This past Monday at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, fifteen-year-old student, Natalie Rupnow, murdered one of her fellow students as well as a substitute teacher. She shot six others, five students and one teacher. Two of her victims remain in critical condition—both students.
Rupnow ended her bloodshed by shooting herself. She died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.
Since the murderess can no longer be brought to man’s justice, what remains for discussion and action by state, city, school, family, and church authorities is cause and motive.
Church, school, and family (fathers and mothers) authorities are examining each other and themselves for personal responsibility. Fellow students are asking themselves, “Did I contribute to Abigail Rupnow’s misery?” Fathers and mothers of Rupnow’s fellow students are asking themselves, “Did my children mistreat her? Did the teachers and administrators of the school not know of her anguish? Do I trust Abundant Life’s authorities to continue to teach my own children?”
Such questions intensify among Abundant Life Christian School authorities: “How did we fail to teach and care for Abigail Rupnow? Did we turn a blind eye to her suffering and inner fury? What blame for this carnage is owned by us?”
Meanwhile, law enforcement and government authorities are issuing press releases saying they are turning over every stone in their search for the murderess’s “motives.”
As government authorities sell their work to the press, reports went out on social media that the murderess was transgender.
Government agents responded by declaring there was to be no discussion or circulation of evidence of motive by mere citizens. Motives were their turf, and they dismissed non-governmental discussions as “misinformation.”
For instance, responding to the question of whether or not Rupnow was transgender, government authorities categorically denied sexual dysphoria had any relevance to the murders. At his press conference, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes made his bid for public approval in Madtown:
I don’t think whatever happened today has anything to do with how she or he or they may want to identify. I wish people would leave their own personal biases.
Similarly, Wisconsin Democratic Representative Mark Pocan declared:
To all the idiots who claimed the shooter was trans with no information whatsoever to believe that, f‑‑‑ off.
Rep. Pocan is the chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus which promotes “LGBTQ equality.”
In the end, the fundamental responsibility for the wellbeing of minor children lies with the their father and mother.
Jeff and Mellissa Rupnow were blessed by God with this child of their union they named “Natalie.” The two of them had been this child’s natural sovereigns. God Who blessed them with Natalie holds them responsible for raising her in godly instruction, discipline, and love. Natalie’s wellbeing is what they owed her and the God Who created her.
So what do we know of Father and Mother Rupnow’s training and care of Natalie which might bring clarity to her motives for murder?
Under the headline, “Court records point to troubled home life for Wisconsin school shooter,” Wednesday’s Washington Post bypassed law enforcement authorities’ claim of exclusive control over information. Examining public court records concerning the Rupnows, WaPo reports Natalie,
had a turbulent home life, according to court records, which show that her parents divorced and remarried multiple times and that she had been enrolled in therapy.
Police have released few details about Rupnow beyond her name, and they said they were investigating a possible motive behind the shooting. With much still unknown, a Washington Post review of court records points to an unsettled childhood for Rupnow, whose parents’ custody agreements sometimes forced her to move between their homes every two or three days.
The purportedly enlightened and progressive social engineering of liberals united in rebellion against God’s Law has reigned supreme for decades now, and it has borne the fruit of children, like Natalie, whose fathers and mothers are remarried multiple times, and leave their children bereft of familial permanence of care and love. At their core, these children understand they have been abandoned by those God gave them to, for loving care and nurture.
But no, it is not the fathers and mothers alone who are to blame.
A huge burden of guilt for the murders of children by children which has overwhelmed our nation these past decades—including the murders at Abundant Life Christian School by Natailie Rupnow two days ago—is properly laid at the door of the very government authorities now claiming they alone will declare Rupnow’s motives; that they alone are qualified to assign guilt and responsibility for the very bloodshed they themselves have caused.
How?
By abandoning their communities’ children by means of their laws enabling, their courts officiating over, and their law officers enforcing their wicked system of child destruction. This is the undocumented legacy of America’s secularist elite who are united in their rebellion against God’s Moral Law. Take, for example, the Divine institution of lifelong, monogamous marriage.
In his short classic The Christian Mind published in 1963, Harry Blamires explained the hypocrisy of government legislation licensing adultery:
The Christian… is expected… to think of remarriage after divorce as something totally different from adultery. He is asked to accept a distinction between unregistered adulterous liaisons and State-registered ones, that institutionalizes infidelity and converts morality into a licensing system. But the Christian mind cannot regard serial polygamy, indulged in over the years with the help of the divorce courts, as wildly different from contemporaneous polygamy….
Having sown the wind, we now are reaping the whirlwind. What Blamires neither forsaw nor warned against was the destruction of children’s homes as a result of the destruction of the marital union of those children’s fathers and mothers.
Keep in mind the custody agreements forged in courtrooms which required Abigail to switch from home of father to home of mother, then back and forth again every few days.
A little story and I’m done.
A dear brother recently deceased once told me of his divorce. Known nationally and revered within the conservative Presbyterian church, the conflict we were joined and fighting together led to a frank discussion during our ride home from the airport.
He explained to me that, one Sunday, his wife had told him she wasn’t going to church. He went to church and came home afterwards, when she greeted him with the profoundly simple statement that she no longer believed.
They were a young couple with children, and he fought for the souls of his wife and children. He sought his pastor’s counsel, then asked his wife to get counselling with him.
She agreed and went, but it was no good. She reiterated her firm rejection of Jesus Christ, and desire for a divorce. No unfaithfulness. No notorious conflict. Just what the Apostle Paul describes in 1Corinthians 7;15:
Yet if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave; the brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us to peace.
Very, very sad it was, and as my friend recounted it, I was grieving for him and his wife and children.
Then he said:
After we had submitted to counselling and it had failed to change her mind, she told me again that she wanted a divorce.
I said I would agree to a divorce on one condition: that she agree to my having custody of our children and having no contact with them until they were adults. I explained that she and I both knew the horrible pain of children bounced between their parents after a divorce, and I was sure neither she nor I wanted that for our children.
Stopping his narrative, I was left hanging. “So what happend? What did she say?”
“She agreed to it,” he responded, “and kept her agreement until our kids became adults.”
First, let me declare my undying respect for this father in the faith. That he would require this as a term of his divorce. That he and his wife would be so concerned for the wellbeing of their children. That he would reveal this great suffering of his life to a young pastor.
Second, let me declare the godless idolatry of our secularist elite who care nothing for children, but instead point at guns in their desperate attempt to score political points against those of us who, with great difficulty, remain faithful to our wives and keep faith with the children who are God’s blessings to us.
It takes the blood and sweat and discipline of Christian faith to raise children given us by God.
These child murderers have been abandoned by liberal secularists. The elite yip and yap about guns, but don’t let them fool you.
Things are quite simple.
Liberals hate God and His Law, and they despise children.
Christians love God and His Law, and love children.
That’s the end of it.
