Wake Up, Look Up

Hello, everyone. Thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch, and in today's episode, we're asking the question, how do you make a killer? And this is prompted by a Wall Street Journal article that looks at, among other people, Tyler Robinson, the alleged killer of Charlie Kirk. And I use that word, alleged for legal reasons. Uh, and let me say this, this episode is being recorded at a time when Tyler Robinson is not communicating with investigators. So it could be that after this episode, more information comes out. But what we're going to look at is what we know, because what we know about Tyler Robinson is a pattern that's becoming all too familiar. He was once a high achieving high school student who kind of spiraled into isolation, uh, removing himself from friends and family, uh, dropping out of school and retreated into dark corners of the Internet and video games, uh, places like discord and Reddit and online gaming, uh, buying into a subculture of angry and frustrated young men that became a substitute for actual community maturing and mental health support. It's the same pattern we saw in Thomas Crooks or Patrick Joseph White or Luigi Mangioni, who murdered the CEO of United Healthcare in Manhattan, uh, otherwise promising young men who go largely online instead of living in the physical universe and end up committing horrific acts of violence. And the reason why I want to focus on this is because I believe that a healthy church, both local and universal, sees these patterns, sees these trends, these problems and takes ownership of them. Doesn't point the finger at other people, but says, hey, we have to do more, we have to do better. And so what does that look like? Well, the first step is we have to continue to teach, especially young people, that isolation is opposite of God's design for us. I mean, God said about Adam and Genesis 2, it is not good that man should be alone. And yet there are huge companies in our culture that exist to get us alone. Companies like YouTube, whose whole business model is keeping you going down the rabbit hole. Social media, uh, online gaming. They want you to stay home, they want you to be online, they want you to be disconnected, because that's how they make their money. And I think as a culture, in a large part, we've seen those things as benign. So what if he plays video games all the time? So what if he has no friends? So what if he's an introvert, if he's a loner? But these things are not benign. They're malignant over time. They expose young men to the wrong kinds of community with very little help to help them sort through it. The second thing is that idleness leads to ruin. Uh, 2 Thessalonians 3, 10 has a pretty harsh statement where Paul says, if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. Paul's not against the lazy. He's for them. He understands that people who are idle, they wither. They become something less than what they were designed to be. We have to teach teenagers and young people the value of work in the more affluent parts of our society. They have to do less. There's just always someone there to do it for them. And when we do that for our kids, we're not helping them. We're not helping them by living lives of isolation because they can just doordash or they can just have mom and dad pay, or they can just have a room in mom and Dad's house. We've got to push young people to grow up, because growing up happens not just in terms of your occupation and your bank account. It matures you in a way that lets you know when things are stupid and things are not. Here's a third thing. The digital world can lead us to some pretty tough places. Romans 1:25 says that we're always in danger when we exchange the truth about God for a lie. And that means not just who God is, but what God has told us about life. Increasingly, pockets of the Internet aiming at young men are becoming full of hate, full of misogyny, full of ethnocentrism and racism and all kinds of awful thinking. The digital world is not inherently neutral. It's like any other part of the world. It takes on the shape of those in it. So even if you have a young person, particularly a young man, in your life, living a life largely online, dialogue with him about the kinds of things he's coming across. And don't laugh at memes that aren't funny. And then they're not funny because of the hateful messages they see challenge that encourage a young person to be critical of that, listen. Our minds must be guarded. That's what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10 when he says to take every thought captive. And if you're listening to this as a young guy who's starting to explore some of these online spaces, you might think that you can hold on to your sanity, hold on to your morality, hold on to your biblical worldview while you swim in these waters. But you're not stronger than the current if you don't believe me. Ask yourself if 12 year old Tyler Robinson ever thought he would brutally murder another man. He didn't think he could get there. And you probably don't think you could go dark places. But he did. And you will if you're not careful. And then finally, the Church must go after Young men. We have not done a good job of this. Listen, I love Sisters in Christ, but if we become overly feminine in the church, if we don't talk about the things that young men are thinking about and wrestling with, they will find someone who will. And just remember in Psalm 27 that the writer says, though my father and mother forsake me and I might add, abandon me to the basement where I go online, the Lord and I hope his church will receive me, young men are not a problem. They're our problem. They're our mission field and church. We have got to go after them. Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up, Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it. And while you're here, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get further content or even download the CCC app, where you'll find even more resources to help you grow in your faith and relationship with Jesus Christ.

Have an article you’d like Zach to discuss? Email us at wakeup@ccchapel.com!