What would make someone do that?

The nation watched in horror as the body count from Monday's massacre at Virginia Tech climbed, making it the deadliest in the nation's history. 33 people dead from a single gunman's violent rage. The nation, including your humble author, mourns the losses and prays for the families of those injured and killed.

And one question continues to reverberate. "What would make someone do that?" From the little I've read on the subject, and being intimately familiar with rage as I am, I can break down a possible scenario of what happened in his head.

First, understand that a person with a rage disorder cannot see it coming. There is absolutely no warning that the sufferer is about to flip out. So, throughout his college career, perhaps he's seen the "rich kids" with the girls and hot cars. Perhaps he has learned a little bit about Jesus Christ. Perhaps he has been picked on all his life. Perhaps he believes that the world is truly out to get him. He gets psychiatric help, only to be released. Now he knows that the world thinks he is crazy.

Mix into this scenario, the fact that he's spurned for taking pictures of women in class. Toss in a little bit of rejection and voilá - you've got a recipe for a depressed, suicidal maniac with a bent for revenge. I do not use the term maniac loosely. I know what it is like to be manic and raging. I suggest Cho was in this position on Monday morning.

Having prepared himself with weapons a month before, he set out to perform a task many of us consider unthinkable. He set out to eliminate those he believe have been persecuting him.

Knowing that he has nothing to lose, he plans on taking himself out at the end.

His rage was not against anyone in particular. The entire campus represented the perceived evil in his mind. He was no longer capable of rational thought. He believed his martyrdom to be equivalent to that of Jesus Christ.

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The shooter on Monday morning was a victim of his own physiology. Something was not wired right in his brain. Could anything have been done to prevent this? Not likely. Maybe if the psychiatric community had seen something that he was perfectly capable of hiding quite well. Maybe not.

Tonight, I pray for those involved in the tragedy at Virginia Tech. I pray for those injured. I pray for the families of those who died.

But I also pray for those who, like so many before Cho, are suffering silently from an undiagnosed emotional disorder. I pray for those who do not know that their emotions lie to them. I pray for those who experience a paranoid reaction to anyone in their presence. I pray for the people who don't stand a chance because something in their head doesn't work right.

I cannot support what happened at Virginia Tech anymore than I can support the things I have done when I experienced blinding rage. I can only thank God that i experienced His Healing Power before my rage became something bigger.

Adios,
Clay

(äd-s) [Spanish adiós, probably translated from French à dieu. (I commend you) to God  : a, to (from Latin ad. See ad-) + Dieu, God (from Latin deus. See dyeu- in Indo-European Roots).]