{"id":2089,"date":"2007-04-19T02:30:36","date_gmt":"2007-04-19T02:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2007\/04\/virginia-tech-what-can-we-do.html"},"modified":"2007-04-19T02:30:36","modified_gmt":"2007-04-19T02:30:36","slug":"virginia-tech-what-can-we-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/04\/virginia-tech-what-can-we-do.html","title":{"rendered":"Virginia Tech: What can we do?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We can pick up the pieces of rubble left aground by the cold-blooded murdering of 32 Virginia Tech students, but we cannot make sense of the senseless shards of rubble we find. A professor who perceived that the young man was deeply troubled and fellow students who knew the same; lives of 33 familes now wrecked and young adults who will not return for the summer; security measures that can never be secure enough to block tragedies and police investigations that didn&#8217;t take the turn we wish had been taken. What can we do? What do you think?<!--more|inline--><br \/>\nWe can hold the entire school, the families, the police force, the medical doctors and nurses still tending to the wounded and all involved unto our God as an offering in the hope that we can heal the grieving and guide our country.<br \/>\nBut we can&#8217;t make enough laws to prevent troubled, isolated individuals from penetrating into the fabric of a reasonably-safe garment to unravel parts of it.<br \/>\nWe can be more sensitive to the troubled and more vigilant in seeking help for roommates, students, acquaintances, and those we encounter whom we believe are a threat.<br \/>\nBut we can&#8217;t find our way into the inner world of everyone so that we can with breathless certainty discern those who might explode at any moment.<br \/>\nWe can fight for justice, establish better laws, and live out our vocation in peace and justice and love. And we can urge the media to remove the videos of the murderer &#8212; those videos can have no redemptive value.<br \/>\nBut we can&#8217;t create a completely safe world, a perfect environment, or a society in which no one with evil intent can ever enter.<br \/>\nWe can live by the Jesus Creed, but we can&#8217;t force anyone to live by it.<br \/>\nFor these reasons, and more beside, we can pray what Jesus taught us to pray:<br \/>\n<em>Our Father who art in heaven,<br \/>\nHallowed be thy name.<br \/>\nThy kingdom come,<br \/>\nThy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.<br \/>\nGive us this day our daily bread.<br \/>\nForgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.<br \/>\nLead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.<br \/>\nFor thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We can pick up the pieces of rubble left aground by the cold-blooded murdering of 32 Virginia Tech students, but we cannot make sense of the senseless shards of rubble we find. A professor who perceived that the young man was deeply troubled and fellow students who knew the same; lives of 33 familes now&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Virginia Tech: What can we do? - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/04\/virginia-tech-what-can-we-do.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Virginia Tech: What can we do? - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We can pick up the pieces of rubble left aground by the cold-blooded murdering of 32 Virginia Tech students, but we cannot make sense of the senseless shards of rubble we find. A professor who perceived that the young man was deeply troubled and fellow students who knew the same; lives of 33 familes now&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/04\/virginia-tech-what-can-we-do.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-04-19T02:30:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"xscot mcknight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Virginia Tech: What can we do? - Jesus Creed","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/04\/virginia-tech-what-can-we-do.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Virginia Tech: What can we do? - Jesus Creed","og_description":"We can pick up the pieces of rubble left aground by the cold-blooded murdering of 32 Virginia Tech students, but we cannot make sense of the senseless shards of rubble we find. A professor who perceived that the young man was deeply troubled and fellow students who knew the same; lives of 33 familes now&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/04\/virginia-tech-what-can-we-do.html","og_site_name":"Jesus Creed","article_published_time":"2007-04-19T02:30:36+00:00","author":"xscot mcknight","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/04\/virginia-tech-what-can-we-do.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/04\/virginia-tech-what-can-we-do.html","name":"Virginia Tech: What can we do? - Jesus Creed","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-04-19T02:30:36+00:00","dateModified":"2007-04-19T02:30:36+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/04\/virginia-tech-what-can-we-do.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/04\/virginia-tech-what-can-we-do.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/04\/virginia-tech-what-can-we-do.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Virginia Tech: What can we do?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/","name":"Jesus Creed","description":"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith for today","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0","name":"xscot mcknight","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","caption":"xscot mcknight"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/author\/xscot-mcknight"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2089\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}