Culture

Teen Rage and Deadly Delights

First of a two-part series on teen violence

Social changes that drive teens to irrational rage

E-mail this page to a friend

Berit Kjos
Kjos Ministries
March 12, 2001

For six terrifying minutes on March 6, a "friendly" freshman at Santana High School near San Diego peppered fellow students with shots that killed two and wounded thirteen. Why?

The media offers some clues: a broken family, a cross-country move, school bullies, a stolen skateboard and a beating… It describes Andy Williams as an outcast, a braggart and an affectionate friend who seemed eager to please, yet played a prank with a water gun filled with urine.

None of those clues explain Andy’s hidden rage or lack of restraint. But his smiling face and unrepentant attitude suggest that he enjoyed his killing spree. Had he no conscience?

If not, he exemplifies an unsettling process of planned social change that is shifting America's values from its Christian roots toward an amoral global consciousness. It involves three main steps:

Confuse and eradicate America's "intolerant" Biblical values.
Introduce a new set of pluralistic beliefs and values.
Train everyone to think collectively, follow their feelings instead of facts, and please the group rather than traditional authorities.

Each step involves cognitive dissonance, a form of moral confusion that blurs traditional standards for right and wrong. "Christian" children are not immune to this psycho-social manipulation, but most children trained by it will reject Biblical Christianity. These progressive phases illustrate the process:

The School immerses a child in multicultural myths, global ideology and sex education, while classroom dialogues train him to pursue his “felt needs,” seek "common ground" and empathize with diverse beliefs and values. Soon contrary religions and lifestyles feel more familiar and fun than home-taught values.
Sensing that God's guidelines are intolerable to the group, he conforms his thoughts and beliefs to politically correct guidelines.
Moral conflicts between new cravings and old values arouse guilt, but he silences the inner nudgings by rationalizing his actions (adjusting his conscience to his moral choices).
His friends introduce him to animated violence and games that reward players who become masters in killing.
He continues to resolve his inner conflicts by justifying his behavior and blaming others -- projecting much of his anger outward. His seared conscience no longer provides moral restraint.

Mental imbalance and emotional instability often follow. Bill Clinton’s Governor's School -- an annual summer school for selected Arkansas high school students -- offers a tragic illustration. It immersed students into a seductive fantasy world where all seemed perfect, while group dialogue pressured them to embrace a radical idealism that produced hatred, not tolerance, and disillusionment instead of fulfillment.

By the time some students left the school, this imagined utopia felt more real to them than the actual world. As in Soviet brainwashing, they had been weaned from truth, facts, logic and reality. Their conscience had been twisted, their emotions destabilized, and their minds opened to manipulation by any feel-good suggestion.

The transition back to reality -- to home, family and normal life -- was agonizing. "When I came back home, I sort of wrote a suicide note to myself," confessed former student LeAndrew Crawford. "I was totally down, because my family just didn't feel like my family. . . . I didn't want to be back."

Brandon Hawk did commit suicide, and other concerned parents contacted his parents. "They see the same thing in their kids that we saw in Brandon," the father explained. "…They just sort of walk off and leave the family."

Romans 1:18-32 explains this deadly corruption: "Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools. . . . Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity.... Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, He gave them over to a depraved mind.... They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil …"

But God’s Word also offers hope. Psalm 130:3-7 points to His mercy and healing love:

"If You, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared. I wait for the Lord… and in His word I do hope."

Next week

Part 2: Using teen violence to justify intrusive government control.