Unrestrained Sin in the Workplace

On Monday April 16, the ~10,000 workers (a.k.a. faculty, staff, and administration) and ~15,000 customers (a.k.a. students) at Virginia Tech University were stunned by the reality of unrestrained sin in their workplace. The largest mass murder in U.S. history was the tagline for the events of that day—a tragedy on truly an epic scale. Now the analysis continues seeking to understand what motivated Cho Seung-Hui to murder 32 people and then commit suicide.

In reading articles and listening to news reports, I have heard Cho described in many ways—deranged, delusional, mentally ill, and psychopathic, to name a few. These are all common terms used by social scientists and the media, many of whom do not subscribe to a biblical worldview, which explains why I have yet to hear anyone talk about Cho’s actions as sin.

If you hold to a biblical worldview, you would expect that the analysis by social scientists and other pundits based on nonbiblical worldviews would be different from an analysis from a biblical worldview. One of the variations in the analyses that you might expect would be the question: Why would you not expect Cho to do what he did? Why do we find Cho’s actions so bizarre or abnormal, as social scientists tend to say? I have yet to hear anyone pose this question.

The news media and social scientists are making the assumption that normal behavior is characterized by restraint. This means that sinful behavior, such as murder, is not widely practiced. Clearly, we all want a society where murder is not ubiquitous. But why should we expect society to be that way? It is a great blessing to be able to walk the streets, eat at a restaurant, and go to a mall without fear of being murdered. The question is why should we feel safe?

To more fully elucidate my point, consider something that you do on a regular basis—eat out at a restaurant. Would you eat out if you knew that the food would be poisoned? The question is clearly rhetorical, but the point is why would you assume that you would not be poisoned? Every time you eat out, whether you are conscious of it or not, you assume that the people who have access to your food—from the farmer to the wholesale food distributor to the restaurant workers—all value your life enough to not poison you. Why should you assume this?

A biblical worldview teaches the depravity of man, which means that man (speaking generically), is born with a bias toward sin. Cho acted out the fullness of the sin that was in him. In fact, what was in Cho is in all of us. That may be startling, but we are all human beings—offshoots of Adam and Eve. Any one of us is capable of doing the same thing that Cho did, because we all have been born with a bias to sin. Since we have a bias toward sin, why aren’t incidences like Virginia Tech happening routinely?

The Bible provides the answer. The apostle Paul (see 2 Thessalonians 2:6–7) inferred that the Holy Spirit is restraining the sin that is in each of us, keeping us from being as bad as we could be. What a wonderful gift from God that we can live reasonably safely in a society that is, for the most part, seeking to reject Christian values and principles.

So from a biblical worldview, Cho’s actions illustrate the potential of unrestrained human sin. This potential can manifest itself at any place at any time and would be out of control if the Holy Spirit’s restraining power over sin was not present.

God is gracious and kind to give us this social protection mechanism, which we tend to take for granted. Serving as a wake-up call, it appears that periodically the Holy Spirit’s restraining hand is lifted so that we can see the full carnage that our unbridled sin would bring. Such events are horrific and should drive us to our knees in thankfulness that God has given us, by His grace, His Holy Spirit to restrain evil.

Perhaps the biggest lesson from Virginia Tech is that what happened there could happen in any organization at any time. The cause of this tragedy may not have been so much Cho’s mental illness, as most pundits and the media want us to believe, but a glimpse at unrestrained human nature and our potential for evil.

Let us mourn with those who mourn and be thankful that the Holy Spirit is, most of the time, faithfully restraining human sin in the workplace as well as other places. And let us always remember that unrestrained sin is devastating.