Brian Rohrbough deserved to make a statement about the recent school shootings in Bailey, Colorado and at the Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania. Brian’s 15-year-old son, Dan, was gunned down at Columbine High School in 1999.
When CBS News anchor Katie Couric opened up her “free speech” segment, Brian Rohrbough was asked to voice his point of view.
“I am saddened and shaken,” he began as he considered the newest wave of school violence. “I had hoped [Columbine] would be the last school shooting.”
Seven years after his son’s murder, Rohrbough had come to his own conclusions about the cause for the heinous killings:
“This country is in a moral free fall. For over two generations, the public school system has taught in a moral vacuum, expelling God from the school and from the government, replacing Him with evolution, where the strong kill the weak without moral consequences. And life has no inherent value.”
His statement, which went on to describe the absence of moral absolutes and the increase in abortion and suicide, caused a flood of comments from viewers who felt this father’s beliefs were offensive. Not surprising for one of the most liberal news outlets in the nation.
However, of all the comments that could have been elevated from viewers regarding Rohrbough’s interview, Ms. Couric chose to highlight the worst: repugnant.
Bill O’Reilly of Fox News described Couric’s response as typical of network newscasts. The attack against this bereaved dad is “a shame, but that‘s the essence of the culture war.”
This “culture war” is more pervasive in our world than even the global war against terrorism. Our soldiers will soon return from Bagdad, but our schools will continue to educate our children in a “moral vacuum.” Abortion-on-demand seems lost to the courts. Disillusioned youth whose parents have abdicated their authority for “tolerance,” find themselves left with emptiness, and some take their own lives out of despair.
The connection that Mr. Rohrbough makes to evolution is a clear statement from a thoughtful dad that the “survival of the fittest” worldview is what actually took his son’s life.
Evolutionary theory has become evolutionary teaching and practice, which has infiltrated the very roots of our society and worked its way up through the classrooms, the courthouses and, sadly, even many Christian institutions that refuse to recognize the Creator as the absolute authority over all mankind.
ICR founder Dr. Henry Morris detailed the history, causes and consequences of this cultural conflict in his book The Long War Against God (Master Books, 2000).
“The denial of God—rejecting the reality of supernatural creation and the Creator’s sovereign rule of the world—has always been the root cause of every human problem” (p. 15).
And that’s exactly how bereaved parents like Brian Rohrbough see it. Expel God, as our society has done, and produce citizens that see life—theirs or others—with “no inherent value.” Evolutionary “doctrine” has moved worlds away from the scientific debate about apes and humans. The war, as Dr. Morris describes, is a battle of worldviews.
“Evolution is not merely a biological theory of little significance. It is a worldview—the worldview diametrically opposing the Christian worldview. Therefore, Christians ignore it or compromise with it at great peril” (ibid, p. 23).
Jesus stated in the Sermon on the Mount that we are to live as “salt” and “light” in this world, not escaping from it, but rather demonstrating “good works” for God’s glory within a culture that desperately needs a Savior (Matthew 5:13-16).
The battle we face is not an easy one—especially because we choose not to compromise with the evolutionary worldview. The results, however, are certain. We know the One who overcomes.
