The April 2007 Virginia Tech University mass murder soaked up public attention. Many folks asked that same old question: “Why?”

Simply put, the mass murderer, Seung-Hui Cho, was crazy. At a deeper level, however, his actions may also have been demonically driven, evidenced by the seasonal timing—during the period between Resurrection Sunday and Pentecost—and Cho’s comparison of himself to Jesus Christ. The devil attempts to distort God’s word and detour people from God’s will.

For the past two years, some news item released during the resurrection season has challenged the Gospel. In 2006, it was the discovery of a supposedly lost book of the Bible alleging that Judas Iscariot and Jesus Christ were in cahoots. This year it was a movie-maker’s documentary implying that Christ’s body had been discovered.

Those stories were probably purposely held by news organizations or broadcasters for release during the season of maximum impact. But the media did not control Cho’s timing.

Nor was his crime unique. Unfortunately, multiple murder-suicides occur frequently. The same issue of AM New York that ran a front page story on the Cho videotape manifesto included a smaller page three article on a 20-year old man’s killing of his mother, her boyfriend, a home care attendant, and himself. What made the Virginia Tech crime so attention-getting was its magnitude.

Yet, had the Virginia Tech incident occurred in the Middle East, it may have blended in as just another “terrorist” act. And by Darfur standards, where hundreds of thousands of people have been killed directly or indirectly in recent years, The Virginia Tech magnitude was barely newsworthy.

But we should not become callous to mass killing. It should drive us to focus more on God’s peace.

Peace is a recurring theme of Jesus Christ’s ministry. Isaiah prophesied Christ to be the Prince of Peace. Christ said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.” He also said turn the other cheek. In explaining his mission to his disciples, Christ said, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.” After the resurrection, the first recorded words to the locked-in disciples as a group were, “Peace be with you.”

And although war against the enemies of Israel consumes much of Old Testament history, God’s underlying preference for peace remains evident. For example, although David and his armies defended God’s people from their enemies, God prohibited him from building the temple, saying, “You are not to build a house for my Name, because you are a warrior and have shed blood.”

So although God deals with total reality, including war and peace, His preference is peace. His preference should be ours.

God can war peacefully. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's and 1960's was effectively a war to liberate blacks from the controlling oppression of legal segregation. Led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, this war was God-centered, intentionally non-violent, and successful. The subsequent black power movement, which was more secular and more tolerant of violence, was less successful.

Finally—or firstly—we should study Christ’s phrase “in me you may have peace,” which implies that peace in God is different than peace without Him. The Gospels and the Prophets suggest that God’s peace is selfless, comforting, communal, incorporates justice, and emanates through individual and collective acceptance of God’s will. It is not, at its core, established through oppression, like the Pax Romana imposed by the ancient Roman legions, nor, perhaps, even like the “American Century” envisioned by some current United States strategists.

Lasting peace is a physical manifestation of God’s love and of humans’ love of God.