WHAT HAPPENS WHEN OUR VALUES AREN’T REAL: THE COLUMBINE SHOOTERS

 

The signs were everywhere that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were about to explode upon Columbine HS. They even left revealing journals so that we are not in the dark about their motivations.

Harris was desperate for the validation, which he required from the other students.  At least, he felt that he could earn their respect by being feared: “I HATE PEOPLE and they better fucking fear me if they know what’s good for ’em.” At a more self-reflective moment, Harris admitted: “If people would give me more compliments all of this might still be avoidable . . . but probably not.” file:///C:/Users/Daniel/Downloads/harris_journal_1.3.pdf

However, Harris might have been seeking an inordinate amount of compliments. He had convinced himself that he was a god, and gods need to be worshipped:

·       It’s ok if I am a hypocrite, but no one else, because I am higher than you people, no matter what you say if you disagree I would shoot you.

Today, building self-esteem, instead of an accurate self-assessment, is praised. It should be no surprise that Harris became a master at self-esteem to compensate for his bad feelings about himself, something we all share. However, if we elevate ourselves as a god, we seek validation from others for the monument we have built for ourselves. When we fail to receive this validation, the compliments, our god is diminished, and we feel rejected.

Besides, the drug of self-glorification diminishes the conscience. It enabled Harris to reject whatever his conscience might have been telling him. After all, if his is god, there is no need to take his conscience or any other voice seriously.

The idea of power gave him a high: “I am fucking armed. I feel more confident, stronger, more God-like. I have confidence in my ability to deceive people.” Harris had filmed his planning book entitled the “Writings of God.” Once the partners had convinced themselves that they were gods, they could reject their servile conscience as the zombie-like mentality of the ignorant masses.

Although less hateful, Klebold expressed many of the same ideas:

·       Society is tightening its grip on me, & soon I & will snap. We will have our revenge on society, & then be free, to exist in a timeless spaceless place of pure happiness. The purpose of life is to be happy & be with your love who is equally happy…The real people (gods) are slaves to the majority of zombies, but we know & love being superior. file:///C:/Users/Daniel/Downloads/klebold_journal_1.1_3.pdf

Society had denied them their due as gods. However, we all cannot be #1, the object of compliments, the most loved, or the most respected. These forms of validation are limited resources. How then must the marginalized survive if the respect is a scarce commodity? Scripture gives us the answer. We need not demand or hunger for the respect and love from others once we are assured of the love and validation that comes from the Supreme Source:

·       I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20 ESV)

Consequently, when the world rejects me, they reject Jesus. It still hurts, but Jesus gives us a refuge and a balm for the pain. Instead, the promotion of self-esteem fails to produce a greater number of “winners” or minimize the number of “losers.” Instead, it seeks to confer a survival advantage only upon its disciples.

In contrast, Jesus is unlimited and can elevate any who come to Him in truth. We can all know that we are loved.

Harris also admitted:

·       Everyone is always making fun of me because of how I look, how fucking weak I am and shit, well I will get you all back, ultimate fucking revenge here. You people could have shown more respect, treated me better, asked for my knowledge or guidance more, treated me more like a senior, and maybe I wouldn’t have been so ready to tear your fucking heads off. Then again, I have always hated how I looked, I make fun of people who look like me, sometimes without even thinking sometimes just because I want to rip on myself. That’s where a lot of my hate grows from. The fact that I have practically no self-esteem, especially concerning girls and looks and such. Therefore people make fun of me . . . constantly . . . therefore I get no respect and therefore I get fucking PISSED. As of this date I have enough explosions to kill about 100 people, and then if I get a couple bayonets, swords, axes, whatever I’ll be able to kill at least 10 more. And that just isn’t enough!

They were gods, and gods and were superior to the zombies. Gods could also take lives. I’m sure that many feel badly about themselves, but Harris and Klebold surrendered to their destructive feelings. What else enabled them to act out? Harris cited the non-existence of any standards of judgment:

·       Why should your morals apply to everyone else. “Morals” is just another word, and that’s it. I think we are all a waste of natural resources and should be killed off, and since humans have the ability to choose . . . and I’m human . . . I think I will choose to kill and damage as much as nature allows me to so take that, fuck you, and eat napalm + lead! HA! Only nature can stop me. I know I could get shot by a cop after only killing a single person, but hey guess the fuck WHAT! I chose to kill that one person so get over it!

Instead of being recognized as superior, Harris felt that he was being scorned. However, he found additional encouragement from the example of the Nazis and an intellectual basis for it from Darwin’s naturalism and the “survival of the fittest. Although Eric Harris wanted to believe himself a visionary, he was a child of his postmodern, morally relativistic culture:

·       If you recall your history the Nazis came up with a “final solution” to the Jewish problem. Kill them all. Well, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I say “KILL MANKIND” no one should survive. We all live in lies. People are always saying they want to live in a perfect society, well utopia doesn’t exist. It is human to have flaws. You know what. Fuck it. Why should I have to explain myself to you survivors when half of this shit I say you shitheads won’t understand and if you can then woopie fucking do. That just means you have something to say as my reason for killing. And the majority of the audience won’t even understand my motives either! They’ll say “ah, he’s crazy, he’s insane, worthless! All you fuckers should die! DIE! What the fuck is the point if only some people see what I am saying, there will always be ones who don’t, ones that are to dumb or naïve or ignorant or just plain retarded. If I can’t pound it into every single persons head then it is pointless. Fuck money fuck justice fuck morals fuck civilized fuck rules fuck laws. . .There’s no such thing as True Good or True evil, it’s all relative to the observer.

Besides his inflated expectation that others should validate him, moral relativism, the belief that morality is no more than a human creation, undermined Harris’ moral restraints:

·       You see, anything and everything that happens in our world is just that, a HAPPENING. Anything else is relative to the observer, but yet we try to have a “universal law” or “code” of what is good and bad and that just isn’t fuckin correct.

Harris felt that others wrongly judged him. Of course, believing himself to be a god, no one else would ever be able to affirm him in the way that he required. Instead, of examining himself and perhaps making some changes, he used his belief that there are no moral truths to dismiss their opinions.

However, without objective moral truths, we are left alone to ourselves and the conviction that whatever gladdens us and makes us feel that we are a “somebody” is the supreme truth. Harris filled the moral vacuum with his own self-aggrandizement:

·       …but me, I see all . . . you can only blind me for so long, but alas, I have realized that Yes, the human race is still indeed doomed. It just needs a few kick starts, like me, and hell, maybe even____ . If I can wipe a few cities off the map, and even the fuckhead holding the map, then great. Hmm, just thinking if I want all humans dead or maybe just the quote-unquote “civilized, developed, and known-of” places on Earth, maybe leave little tribes of natives in the rain forest or something.

Harris rejected any truths that could challenge his thoughts and feelings. Why would Harris be willing to leave “tribes of natives?” Perhaps because he had desired the validation and approval of the “civilized” – those who thought that there was something the matter with him? In contrast, these tribes had never contradicted his visions of self-glorification.

Harris committed one of the many errors of postmodernism. While he claimed that no one could judge him, this didn’t prevent him from judging others.

Self-glorification is intoxicating, but it is a creature that needs constant and increasing feeding. Klebold and Harris also produced very candid videos. In them, Klebold stated:

·       Directors will be fighting over this story. I know we’re gonna have followers because we’re so fucking God-like. We’re not exactly human — we have human bodies but we’ve evolved into one step above you, fucking human shit. We actually have fucking self-awareness. file:///C:/Users/Daniel/Downloads/columbine_basement_tapes_1.0(1).pdf

Interestingly, they didn’t blame their parents for what they planned to do. Harris stated:

·       My parents are the best fucking parents I have ever known. My dad is great. I wish I was a fucking sociopath so I didn’t have any remorse, but I do. This is going to tear them apart. They will never forget it. [He then addresses his parents directly, if briefly] There is nothing you guys could have done to prevent any of this. There is nothing that anyone could have done to prevent this. No one is to blame except me and Vodka [Klebold’s nickname]. Our actions are a two man war against everyone else.

·       Yea . . . Everyone I love, I’m really sorry about all this. I know my mom and dad will be just like . . . just fucking shocked beyond belief. I’m sorry, all right. I can’t help it.

Klebold added:

·       Hey mom. Gotta go. It’s about a half an hour before our little judgment day. I just wanted to apologize to you guys for any crap this might instigate as far as [inaudible] or something. Just know I’m going to a better place. I didn’t like life too much and I know I’ll be happy wherever the fuck I go. So I’m gone. Good-bye. Reb . . .

Perhaps we have been too ready to lay all the blame at the feet of the parents and need to spread the blame around. I think that the self-esteem, self-help, and psychotherapeutic community need to assume some of it. Klebold and Harris had been faithful students of the self-esteem culture, even if they did apply its lessons more thoroughly than most. They had learned to believe in themselves to the extent that they believed that they were superior – even gods.

Instead, growth and appropriate modifications depend upon seeing the object that we want to modify accurately - ourselves. The Bible counsels:

·       For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment... (Romans 12:3)

Why aren’t we given the corresponding warning to not think less of ourselves than we ought? Because our tendency is to inflate ourselves to compensate and cover the painful feelings about ourselves!

In contrast, Harris wouldn’t listen to anyone. He did not want to climb down from his self-constructed throne. It was just too deflating. Instead, he was determined to believe in himself, and it was easier to regard others as beneath him than to sit at their feet.

He could they abide with humbling themselves to truly examine who they were and to make the proper adjustments? Once they rejected Christ, His love and forgiveness, they had rejected the one Resource that would have enabled them to face the painful truth.

Besides, if morality is just a human illusion, which imprisons the zombies, why bother with it or with the need to make any painful personal changes, which God’s moral standards require. Klebold and Harris had pulled anchor and convinced that they were captains of their own ship. They were now at the mercy of the winds of their destructive feelings.