Why did Adam Lanza Kill?

Why did Raskolnikov kill? That is the question that haunts Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic novel, Crime and Punishment. There is not single answer but the author gives a number of hints: Raskolnikov was bullied, his father was absent and his mother possessive, and the larger problem of atheism that the Enlightenment brought to Russia. (Dostoyevsky is famous for saying, “Without God all is permitted.) The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams in a book that includes a review of Crime and Punishment says the Raskolnikov’s crime was a pathological expression of himself in the face of a morally deteriorating culture and his own radical isolation. Does this sound familiar?

Why did Adam Lanza kill? This haunts us all today, and likely it will for a long time to come. Here too there is no single answer. I recently had a discussion with my college son about causation and correlation, he speaking from a scientific perspective and me being the philosopher, and we came to a similar conclusion. To think in terms of causation encourages us to look for a single cause for an event. Correlation sees numerous, sometimes uncountable and unaccountable things that correlate to create an event. When my stomach hurts do I look for the single reasons for it – a bug or something I ate – or do I included many factors including my emotions and the millions of microbes that live in my digestive system? We still tend to think in a causal fashion when we need to consider correlation.

Why did Adam Lanza kill? there are many factors involved including the proliferation of guns and slack gun laws, mental illness, the common experience of boys in our culture, his personal relationships with his parents, and certainly his experience at school. There is not single reason, but many things correlate with this tragic event. I think this event could be an opportunity for us to ask larger questions – interrelated questions about all of these correlations and how they function in our culture. Crime and Punishment is a story of the Russian people; how does this fit into the story of us as a people?

I have no doubt that Adam Lanza felt isolated and alone. Yes, he was mentally ill, but to say just that is to dismiss how we are all a part of a culture isolates people, particularly young men. It is likewise too simple to say that if we only changed the gun laws these things wouldn’t happen. I believe that they wouldn’t happen as often and I am in favor of more stringent laws, but to me the more poignant quesion is, why do we love guns so much? What is it in our values and psychology that nurtures this passion? Likewise, I am all for considering how we do not adequately care for the mentally ill in our society, and I would favor much more government funding for this, but I am also interested in what it is that we value and want that encourages mental illness and at the same time prevents us from taking care of it? I believe that it is not that there are a few sick people in our society and the rest of us are fine. I believe it is the tip of an iceberg of a deeper spiritual illness that inhabits each of us and pervades our society.

Like the fictional Raskolnikov, I think Adam Lanza’s act was a radical and pathological expression of himself, in a culture that values the self above all things. As much as we claim to be a religious people, I often feel that we are functional atheists. Our obsession with self reliance, self-help, self improvment, personal freedom, privacy, nice abs, personal sexual exploits and Hummers, just to name a few are also correlative to these violent and tragic events. In any case, and regardless of whether you agree, this is where our discussion needs to go; particularly in the church we need to aks the values and spiritual questions.

A universal theme in all of Dosteyevsky’s work is the spiritual power and grace of being responsible for others, not just ourselves. Redemption for Raskolnikov comes via the commitment of Sofia even following him to the labor camp. And, ironically, it is when he is imprisoned and accepts Sofia’s dedication to him that he becomes free.

Finally, and parenthetically, we lose so much in our culture when we lose literation – which comprises the wisdom of the past. We think we are dealing with this question for the first time, but we aren’t. This loss is also correlative to the violence in our world. I would love to see Crime and Punishment become a part of the required curriculum in high school, and can’t help but wonder that something might be different if Adam Lanza had read it. Pastor Jim