Youth committing violent crimes--Why?<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
By Steve Cornell
I am from a relatively peaceful part of <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />America--- Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Each year, tourists descend here by the thousands. They come for bargains at the outlets or to check out the Amish way of life. Lancaster has always been a nice place to visit. Twenty-three years ago, I moved from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Lancaster. I feel blessed to have lived so long in this part of the Country. My wife and I have raised a family here and planted the Church I currently pastor. Lancaster is a great place to live. But something has changed here and it's deeply troubling.  
Upon moving from Philadelphia, I distinctly remember being impressed with how few murders were mentioned on the news. In the big city, murder reports were expected in the evening news. But the bizarre murders occurring in Lancaster over the last couple of years have marred the peaceful image of this County and have drawn national media attention.  
We've had no relief from the pattern of violence. The string of murders here has occurred within such a short period of time that each one stirs memories of the previous ones. Tragically, many of these murders are being committed by our youth. As I talk with people about this, they shake their heads in confusion and dismay.  I feel the same way but I am convinced that we must look for causes and solutions.
In looking for answers, we must guard against the temptation to be overly simplistic. A convergence of factors must be considered. To blame violent video games, television or the internet, for example, is too simplistic. To ignore these influences is irresponsible. The same is true when weighing the effects of broken homes and the fatherhood deficits. Obviously, some of these influences are more significant than others but none can be completely ignored.  What is most alarming is the number of brutal killers coming from unexpected places. Our schools and neighborhoods (even in the Amish countryside) are vulnerable to deeply troubled people willing to commit horrific crimes.   
Looking at larger cultural shifts, I am convinced that a major contributor behind the scenes is found in the significant societal movement away from moral appraisals. The diversity of our culture (which is not a bad thing) has placed us under a burden of pluralistic civility that requires us to tread lightly around moral categories of right and wrong; good and evil. In many places of higher education, we have even replaced moral outrage with outrage against morality.  
The result of this is a kind of prevailing moral confusion on all levels of society. All of this has promoted an increasingly individualistic and isolated culture. We talk about celebrating diversity but in reality we celebrate the sovereignty of the self. This is part of what has weakened commitments to marriage, family and church-three institutions indispensable to the stability of society.  
Our marriages are broken, our homes are splintered and our Churches are deemed unnecessary (especially if they don't pay taxes). We have produced a society full of self-absorbed people who are filled with deep feelings of entitlement, resentment and hostility. As this plays out in the lives of children and youth, it feeds character qualities of the worst kind-those discovered by researchers of violent criminals. 
A couple of years ago, The New York Times ran a piece titled, For the worst of us, the diagnosis may be evil (February 8th 2005). The article explored ways forensic scientists and psychiatrists evaluate the behavior of predatory killers. In contrast with the fact that, "Most psychiatrists assiduously avoid the word evil, contending that its use would precipitate a dangerous slide from clinical to moral judgment…", when forensic scientists investigate the grizzly savagery of predatory killers, they say, "…their work forces them to reflect on the concept of evil, and some acknowledge they can find no other term for certain individuals they have evaluated."  
When and why did the professional community begin to entertain a distinction between clinical diagnosis and moral appraisal? The real dangerous slide is our movement away from clearly agreed upon moral categories. Our collective inability to think clearly about good and evil and to arrive at defined understandings of right and wrong has hurt us on many levels. Western culture has been riding the train of moral relativism for decades. Why are we surprised by the train wreck?
A professor from Columbia University who "published a 22-level hierarchy of evil behavior, derived from detailed biographies of more than 500 violent criminals, is now working on a book urging the profession not to shrink from thinking in terms of evil when appraising certain offenders, even if the E-word cannot be used as part of an official examination or diagnosis."
Dr. Robert Simon, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown Medical School and author of Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream, suggests that "Evil is endemic, it's constant, it is a potential in all of us. Just about everyone has committed evil acts." Evil is not a potential in all of us; it's a reality. All people commit evil acts and we all must keep the power of evil in check. Evil is first and foremost an interior life issue. The wisest teacher who ever lived said, "For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, … murder…etc." (Mark 7:21-23). When investigators comb through the journals, web logs, and other sources of criminals, they look for motivations. Motives are matters of the heart that lead to criminal acts.  According to the NYT article, when experts evaluate violent criminals, they "… rate offenders on a 20-item personality test. "The items include glibness and superficial charm, grandiose self-worth, pathological lying, proneness to boredom and emotional vacuity." Researchers have also found that "broken homes and childhood trauma are common among brutal killers; so is malignant narcissism, a personality type characterized not only by grandiosity but by fantasies of unlimited power and success, a deep sense of entitlement, and a need of excessive admiration."  
We've tried to fix our problems through political, economical and educational means but things keep getting worse. Is it possible that we are ignoring an important dimension of human life? I am not suggesting easy answers that will lead fallen people into utopia. I am, however, recommending that it is time to remember that we are spiritual beings with needs related to our Creator. We must look to the God of our forefathers to lead us out of moral confusion into his will. Large doses of humility and repentance will be needed if we are to find our way out of the darkness we have created.   
Steve Cornell