Will the next George Sodini please stand up?

I read his blog yesterday. It has taken me a full day to process it, and I don’t know that I will ever understand. Yet, I feel compelled to write about it.

George grew up, got a good job, bought a house and waited for life to have meaning.

George longed for a partner. He believed a woman would make him complete. He wrote, “A man needs a woman for confidence. He gets a boost on the job, career, with other men, and everywhere else when he knows inside he has someone to spend the night with and who is also a friend.” Yet this kind of relationship eluded him. At 48, he was still single, and he had lost hope: “This type of life I see is a closed world with me specifically and totally excluded.”

George read self-help books and subscribed to a program that purported to teach him how to find a mate. He worked at making himself desirable, joining a gym, going to a tanning salon, being careful about personal grooming. And yet, he said, “I always had hope that maybe things will improve especially if I make big attempts to change my life. I made many big changes in the past two years but everything is still the same. Life is over.”

He wrote about a talk-show. A caller spoke of the hopelessness of living in the inner city where men engaged in destructive behavior so as to shorten their miserable lives.

In January, he wrote, “The future holds even less than what I have today.” It was the day George “chickened out”. He had a plan for that evening, but said, “I always think I am forgetting something, that's one reason I postponed. Similar to when you leave to get in your car to go somewhere - you hesitate with a thought: ‘what am I forgetting?’ In this case, I cannot make a return trip!” After a few months of despondency, George finally put his plan into action.

On August 4, 2009, George Sodini walked into a crowded Pittsburgh gym class, unzipped his bag, pulled out two guns, turned off the lights, and opened fire. Three women died and many others were injured before he turned the gun on himself and ended his life.

As a human and as a Christian, I ache.

His blog showed that he’d attended a local church for thirteen years, until 2006. He credits his former pastor: “…this guy teaches (and convinced me) you can commit mass murder then still go to heaven. Ask him… I think his crap did the most damage.”
George wrote on August 3, “Maybe soon, I will see God and Jesus. At least that is what I was told. Eternal life does NOT depend on works. If it did, we will all be in hell. Christ paid for EVERY sin, so how can I or you be judged BY GOD for a sin when the penalty was ALREADY paid. People judge but that does not matter. I was reading the Bible and The Integrity of God beginning yesterday, because soon I will see them.”

I’ve looked up the website George gave for the church. I cannot tell what kind of church it is. The page that is supposed to tell of their doctrine is down, with the message "Our newly revised doctrinal statement will be available soon.” Revised doctrine? It leaves me to wonder: Did they teach George that it isn’t enough to just believe in Jesus, but that you have to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior in order to go to Heaven? Or was that the thing that he referenced earlier that he was forgetting, the reason he was unable to go through with the plan because he knew something was missing? It is frustrating and maddening and distressing that someone could come so close to the Truth and yet miss it!

George was empty and he needed Jesus.

George had “Christians” in his life. He described one of them. “I have been in barrooms and church groups. The worst people by far are the religious types. Especially a right-wing, stiff-faced fundie like Andy. A condescending, demeaning, passive-aggresive person. Frigid, rigid, linear and totally inflexible. Being a very serious person, he cannot hide his frown-lined face. He better not try to smile; lest his face might crack.”

Is this how the world views us? Is this how your lost friends see you?

Brothers and sisters, where are we failing? Is our joy not evident? Are we not giving an account for the hope we have? Are we not being light and salt? Is there nothing different in us? How will they recognize truth unless they see it in us first?

Is the next George Sodini sitting in the next cubicle? Is he your neighbor? Is she the loner in Biology class? How God’s heart must ache!

Lord God, You came to seek and save the lost and you have given us the task now of seeking them and leading them to you. I pray that you open our eyes and prick our hearts! Amen!