Did One of the Colorado School Shooter’s Belief in a ‘Big Lie’ About Christians Lead to his Hate-filled Act?

We now know that two people who had serious issues in their lives were behind the shooting at the K-12 STEM school located in Douglas County, Colorado. One was a girl named Maya (a.k.a. Alec) McKinney who was “transitioning” to be a boy. The second was Devon Erickson, an 18-year-old high school student who worked as a “youth actor” in Colorado.

On May 15, 2014 Devon Erickson wrote on his Facebook page:

You know what I hate? All these Christians who hate gays, yet in the bible, it says in Deuteronomy 17:12-13 if someone doesn’t do what their priest tells them to do, they are supposed to die. It has plenty of stuff like that. But all they get out of it is “ewwwwww gays”

Questions:

1. Did Erickson’s hate of Christians lead him to commit his hate-filled act?
2. Did Erickson enlist the help of a minor girl Maya McKinney to become a co-conspirator in this hate-filled act?
3. Is this a religious hate crime inflamed by LGBT propaganda about Christians?

The Big Lie

The big lie is that Christians hate gays.

This horrific shooting happened just one month after the first openly gay candidate for president Democrat Pete Buttigieg’s attack against Vice President Mike Pence, a Christian, for his stance on “same-sex marriage and gay rights.” The “Christians hate us” big lie is something that the LGBT community has been pushing with the help of organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The SPLC website states:

A central theme of anti-LGBT organizing and ideology is the opposition to LGBT rights, often couched in rhetoric and harmful pseudoscience that demonizes LGBT people as threats to children, society and often public health.

Learn more about the LGBT efforts to change science, biology and culture by clicking here.

What Do Christians Believe about Gays?

The issues addressed about how Christians approach gays is outlined in a column titled “10 Things Everyone Should Know About a Christian View of Homosexuality” by Glenn Stanton. Stanton lists the following views held by orthodox Christians:

1. All humans are simultaneously sinful and loved. All people, regardless of their story, are deeply and unconditionally loved by God, each created with profound dignity and worth, not one more than another.
2. Jesus wasn’t silent on homosexuality. Jesus was unequivocal in saying that to understand marriage and the sexual union, we must go back to the beginning and see how God created humanity and to what end. (See Matthew 19 and Mark 10.)
3. There is only one option. Both Jesus and all of scripture approve of no other sexual union than that between a husband and wife.
4. Male and female complete God’s image on earth. It is not just mere “traditionalism” that makes sex-distinct marriage the norm for Christians.
5. Sex is indeed about babies. It is a new and culturally peculiar idea that human sexuality is all about intimacy and pleasure, but not necessarily babies. Babies and reproduction matter.
6. Children have a right to a mother and father. Every person ever born can track his origin to a mother and a father.
7. Same-sex attraction is not a sin. To be human is to have a disordered sexuality. You do. I do. Everyone does.
8. Sexual intimacy is not a right. Every Christian has limitations placed on his sexuality.
9. Rewriting God’s rules is never an option. One of the marks of a Christian is his or her desire to be obedient to Christ’s teaching.
10. People are more than their sexuality. To identify people by their sexuality is to reduce people to their sexuality.

Misusing the Bible

Question: Did Devon Erickson misuse the Bible to justify his hateful act?

Erickson quoted the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy 17: 12-13 on his social media account. Deuteronomy 17: 12-13 reads:

And the man that will do presumptuously, and will not listen to the priest that stands to minister there before the LORD your God, or to the judge, even that man shall die: and you shall put away the evil from Israel.

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament notes:

If such a case should occur, as that a man or woman transgressed the covenant of the Lord and went after other gods and worshipped them; when it was made known, the facts were to be carefully inquired into; and if the charge were substantiated, the criminal was to be led out to the gate and stoned. On the testimony of two or three witnesses, not of one only, he was to be put to death (see at Numbers 35:30); and the hand of the witnesses was to be against him first to put him to death, i.e., to throw the first stones at him, and all the people were to follow. With regard to the different kinds of idolatry in Deuteronomy 17:3, see Deuteronomy 4:19. (On Deuteronomy 17:4, see Deuteronomy 13:15.) “Bring him out to thy gates,” i.e., to one of the gates of the town in which the crime was committed. By the gates we are to understand the open space near the gates, where the judicial proceedings took place (cf. Nehemiah 8:1, Nehemiah 8:3; Job. Deu 29:7), the sentence itself being executed outside the town (cf. Deuteronomy 22:24; Acts 7:58; Hebrews 13:12), just as it had been outside the camp during the journey through the wilderness (Leviticus 24:14; Numbers 15:36), to indicate the exclusion of the criminal from the congregation, and from fellowship with God. The infliction of punishment in Deuteronomy 17:5. is like that prescribed in Deuteronomy 13:10-11, for those who tempted others to idolatry; with this exception, that the testimony of more than one witness was required before the sentence could be executed, and the witnesses were to be the first to lift up their hands against the criminal to stone him, that they might thereby give a practical proof of the truth of their statement, and their own firm conviction that the condemned was deserving of death, – “a rule which would naturally lead to the supposition that no man would come forward as a witness without the fullest certainty or the greatest depravity” (Schnell, das isr. Recht).

However, Jesus said this in John 8: 1-12 about stoning those who were found criminally guilty in the New Testament:

1 But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them.
3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group
4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.
5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”
6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.
7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”
8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.
10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
11 “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
12 When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

Selective parsing leads to hate-filled acts. That is today’s lesson tragically learned by those in Colorado.

RELATED ARTICLE: Father of Colorado school shooter Alec McKinney is Serial Felon and Illegal Immigrant

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