Yesterday the early, heart-stopping headline read, “22 INJURED IN KNIFE-WEILDING RAMPAGE AT PA SCHOOL”.
The brief supporting text was about an as-yet unnamed student, unleashing brutally violent terror upon unsuspecting classmates; another wasteful, senseless school tragedy perpetrated by a disturbed, heartless teen; one that sadly has become all too common in the hallways and cafeterias across our country.
Like everyone else, the news instantly shook me out of the safety of my usual schedule of microscopic problems and self-centered worries, into far deeper, bloodier water.
As the stories came in, with the tales of heroic teachers taking blades for kids, of selflessly sacrificial students risking disfiguring injury to save strangers, and of the life-altering, life-threatening wounds innocent young people were facing in local operating rooms, the story that has shaken me the most, is that of the young man whose hands held the knives.
I read the words of a classmate, who talked about how Alex Hribal was quiet and ordinary, how he had been teased for being “small for his age… like a little boy.”
She went on to say that he was bullied “relentlessly”, yet also confessed that she, “didn’t realize it was all that bad.”
We never do realize it, do we?
As I looked at a photo of vacant-eyed Alex being led out of the hospital by police, I thought of my own son Noah, currently 8, who earlier this week said to me at the morning bus stop, “Dad, why I am so small?”
He talked about being teased and made a joke out of for his stature. No big deal, right? Just the cost of being a kid? Maybe. Maybe though, the cost is becoming too great.
I thought about the stupid words and easy insults Noah’s already absorbed at his age, and the way his own sense of confidence, and well-being, and his understanding of people are already being altered. I thought about the way teenagers have turned criticism and bullying into precise, destructive art forms, and how people around them are being internally changed.
Was Alex ever the joyful, kind-hearted, peace-making boy, that my son is today?
Did he once have a soft heart for all people, the way Noah does now?
Had Alex once been the silly kid who giggled, and hugged, and made friends with the outcast, like my sweet boy?
I considered Alex and Noah, and wondered whether maybe the line between kind, gentle, normal child; and cold, heartless, headline-making killer, is often much thinner than we ever want to admit.
And through the swirling storm of sadness, shock, and fear that events like this bring, especially to those of us with young children, the one question that intrusively invaded the space of my heart, was the one that as a pastor of students, I ask all too frequently:
Where the heck were the Christians?
Where the heck are the Christians?
Where are the teenage followers of Jesus, when students like Alex absorb the relentless body blows of words and taunts; because of their smallness, or oddness, or sweetness?
Where are those sweaky-clean youth group kids, who on Sunday nights are so “fired-up for God”, when Tuesday morning rolls around and people next to them become verbally-beaten, human pinatas?
Where are the “church kids” who supposedly know, and follow, and worship a loving, compassionate Jesus who died for the whole world, when somebody’s being terrorized and torn-apart at the cafeteria table or in the locker room or on the bus?
As a 16-year Student Pastor, I’m afraid I’ve seen where they are; all too often either inflicting the blows, mindlessly laughing as they are delivered, or silently side-stepping the damage… for a while.
Too many of the teens I serve and live alongside compartmentalize their faith.
They have times, and places, actual buildings where they bring out their belief, the way adults break out fine china for holidays, only too put it away for the normal and less special occasions.
They’ve become completely comfortable with a religion that makes no tangible, visible difference when they’re off the “church clock”.
The students who fill our churches, so often have a faith that is optional; relegated to Sunday services, or FCA meetings, or weekend retreats; the places where faith is easiest, and least costly, and largely, the most useless.
I don’t know Alex Hribal’s story. I only know the headline, but I know that he is far more than that headline. He had a long, winding path that led to the monstrous thing that he did in a few moments yesterday, to a group of good, loving, young people who couldn’t have ever deserved it.
Maybe though, he had the monstrous visited upon him for a long time too, and maybe lots of people witnessed it; people whose declared faith should have made a difference, or at the very least, should have made them want to make a difference.
Christian teenagers, when people around you are damaged, silence is participation.
Your hallways and cafeterias are filled with small, odd, quiet people, who are starving to hear words of care and kindness; to hear the voice of a God who sees, knows, and loves them.
For the sake of the next Alex Hribal, and for the next innocent victims of another battered student’s last straw, speak them.
