A murderous loss of meaning

On Aug. 22, Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee, was murdered by a homeless ex-convict named Decarlos Brown while she was riding the light rail home from work in Charlotte, N.C. Video showing the moments leading up to the attack made waves on social media last week, even as the story received almost no national media attention.

Media reports indicate that Brown has a history of arrests, including a conviction for armed robbery (for which he served a five-year sentence) and arrests for assault and communicating threats. During his most recent run-in with the police from earlier this year, he asked them to investigate “a man-made material” in his body that was controlling his actions.

Zarutska’s murder comes at a time in which President Trump has used the National Guard to bring law and order to Washington D.C. Trump has also suggested sending the National Guard to other Democrat-run cities (such as Chicago or Portland) in order to clean up their crime-ridden streets. This effort is part and parcel of the administration’s larger emphasis on law and order—from deportations and enforcing immigration law to using the military to wage war on narco-terrorists.

Many conservatives on social media argued that Zarutska’s murder is further confirmation that Democrats are soft on crime, refusing to adequately punish repeat violent offenders in the name of empathy and social justice. Many quoted Ecclesiastes 8:11: “Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil.” Others highlighted the silence of the mainstream press, pointing out the inconsistency in coverage as compared to the death of Jordan Neely when Daniel Penny restrained him on a New York subway. A white man restrains a mentally unstable black man resulting in his death and it’s national news for weeks. A mentally unstable black man murders a white woman on a subway and all we hear is crickets.

But behind the reaction to Zarutska’s murder lies a more unsettling reality, one that also lurks beneath the Annunciation School shooting in Minneapolis a few weeks ago and the Covenant School shooting in Nashville in 2023. In both of those shootings, trans-identified individuals planned and executed horrific evil on vulnerable Christian children.

We commonly call it a “mental health crisis,” and it’s unclear that we as a society have any idea what to do about it. Mentally unstable individuals, sometimes with pre-meditation and sometimes unprovoked, snap and commit violent acts against the weak and defenseless. The randomness and absurdity of it is part of what makes it so terrifying.

Of course, we can talk about the various layers to the challenge. Progressives do often seem to have a strange and misplaced empathy for criminals, prioritizing them over their victims. Rather than incarcerate criminals or institutionalize the mentally unstable, repeat offenders are put back on the streets, where many are homeless and addicted to drugs. Indeed, the widespread tolerance of drugs in urban centers is unquestionably linked to all manner of crime, from petty theft up to violent assault.

When it comes to the growing frequency of trans shootings, we have the additional complications of mentally deranged individuals who have been groomed and catechized by gender ideology and then provided experimental hormone and chemical treatments in order to “transition.” Are we really surprised that such assaults on reality result in greater psychosis, as well as rage and anger when such transitions don’t relieve the underlying problem, and religious conservatives provide a suitable scapegoat, since they refuse to go along with the lies and sexual insanity? And are we surprised to learn that the trans shooters typically come from broken homes? Does the disintegration of the natural family have anything to do with our mental health crisis? (One doubts that Decarlos Brown was raised in a household with a mother and father who were married to each other.)

But beyond the failures of the criminal justice and mental health systems, and beyond the lies of the gender cult, and beyond the breakdown of the family, there is the larger loss of meaning in our modern technological, secular, and materialist society. Put simply, we have abandoned God, rejected God, turned from God. Is it any wonder that despair and hopelessness follow from the nihilism that hovers over our nation? And given Decarlos Brown’s words about something controlling his body and the disturbing images in the diary of Robert “Robin” Westman, are we ready to recognize the presence of dark powers at work in and through the various earthly means? Were Westman and Brown afflicted (or possessed) by demons when they committed their horrific evil?

The scale of such problems can seem to us overwhelming. Yes, it seems clear that we need to punish repeat offenders. Yes, mentally unstable individuals need medical and psychological help. Yes, we need to address the over-medication (and mis-medication) that our materialist society relies upon as a substitute for God. Yes, we need to do whatever we can to restore the natural family as a bulwark against our modern despair.

More than any of those, we need to turn back to God in Christ. Deep repentance, real forgiveness, spiritual renewal flowing from the gospel of Christ. In the face of whatever is behind our “mental health crisis,” our greatest need is God Himself.