The Pendragon's Hall

I knew this would happen. MSNBC reported today that a high school student near Chicago, Illinois, has been arrested and suspended for writing a violent essay in his English class. The essay apparently fantasizes about walking into a building, shooting all the people in it, "and having sex with the dead bodies." Disturbing, right? The student in question, Allen Lee, is a straight-A student with no discipline problems who enlisted in the Marines, and of course the press is trying to drum up support for him as the kid caught by the backlash of the Virginia Tech shootings. He is in counseling at the moment while the school tries to decide what to do with him. Lee says he was simply following the assignment, which directed him to write what he was thinking--"do not judge or censor what you are writing." The kid is obviously weird, but I mean, come on! What kind of an assignment is that? I know it's common--that's the problem. It's that whole introspective, obsessed with ourselves culture re-emerging. Why would you tell someone to just write out what they're thinking without censoring themselves? Is it therapy? Maybe so, but it also teaches them that self-expression is more important than thinking about what you say, more important to get out whatever you're feeling than to think about other people and the effect it might have on them. Get the drift? Me, me, me. If you've ever baby-sat a toddler and still come away committed to self-expression, you may indeed want to have your head checked. But this kind of assignment fuels the problem. I doubt that Allen Lee intends to go on a shooting rampage--he's probably ok--but let's just think about what you're doing. You're telling a fallen creature to look deep inside and find all the darkness. Then express it. Now it's just a writing exercise--tomorrow the expression could be murder. The Pendragon grows weary of beating this dead horse, but they just keep proving it. In an Everybody Loves Raymond episode, Raymond's mother has just spoken out during her son's wedding ceremony because "I felt the need to say something." When challenged by the bride's mother, she claims, "I was doing it for them." To which the new mother-in-law responds, "I think maybe you were doing it for you. You were so focused on yourself and what you had to express, you didn't think about anyone else, including your son. I think that's called narcissism." Bingo! But what is lighthearted fun on a television sitcom can so easily turn nasty as we saw at Virginia Tech. The answer to our problems does not lie within...that is where our problems lie. The answer lies outside ourselves...not in some smarmy stuffed-suit getting us to "express" ourselves, but in a relationship, both with other people with with the One who created us.