Prayer breakfast focuses on avoiding evil within yourself

Evil surrounded the 22nd Annual Wheaton Leadership Prayer Breakfast Friday morning.

It was an introspective concept placed in the minds of elected officials and local business and government leaders as they poked at their morning eggs.

Guest speaker Clinton Van Zandt knows a few things about evil.

He is a retired FBI hostage negotiator and criminal profiler. His years on the job tied his daily work to the likes of serial killer John Wayne Gacy and the front lines of the Branch Davidian crisis in Waco, Texas.

Van Zandt spoke of the need to identify evil in life, especially when it's inside oneself.

"You may be able to hide your crime from the eyes of man, but you're not going to be able to hide the crime from God's eyes," Van Zandt said in an interview after the breakfast.

Van Zandt may be best known in recent days from his interviews with cable TV news stations during the gunman's shooting rampage on the campus of Virginia Tech.

Van Zandt said the aftermath had everybody questioning where the criminal justice and health systems failed the gunman, instead of placing the brunt of the blame on the student for his decisions.

"It still was, ultimately, (the gunman's) choice to kill or not kill," Van Zandt said. "I can't blame that on his parents and his fellow students. It's a mental health situation, but it's still evil that grew in him."

Van Zandt is a practicing Christian and said he's maintained his faith, despite seeing people repeatedly commit the worst crimes imaginable. He credited the presence of evil in the world to free will.

"If you want to see who's responsible for what you do, don't blame the church, don't blame your mother," he said. "Look in the mirror."