Jeremy L. Berg

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the Columbine High School Massacre where two teens opened fire in their school killing 12 and wounding 23 others before taking their own lives.  So, where were you on April 20, 1999?

I was a 19-year old college freshman sitting in my college dorm room checking my email and chatting online (remember pre-Facebook internet?).  I began watching LIVE coverage on MSNBC.com as the horrific events unfolded.  Chills still go down my spine as I remember back.

What I , a 19 year old kid, didn’t know then was that 10 years later I would be a youth pastor spending most of my time investing in high school students who on the surface look no different from Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.  I want us all to look into the eyes of these two teenagers. Yes, I know what you may be thinking.  I, too, have always been bothered by the public display of photos of killers such as Timothy McVey and others.  A part of me wants their memory to vanish from history forever.  We should memorialize heroes and bury the memory of history’s villains and mass-murderers, right?  I am sympathetic to this sentiment.

Yet, my perspective has changed a bit over the years as I have now cultivated a special place in my heart for teenagers and the unique challenges adolescents can face.  I honestly don’t want to look at them — it both angers and grieves me too much.  But I need to see their ordinary, almost-innocent looking faces.  I need to stare into their eyes as I ask the obvious questions we all have: Why did they do this?  How could they possibly do this?  What sort of twisted, diabolical mindset must take over a young soul in order to commit such cold-blooded, sub-human acts of murder?  NOTE: I cannot tell you how disturbing it was to read the full detailed account of their heinous crimes that day.

We need to ask these questions.  But we need to ask them without divorcing our abstract questions from the human faces that lie behind them.

As parents, teachers and youth ministers, we also need to let their faces ask us a few questions as well: Who are the Erics and Dylans in our midst?  Do we notice them?  Do we see the advanced warning signs?  Do we see the deep pain, despair, anger and every other emotion hidden behind the masks our teens are so good at wearing?

My heart breaks for the families of the victims of this tragedy.  May God give them peace, comfort and hope amidst their ongoing grief and loss.  And may God bring the same solace and healing to the parents of the killers, whose hearts have no doubt been wounded almost beyond repair by their sons’ actions as well.

And may we all be reminded this eve of Good Friday that on the cross Jesus displayed the outrageous, reckless love of God toward ALL sinners by taking upon himself the sins of every person — Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold included. So, while part of me wants to erase their faces from memory and label them ‘pure evil’, Christ’s love compels me to look at them through the lenses of Calvary as God’s children — terribly sinful and badly broken for sure — but made in the image of God nonetheless.  Only the Spirit of God can help us do that.

So, Lord, give me your eyes to see them thus.

“Father, forgive them.  For they know not what they do.”

-Jesus on the cross

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: What emotions do the faces of these two bring you?  What is the appropriate “Christian” approach to remembering or forgetting mass-murderers and other perpetrators of heinous evil?  How does God view Eric and Dylan?  Do you agree that it is important to keep the human face in mind when discussing evil?  Why or why not?