The Unspoken Factor Behind Mass Shootings

Mass shootings are scary because they are random, senseless, and unpredictable. You can’t drive into a neighborhood, lock your doors, roll up the windows, and think ‘I need to get out of here because mass shootings happen here.’ No, they happen anywhere – and generally, they happen in the places you want to be – churches, shopping centers, movie theaters. Yes, it’s scary.

Risk Factors

Experts point out different ‘risk factors’ that make a person liable to become a mass shooter – male, firearm access, mental illness, extremism, etc. None of these risk factors is sufficient to explain the phenomenon. You can’t pin them down on ideology, either. They come from the right and the left and the center. They identify of secular, Christian, and Muslim. They could be anyone.

What is clear is that mass shootings are becoming more common, more deadly, and more publicized. The modern period of mass shootings is generally considered to have begun on August 1, 1966, when a gunman opened fire from a tower overlooking the University of Texas. Since then, mass shootings have been a common – even regular – occurrence in modern American life.

An Unspoken Factor

I believe there is an important factor at play in the rise of mass shootings: the breakdown of Christian morality. Of course, as a Christian blogger, you might expect me to say that. Before you dismiss the idea, however, consider this – the evidence is exactly what Christians have been warning about for decades. We argue that when society leaves God, there are consequences.

Many people laugh at that idea – “I don’t see fire falling from heaven; who says there are consequences?!” These are not the consequences we are thinking of. We are talking about far more ‘mundane’ things – things like dysfunctional families, messed-up worldviews, child abuse, epidemic drug addiction, rampant depression, and suicide epidemics. Can’t those be consequences as well? Maybe the spiritual realm is a bigger deal that we want to admit.

I’m not saying that America has ever been a ‘Christian’ society in terms of a majority of people having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ; I am saying that Christian morality had infiltrated American culture in many ways, but it is being intentionally discarded in favor of secular humanism.

Modern Moral Philosophy

A few years ago I met this kid on an airplane. Because he was seated between the window and me – and because I am such an avid fan of looking out the window as you fly – it was inevitable that we would start talking. He was a nice kid, willing to talk, and quite intelligent. What he said was intensely troubling.

Here was an extreme introvert without social skills or a moral system, coming from a wrecked family. But he was smart – philosophically well-versed. He knew Cartesian cynicism well – he could question everything. He wondered aloud whether human beings even existed. He wondered, for that matter, whether I even existed. Perhaps he was just a figure in a video game. Perhaps, he mused, we are all just living in a gigantic version of The Matrix. Does it really matter what we do to other people? To those around us? Maybe, he wondered (going deeper into the philosophical cave than I was comfortable with), he was the only real human being, and all else, including everyone around him, were just props in a grand play orchestrated by some outside source.

I didn’t need to point out the moral ramifications of such a system. He confessed them himself. Some people who thought like this – he said – had been led to do some terrible things, because they didn’t even think that other people really existed. And, he questioned, how could we really claim that they were wrong, since we just don’t know?

You can see how such a worldview – without any clear up or down, any moral right or wrong – could view mass shootings as ‘interesting.’ It reminds me of how, many years ago, I once had a combat flight simulator. I’ve always enjoyed aviation, and it added an element of excitement to try to take down enemy planes. But every once in a while you get tired of that. What happens if you bomb your own aircraft carrier? Of course it didn’t really matter – it was just a game, and I only wondered if the computer programmer allowed such an action. But if suddenly your worldview is that the world is a game, does it really matter if you decide to break all the rules?

Such thinking is sick, twisted, and everywhere. This is not simply a fantasy of young teenagers, but the sort of post-Christian thinking that has taken root everywhere. Of course, such a philosophical framework does not lead one to pick up an AR-15 and kill random strangers. But take this mindset and mix in heaping spoonfuls of hatred, despair, depression, and bitterness, and you have a recipe for Stalinesque evil.

An Objection

Some may object. Isn’t Europe post-Christian? They don’t have the same level of mass shootings. The problem is guns. Or violent video games. Or failed mental health systems. It can’t just be this ‘moral collapse’ that you talk about.

We all know, however, that evil doesn’t just take one form. It is directed by the circumstances in which it exists. America – a country filled with guns and lone-ranger mentalities and desensitized to violence – will necessarily foster evil that looks different from its European counterpart.

But my argument is this: many of these realities have been present for some time. America has had guns, and lone rangers, and a violent frontier, for generations. Why the increase in shootings? What has changed is not the level of gun ownership, or the ideology of what it means to be American. What has changed is the moral worldview of this nation.

Moral Collapse

This is reality: mass shootings aren’t “caused” by violent video games, gun access, dysfunctional families, depression, female rejection, or any other number of ‘risk factors.’ Those things may play a role, but they are dwarfed by a far larger issue: Moral collapse. Philosophical degradation. We are awash in a culture that rejects God. And until this problem is resolved, we can only apply band-aids to our gaping wounds.