I want to talk to you about Littleton, Colorado, where two high school students shot and killed over a dozen others recently.

Horrified, people ask - "How could such a thing happen here? What’s wrong with our country?" Important questions that don’t have easy answers.

But it’s important to realize that the slaughter didn’t just happen. It wasn’t done by two crazy kids whose minds just snapped. No. The killers were two highly intelligent young men who consciously chose evil. The killings were something they planned, rehearsed, and carried out, and then finished with their own suicides. I personally see it as a statement of hatred and despair. Hatred and Despair don’t happen instantaneously, but take a long time to smolder and develop before exploding.

Why would youth want to choose evil, hatred, and death? "The thief comes only to slaughter and destroy." The thief, the Evil One, Satan. What would make the voice of evil attractive and appealing to them? Why would they embrace hatred and death instead of love and life, especially at such an early age?

It’s my contention that American culture has been in a continuous downward spiral since the sixties, that God has been eliminated from public life, and that America has very little guidance to offer its youth as they search for purpose and meaning.

When I was growing up, our society and culture were pro-family. There were positive TV programs like "Life with Father", starring Stu Ervin, "Father knows Best," with Robert Anderson; and "My Three Sons" with Fred McMurray. These were fathers in the families who had actual communication with their children and could offer them wise guidance as they struggled to find their way.

But Pro-Family programs became ancient history. "All in the Family" grew popular. So did the "Jeffersons." In both, father became a buffoon and a bigot. Archie Bunker was good for a few laughs, but he had nothing of value to say to Gloria and Meathead. Gloria and Meathead were soon replaced by cartoon caricatures, Beavis and Butthead, smartmouth cynical know it alls who criticize and demean everything. Is this the best America’s creative artists could do in support of family values?

Sociologists point out that American society has become more coarse and violent over the past few decades. On radio, "shock-jocks" compete to see whose language is more gross. Gross language has become part of TV and movies as well. The same is true of violence and sex. What once would stun and shock loses its power to do so since we get used to it. So, to capture our attention and hold it, language is made more filthy, violence more brutal, and sex more explicit and degrading. The evidence is before us: in video games, heavy metal and rap music, TV shows and movies. American culture continues to deteriorate in a downward spiral, becoming more coarse, more vulgar, more violent, more sexually explicit. "How low can you go?" is a question we haven’t found the answer to, but we seem determined to try.

Over a period of time, music, television, movies, magazines, video games, all have a formative effect on our youth, or better said, a deformative effect. If our youth put garbage in their minds and hearts, the garbage will come out in their actions. But why make garbage so accessible to them? Why does our culture promote a message of evil? Why not censor violent and sexually explicit material? Why in the name of freedom of speech is it necessary to let brutality and pornography become multimillion dollar industries promoted by the entertainment media? A Gospel of depravity is the Bad News fostered upon us by our creative people, and it leads nowhere except to death.

Where is God in America today? He may be in our churches, but He is not in our culture. In the USA, freedom of religion means freedom from religion. Separation of Church and State means religion should be a private affair between you and God. It has no place in public life. Keep religion in Church where it belongs, where it is harmless.

Yes the voice of the Good Shepherd is heard in church in a sermon that lasts for twenty minutes. But how many of our youth are in church to hear the message? Very few. And for those few, the voice of the Good Shepherd is easily forgotten once they step outside, into the noisy, fast moving world, the world that preaches its gospel of money, sex and violence twenty-four hours a day.

Youth is a time of searching, for truth, for love, for noble ideals, for purpose and meaning. Youth is smart enough to ask: Why does anything matter? Why choose love over hate, good over evil, life over death? Why not be violent if it suits my purpose? After all, there is no such thing as truth. Good and bad, right and wrong, are a matter of opinion. I can do whatever I want. No one has the right to tell me otherwise. My behavior is my business. Besides, if it all ends in death, if that’s all there is, why not embrace death and get it over with?

Is it possible for youth to feel that way? Oh yes. It’s the message they get from the culture. Go to a book store. The best sellers in fiction are horror stories of the weird, the macabre, and the demonic, or fast-moving novels that contain lots of sex scenes and graphic violence. What are the big money-making movies? The ones contain a lot of murder and mayhem, spectacularly violent stunts, and explicit sex. Listen to the popular music that kids buy, and ask yourself what kinds of feelings the lyrics and beat stimulate. Look at the way kids dress. Why instead of being clean and neat do they wear clothes designed to make them look sloppy and slovenly? Why in an attempt to look good do they end up disfiguring themselves and thinking it is stylish or fashionable? The popular culture forms them that way.

Why should God be in public life? Without God there is no truth. Without God who’s to say what’s right or wrong, good or bad? It’s all relative. Rules and standards are arbitrary norms waiting to be broken. Beauty is whatever pleases your eye, no matter how jaded or perverted that eye might become.

America needs God present in public life, present in the arts, in the film industry, in music, in literature, in popular song, etc. If He is not present in American culture, then we can not expect our youth to find Him. "I have come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly." When’s the last time you saw a movie that portrayed belief in eternal life? Why is it in the movies religious people are all prigs or hypocrites? Why are those who raise their fist against God seen as brave and heroic, while those who obey him seem weak and cowardly? Why are good people seen as boring, but evil people seen as exciting? Why is virtue dull but sin thrilling? The bias of our culture is in its anti-God stance. Why are so-called creative people so anti-religious?

Youth’s search for meaning, for truth, for love, for goodness and beauty, is really a search for God. America’s youth deserves a culture that makes God easier to find, not harder. Our cultural life should present youth with heroes and role models that appeal to the best in them not the worst. Movies and novels should show us that to search for God is the greatest adventure possible, and that a life style according to His rules and truth is what makes us fully human. The arts in America need to re-establish themselves in a Christian culture in order to present to our youth the absolutes that make life worth living.

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