Words cannot even begin to express the heartbreak that is gripping our country right now. As I read the news report today, I broke down. I shed tears for the families who dropped their innocent children off at school like it was just another day and then had to scramble to the school in hopes that one of their kids was not one of the twenty who were shot. I cannot even imagine the heartache those families are going through right now as I type this. I'm sure their houses are decorated for Christmas and they have their presents bought for the children that will never receive them.
I was at the gym this evening and the news coverage was on several of the televisions. As I was working out, I watched the news report and read the words on the screen because the sound was off. A man was being interviewed about his assessment of the shooter. He talked about how the shooter had a learning disability and probably grew up very frustrated and eventually exploded on this day. I can see where this is going. So-called experts are going to try to spin this where the shooter was not totally at fault in all of this. He had issues and because those issues may have never been properly addressed in his life, the volcano erupted.
At times like this, we need to call a spade a spade. The man was evil. Period. This is not judgmental or intolerant. It is the truth. But, if we are going to call him evil, we need to call ourselves evil as well because that is just what we are. We are all evil from birth. David says in Psalm 51:5, "Surely I was sinful from birth..." We need to start realizing the problem with humanity, we are evil from birth. There is a nature about us that wants to do what we want to do at the expense of everyone else. We have a propensity for things like what happened today. We can look at this man and say we would never do anything like that, but how do we know that? How do we know that we would never lose it one day? Left to our own devices, we don't know for certain that we would never do that.
But, then there is grace. At times like this, people want to blame God for this. He is supposed to save us all from every tragedy that could be possible because He is all knowing and powerful. Isn't that what the Bible says? Jesus told his disciples that in this world we would have trouble. Paul writes to the Romans in Romans 8:22, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time." We live in a fallen, broken world. The only cure for it is Jesus. The only cure for propensity for evil is Jesus. The only cure for broken hearts in the midst of tragedy like this is Jesus. There is no other cure. We think that if we medicate the problem it will go away, but all that does is mask the problem. It's like sticking a cork on an erupting volcano, eventually it's going to blow it's top. We need a new life in Jesus. Why do you think Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3 that we must be born again? We have to leave behind our old life of doing things our way and embrace the life that Jesus offers. Paul says in II Corinthians 5:17, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone and the new has come."
So, this shooter gave in to his evil desires. He chose to do things his way and conquer his world the way he wanted to. He wanted to be the king of his universe. I'm sure there were plenty of people in his life that tried to help him, but imperfect people trying to solve a problem perfectly is like the blind leading the blind. This was a man in need of a Savior. This was a man in need of a new life. This was a man who needed to be changed in a drastic way with the radical love of Jesus and this is the only way our world will get better.
No comments:
Post a Comment