The face of Satan

It's jarring, really. You so rarely get to see the face of pure evil. But there it was this morning, spread out on the front page of the Star Tribune.

The picture is of Cho Seung, the man who shot up the Virginia Tech campus on Monday. In the midst of his efforts to unleash Hell on a bucolic college campus, he stopped off to mail off some publicity photos to NBC News, including the one that the Star Tribune published this morning. In the photo, you see Cho's malevolent visage, with him brandishing two pistols at arm's length. Cho's pose was meant to summon the image of Jesus on the Cross. And in the video he provided, he went on at some length about the malevolence and evil he saw about him and how he was going to die "like Jesus."

I have read all four Gospels pretty thoroughly by now and I don't remember Jesus ever gunning down people at random. I do recall Jesus curing a number of people who were possessed by demons. It's pretty clear, looking at the picture, that demons were in control of Cho Seung. As with the demons portrayed in the Gospels, Cho's voice was filled with sputtering rage. In his madness, Cho envisioned himself as some sort of avenging angel, a martyr who would set things right by firing ammo clips into the evil students around him.

The whole thing is chilling and there has been some debate surrounding whether or not NBC should have aired this material. Ultimately, I think it was the right thing to do, for these reasons:

• We need to be reminded that evil does exist in this world. We are currently in the process of watching the Congress put an arbitrary deadline on the war in Iraq, mainly because so many of us are tired of confronting the evil men who are blowing up our soldiers every day. We'd rather not confront evil, even where it exists. Cho has nothing to do with Iraq, of course, but he is a reminder of what evil looks like. If we are ever to effectively confront evil, we need to face it squarely.
• We also need to see that evil, although prevalent and often pervasive, is always futile. Cho managed to kill over 30 people this day, but through his heinous actions he has brought together the Virginia Tech campus in ways that he could never have imagined. The prayers and faith of those in Blacksburg and beyond cannot erase Cho's acts, but they can and will overwhelm the malevolence that he unleashed on that campus. Those who survived this day will, in the main, not lose faith. The victims were indiscriminate; it was never a matter of someone deserving their fate. Satan would love to sit in judgment of us all, but can never do so.
• We also see, as we learn more about Cho's past, the limits of human-built structures in containing madness. We have learned that Cho was briefly institutionalized for mental illness. We have also learned that Cho had been harassing students and that some of his professors had raised various alarms. Yet, Cho was never sent away from Blacksburg and the interventions that were proffered fell far short of stopping him. All the Ritalin and lithium in the world, and all the empty court orders, are not strong enough to stop evil. We need to understand this and look elsewhere. I know where I've loooked for guidance and strength lately and I'd recommend it to everyone who reads this blog. You need faith and you need prayer. They give you the strength to face what's ahead.