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Murderous teens missing spiritual, parental base - I

Published in The Orlando Sentinel on April 25, 1999.

These are tough times for spin-sters. Glibness doesn't work when children are murderers and murdered. Theories don't count for much against a backdrop of bloodied bodies and sobbing children.

To what end, such talk? Yet we're compelled. How else to get through a sun-sprinkled April day while teens describe the gun that was put to their buddy's head. How else to explain the bizarre juxtaposition of our ordinary lives, as we stand in the kitchen, munching Special K, as Katie Couric comforts a kid whose friend was blown away by a tall boy hissing "nigger."

In these days, nausea challenges speculation to a duel of frank fear. How could it happen?

I'm not about to presume to know. Like you, I've listened to the experts. Easy access to guns; gotta get rid of them. Violence in the entertainment media; tax the industry. Peer cruelty; need laws to condemn hate and teach tolerance.

Everyone nods and seems to agree: It's a little of this and a little of that. But where do we begin to change a world that can produce boys so diseased with hate, so bereft of remedy?

Is it reasonable to blame guns when so many non-violent Americans keep them for protection or sport? Is it reasonable to tax an industry for making violent movies when the vast majority of moviegoers never consider emulating the fantasies of a 90-minute film?

Is it reasonable to criminalize "hateful" thoughts when most people don't harbor any and when, besides, hate is banished only by love?

A new face appears on the television screen, another expert. Now what? James Garbarino is the author of Lost Boys, we're told, a book about why our sons turn violent. "Spirituality," he said. What?

"A strong spiritual base provides a buffer against social pathologies," he said, or words to that effect. Of course, he's right. Whatever else is unknown, this much is clear: The boys who every day wore black trench coats and berets with swastikas to school, who hated jocks, blacks and other minorities, and who openly adored Adolf Hitler . . . were lost.

Did they have a spiritual base? Did they have something to fall back on, a purpose to their lives, a reason to live, to love and be loved?

Decidedly not. Why they didn't, we may never know. But we do know that a spiritual life isn't the product of some cosmic mist. It is bestowed upon the young by adults, principally parents, who nourish a child's soul through demonstrations of compassion and acts of empathy.

When baby cries, mommy comes; When junior falls, daddy heals; when boys hurt, caring, compassionate, attentive parents know it. There is something bigger out there, we tell them; and we, Mother and Father, are its agents. We will take care of you.

For whatever reasons, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were spiritually adrift long before they set foot at Columbine High School. Just as monsters aren't born, neither are they created overnight.

The suicide-killers' families have asked for privacy. News coverage thus far confirms that no one wants to point a finger at these upper-middle-income, nice-neighborhood, cul de sac homes. We can assume nothing about them except that they're suffering, too. So let's not. But let's do ask a few relevant questions for our own children's sake:

If your child espoused hatred toward others and spoke openly of his admiration for Hitler, would you notice?

If your child left the house for school each day, wearing an ankle-length black duster and a beret with a swastika, would you notice?

If your child were building a pipe bomb and collecting an arsenal in his room, would you notice? Would you do anything about it?

Begin there.

[Posted 04/26/1999 5:13 PM EST]

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