After Virginia Tech massacre, worshipers ask God ‘Why?’

The tissue boxes were neatly laid on every wooden pew, but there were none on the pulpit, so Tommy McDearis wiped his tears away with the back of his hand.

The pastor of Blacksburg Baptist Church also served as a police chaplain, and after last week’s shootings at Virginia Tech, he had to tell 20 families that their children were gone. He had to console the homicide detectives and SWAT team members who saw the blood-soaked classrooms, the wounded and the dead.

Through it all, McDearis told his congregation Sunday morning, he struggled to control his emotions -- to understand how God could let something so vile happen to so many good people.

“I was sitting at the Inn at Virginia Tech, waiting for the next broken family to come in, and a woman pulled my badge ... and said, you know it seems like God could have done better,” McDearis said. “I wanted to be able to argue with that woman. But the truth of the matter was that I knew just what that woman was feeling.”

Across this heartsick city over the weekend, unusually high numbers of people crammed into houses of worship, yearning for spiritual answers to the question of why a troubled young man would kill 32 others before killing himself. What many heard were messages of perseverance, of learning to confront evil and overcome it with good.

The church services Sunday came as the Virginia medical examiner’s office in Roanoke confirmed it had concluded the autopsies of all 32 victims and the killer, Seung-hui Cho.

Cho, 23, died of a single gunshot wound to the temple. Medical examiners were awaiting the results of toxicology testing to determine whether he was under the influence of any drugs at the time of his rampage. The tests could take six weeks, a spokesman said.

Medical examiners had also concluded that Cho fired more than 100 shots into the 32 victims, many of whom were crouched in defensive positions. There was no evidence he had scuffled with any of them. The final autopsy reports for each victim were still being prepared.

On Sunday, members of the Korean Baptist Church of Blacksburg felt a dual grief: They mourned for the victims of the shooting, but also for Cho’s family, South Korean immigrants who were living a parents’ nightmare.

“We’re a part of this community, and we are grieving just as much as anyone in this community. We’re Americans,” Pastor Hyun David Chung said.

As he spoke, he was repeatedly approached by members of Blacksburg Baptist, which meets at the same chapel earlier in the day, who wanted to assure him that no one blamed Korean Americans for what took place.

At the Blacksburg Presbyterian Church, Associate Pastor Susan Verbrugge told her congregation that she too was having a hard time dealing with the shootings. During a recent morning walk, Verbrugge said, she stopped on a hill overlooking a normally stunning city skyline. Everything looked gray.

“I didn’t see anything beautiful,” she said. “My heart had been numb since Monday.”

She screamed into the wind at God: “This is your world, so do something about it!”

That moment, she noticed woodpeckers, and saw beauty again. She realized that the world would mend, and that “God started with my heart.”

Pastor Alexander Evans recounted how he was called to the scene immediately after the shooting and was saddened to see the campus drill field overrun by armed officers and ambulances.

But the drill field later became a rousing memorial to the dead where people left orchids, roses and writings, and by the weekend, he noticed people picnicking on it again. He believed a rebirth was occurring.

“Death is being pushed back and new life is emerging,” he said. He prayed for the world to “embrace the lonely people.”

On Friday, the church had held a memorial for a popular professor, Kevin P. Granata, who was killed after ushering some students into the safety of his office. Many at the memorial had been personally touched by the tragedy.

Diane Wilson was among them. One of those killed, French professor Jocelyne M. Couture-Nowak, was her neighbor. The professor’s family had gathered at her house Sunday morning, and Wilson stopped by to offer her mother condolences.

During the service, Wilson bowed her head and prayed, “God, where can we turn when the senselessness of violence rips through our lives?”

At the Baptist Student Center near campus, dozens of students in jeans and maroon and orange Hokie shirts attended the Northstar Church’s contemporary Christian service. A youthful band strummed Christian pop songs onstage. Deacons passed around old Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets as collection dishes.

Pastor Bob Jackson invited his son Joel onstage, and the two talked about the son’s own school shooting experience in 2002, when he witnessed an attack at Virginia’s Appalachian School of Law that left three dead. Joel Jackson had known the shooter, Peter Odighizuwa, as well as one of his victims, Angela Denise Dales, whom he saw dying on the campus. The shooting, the son said, brought him closer to God, and made him appreciate the frailty of life.

Afterward, parishioners said they felt comforted. Most were local students, but the crowd included parents touring the school for the first time with their high school-age children. A few had come from hours away to show solidarity with the Virginia Tech campus.

“I felt it was important to come,” said Janie Parsons, a Virginia native who drove from Boone, N.C. “This just really hit close.”

Like other pastors, McDearis of the Blacksburg Baptist Church said he had overcome his anger. He told his congregation that at one point last week, he stood before Norris Hall, the building where most of the victims were killed, and yelled, “You are not going to win!”

Passers-by thought he was crazy, he said. Some assumed he was talking to Cho, and he was in part, but he was really talking to Satan.

By week’s end, McDearis had found comfort in the words of Ernest Hemingway, who wrote in “A Farewell to Arms”:

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”

“There will be things that will break our hearts,” McDearis said, “but we can come out of this a stronger people.”

miguel.bustillo@latimes.com

erika.hayasaki@latimes.com