am outraged!
April 24, 2007 at 08:20
I, for one, don’t think that all video gamers are murders just waiting for some trigger to set them off. However, I do see a paradox here. How is it that people continually say that watching violence on TV, movies, video games, etc., has no effect on people yet advertisers have shown over and over again that seeing images does, indeed, effect our actions?
April 24, 2007 at 08:24
Barna makes some interesting points. But like a few of the commenters above, I’m a bit nervous about connecting his data to this incident, given that there were clearly mental and social dysfunctions at work in this killer that can’t be blamed entirely on bad parenting or unrestrictred media intake. Remember that the Virginia Tech victims, too, were presumably exposed to the same violent and ugly media growing up that Barna describes; but they obviously didn’t choose to kill. Something else was at work beyond just bad parenting or violent movies.
Data like this is sobering, but I think Christians need to be careful not to overstate the case. I’ve no doubt that violent media plays into incidents like these in some ways, but if there was a simple and direct causal connection between violent media consumption and school shootings, we’d have a lot more school shootings happening than we do.
April 24, 2007 at 10:48
This kind of data can be interpreted many ways. Media was mentioned in the data. I think this has more to do with Christian leaders shutting out Hollywood and the secular media for so long that it took this decade to begin to repair the rift. We cannot abandon the world we live in. We must offer something better as Christians. So, lets be missionaries to the media. The truth is that we live in a post-Christian society. This is not solely a parenting issue. This is a church leadership issue.
For thought, the so-called most Christianized country Rwanda has little of the media, porn, video games in comparison to America. Yet, with all the decades of professions of faith we witnessed a genocide. Can we ultimately blame ourselves for being Americans or blame the media itself for violence? The killer was at fault here, not his parents or the “media” in my humble opinion.
April 24, 2007 at 11:34
I think Barna is going a little over the top here. This young man’s mental illness is what brought on this tragedy. To blame parents who were probably aleady suffering, knowing that their son had a mental illness, but whose hands were probably tied because he was a legal adult, is not fair. Hopefully this tragedy will bring about useful change when it comes to treating mentally ill people.
April 30, 2007 at 13:07
I definitely believe blaming parents after an incident like this is ridiculous. As I recall, after Columbine some parents of some of those killed wanted to sue the parents of the two who did the shooting. It was unseemly to say the least. What kind of monetary value do you put on a dead child anyway? And at some point we must admit that no parent has 100% physical control over their child. Parents are not criminally liable for the actions of their offspring. Only the most overt, conscious, contribution to the offspring’s crimes should expose parents to legal culpability. Could they have done more to raise the child better? That is a moral question they will ask themselves as long as they live. It is not a matter for lawsuits and monetary compensation.
Video games do not, in themselves, create killers. The fact that so many in our community or nation find such high levels of violence in video games acceptable or fun reflects something about our community standards, which provides a kind of background noise to really murderous episodes when the occur.