Better that Sandy Hook shooter was never born?

The father of Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza sums up his thoughts in an interview released last month by saying that he wishes Adam had never been born. If we look at his final act in a vacuum, that view is understandable: 27 murdered, including 20 children, and one more if you count his life, which he took after his killing spree.

Judging from interviews, Peter Lanza appears to be a man who wanted to love his son, not some lunatic father who created a monster.

If the inevitable was that this warped 20-year-old would massacre children and adults in an unfettered rage, where’s the good in Adam Lanza’s life? It’s a fair question. Perhaps the deeper question is if it was inevitable, then weren’t Adam’s actions only a matter of matter—a design defect or mental illness, perhaps a killing gene, which created a monster who was predestined to emerge, sooner or later, in a killing spree.

If that line of thinking about nature and nurture (and it’s not clear from interviews what his father believes) is true, it has scary implications for the realm of bio-ethics. Would genetic markers of mental illness or social disability, even mild autism that could result in anti-social behavior, warrant the same rejection in the form of abortion that Down syndrome babies (more than 90 percent are never born) get now?

I think we can do better by asking who Adam Lanza could have been in an intact, loving, nurturing family with a mom and dad under the same roof and living in a community of connected, involved people, be they extended family or neighbors or friends.

Peter and Nancy Lanza were normal by all accounts. And therein lies the problem. Normal won’t do. Especially for the Adam Lanzas of the world.

In an interview in the latest New Yorker magazine, Peter Lanza said he is certain Adam, whom he said he had not seen for two years prior to the Newtown, Conn., school shooting in December 2012, would have killed him too given the chance.

“You can’t get any more evil. … How much do I beat up on myself about the fact that he’s my son? A lot,” he told the magazine.

Peter and Nancy Lanza were separated in 2001 and divorced—eight long years later—in 2009. Adam was 20 when he shot his mother and then went to Sandy Hook Elementary and did the unthinkable.

In the interview Peter Lanza describes Adam in his early development as “just a normal little weird kid” but adds that his later diagnosis with Asperger’s syndrome, a type of high-functioning autism that was officially dropped from a list of diagnostic categories last year in favor of more generic terms, masked deeper, darker mental problems that were missed by doctors. Adam Lanza, according to the story, rejected and resented the Asperger’s diagnosis he received at age 13.

Reportedly, he spent his final two years largely alone, spending long hours despairing of existence in his bedroom, apparently clinically depressed, socially isolated and refusing to see his father despite his mother’s pleas. As with many kids on the autism spectrum, Lanza struggled with anxiety and depression, sensory-integration issues and obsessive-compulsive disorder. He became particularly fixated on mass murders.

There’s no evidence Adam Lanza was victimized in any purposeful way except through the pain of divorce. Many couples divorce. Many kids endure (Do they have a choice?) without becoming sinister. There are no born killers, nor a killing gene. Adam Lanza was in no way predestined to murder.

But one is left to ask “What if?” What if Adam Lanza had been taught from the cradle that he was fearfully and wonderfully crafted, emotional challenges and all, in God’s image? What if he’d had the benefit of a loving father in the home rather than estranged through the pain of divorce? Kids need both parents, especially kids like him. What if he had heard that there was hope beyond this life, which can seem relentless in its thorns and thistles?

A thousand “what ifs” could be posed, especially by those of us who have the power to influence people in our own sphere for God’s glory and purpose. We come bearing the only true, lasting peace.

Yes, Adam Lanza should have been born by virtue of the fact that he was conceived. But there was much more in his life that should have been. He chose to kill. He wasn’t predestined by God or biology to do it.