Killer’s Delinquent Dad

Finally, more than a year after the incident, the father of the Sandy Hook Elementary School slaughter has spoken out. Adam Lanza killed himself and 26 others, including 20 children, and his father has been essentially silent until now. This week the elder Lanza told New Yorker magazine, “With hindsight, I know Adam would have killed me in a heartbeat, if he’d had the chance. I don’t question that for a minute.” Peter Lanza says that he hadn’t seen his son for two years. The killer’s dad said he could see changes in his son and knew that something was wrong. He suggests that the tragedy couldn’t have been predicted. “You can’t get any more evil,” Peter Lanza assesses.

I don’t know this father and can’t possibly factually discern what’s in his head. But the resignation of his comments bothers me. I suppose that he sincerely believes his son’s mental illness was out of control, an accident waiting to happen. But whether it could have been averted is debatable. First, Peter laments he wasn’t in his son’s life more. Well, why wasn’t he? Being an absent, divorced dad didn’t help matters. Second, in the excerpt on New Yorker’s web site, there’s no indication that any attempt was made by either him or his murdered ex-wife to include religious instruction of any kind in Adam’s life — or to get spiritual intervention when things went wrong. In fact, there’s no mention of God at any point in his interview. Maybe that wouldn’t have made the difference, but we’ll never know. A crime of this magnitude cries out for reasons and the lack of any biblical context to the killings says volumes. As a society we turn to God with prayers and platitudes AFTER a tragedy. The real tragedy is that we don’t do it before.