Tragic Massacre at School in Germany

First it was 16 students and a teacher in Dunblane, Scotland, 1996. Then it was 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, USA. Now an angry student at Gutenberg High School in Erfurt, Germany, has taken the lives of 14 teachers, 2 students, and a policeman, before killing himself.

“Even if I believed in God, I would not believe in him any more,” a student asked after the massacre. “How could he let something like this happen? What I have seen today will stay with me for the rest of my life.”1

Germany is reeling from this massacre, looking for answers to such senseless violence.

There is much hand-wringing about illegal guns, but the problem is far deeper. It lies in the human heart, which is “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9). The only way to understand such evil and to find real hope for society is through the Bible. Beginning in Genesis, God describes the Fall of Adam and lifts the veil on the great wickedness that has passed upon all men. The last century has also seen tremendous foundational shifts in the culture of all of the once-Christian Western nations, making such senseless acts of individual violence more likely. See Ken Ham’s commentary Defusing bombs in public schools.

AiG has prepared a pamphlet (right) in the wake of the September 11 tragedy in America, but the comforting words from Scripture offer hope to anyone stung by tragedy.

Answers in Genesis shares in the great sorrow of all those who lost loved ones in this latest school tragedy. We pray that Christians and non-Christians alike will turn to the Scriptures and look to the loving Savior to find hope and comfort in their great sorrow. Let us all pray earnestly for the sufferers, and do everything we can to share God’s words of hope.