Satanism and school murders. A critical consideration.

I am quite skeptical when persons or groups make exclusive and absolute claims about the reasons for violence among young people. Such claims are seldom entirely accurate since as most of us would agree identity and motive are complex phenomena. For every child who behaves badly and plays video games there is another child whose behavior is not inappropriate who plays exactly the same video game.

As for the school murder in Krugersdorp, South Africa, last week - there has been a tremendous amount of sensationalism that has gone along with this very sad and unfortunate event. The young man who perpetrated the act of violence with a sword is suggested to have emulated members of the band 'Slipknot', to have been a satanist, and even a 'Ninja' by some ill informed journalist! Of these claims the claim to satanism perhaps the most disturbing. I have not been suprised that the media have latched onto this particular claim (rather than other psycho-social factors in the young man's life and surroundings) - in short, satanism sells newspapers!

However, this does display both ignorance of the complexity of faith (whatever form such faith takes), and particularly an inability to understand how faith and human development go hand in hand throughout the stages of life.

One must never forget that as persons mature and grow their understanding of themselves and their faith in God (or whatever else gives them the ability to make meaning and transcend the struggles of life) changes significantly. In most cases the 'regular' stages of development can be fairly closely aligned to the stages of faith development (even, as I mention above, if such faith is a form of 'secular spirituality' that places faith in money, the human self, or some other structure). James Fowler's stages of Faith development are particularly insightful in this regard. Here is a quick overview of the stages as Fowler suggests:

Faith is seen as a holistic orientation, and is concerned with the individual's relatedness to the universal:

• Stage 0 - "Primal or Undifferentiated" faith (birth to 2 years), is characterized by an early learning of the safety of their environment (ie. warm, safe and secure vs. hurt, neglect and abuse). In addition, sharp attention is paid to mammalia (e.g., wooly sheep)
• Stage 1 ? "Intuitive-Projective" faith (ages of three to seven), is characterized by the psyche's unprotected exposure to the Unconscious.
• Stage 2 ? "Mythic-Literal" faith (mostly in school children), stage three persons have a strong belief in the justice and reciprocity of the universe, and their deities are almost always anthropomorphic.
• Stage 3 - "Synthetic-Conventional" faith (arising in adolescence) characterized by conformity
• Stage 4 ? "Individuative-Reflective" faith (usually mid-twenties to late thirties) a stage of angst and struggle. The individual takes personal responsibility for their beliefs and feelings.
• Stage 5 ? "Conjunctive" faith (mid-life crisis) acknowledges paradox and transcendence relating reality behind the symbols of inherited systems
• Stage 6 ? "Universalizing" faith, or what some might call "enlightenment".

Now when one considers the complexity of faith as it develops through these stages it is quite easy to see how a simplistic assumption that a person was motivated by 'satanism' to murder another pupil falls drastically short of the complex reality that surrounds these sad events. Faith, or lack thereof, may have played some part in this incident, but I would not think that this young man had a sufficiently developed faith orientation to motivate him to go against all of the conventions of society to murder another pupil! Heck, most adult Christians have not even developed the courage to speak about their faith (only 3% of all Christians have ever publicly witnessed to their faith)... And such persons are regular attenders of Churches, schooled in their religious convictions and sincere in their desire to honour and serve God.

Regardless of my argument, Steve Hayes, has written a wonderfully detailed and critical consideration of both the motives and the religious convictions of satanism in relation to this issue. You'll find it in his superb post 'Will the real satanists please stand up'. What do you think? Are we missing something?


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