Things I Don’t Read About After Mass Shootings and Invasions of War
First, is there a better time for us to consider the total depravity of man? Right wing commentators call for prayer, while left wing commentators call for a gun round up, and the president quotes a Bible passage out of its proper context — and so goes our national story line — a maudlin diatribe aptly titled, “Lunatics with Lugers” or “Madmen with Missiles.”
The human heart is desperately wicked, and that is our own doing and responsibility (Gen 3; Jer 17:9). We are all conceived and born as children of disobedience (Ps 51:5; Eph 2:1–3), thus, children of wrath because we ran away from home and shacked up with our abusive surrogate, making ourselves children of the devil (Jn 8:44; 1 Jn 3:10). Humanity loves darkness because its deeds are evil (Jn 3:19).
What is not fake about the nightly news is our tragic story of self-inflicted calamities. Under the tutelage of our father, the devil, who was a murderer from the beginning, we succumb to the temptation to muse the grossest malfeasance against classmates, co-workers, and even our own kin in neighboring nation states. The realized ruse gets the ratings, so the show must go on. There will be wars and rumors of wars.
Demon-possessed people are all around us, prowling for prey to devour, so who can successfully restrain their evil intentions? He is the Holy Spirit of God. One might ask, “Well, why doesn’t He do something about these mass shootings and incursions of war?”
Really? You boast in your unbelief, then curse His Holy Name, and then inquire about His apparent powerlessness with a condemning tone?
Is it not written? Did He not say, “You reap what you sow”? So let us examine ourselves as a nation. Have we sown sin? or, Have we sown the Word of God? The first reaps death, and the second reaps life. Are we not hypocrites when the evil of others becomes too apparent? We have shock and awe when a despot goes to war, but how few show up to protest the systematic slaughter of our own children at the abortion mill.
We have marginalized prayer and the Bible to fringe activities, while four thousand American moms slaughter their own children…every single day. Who again is desensitized to mass killings? School shootings and acts of war still seem pretty gruesome to most people and we protest the political intrigue of the rich and powerful, who think nothing of human extermination on small and large scales. Do we hate them in our hearts? Are we then not just like them albeit constrained by fear of the repercussions of heinous acts?
American ideology, philosophy, and psychology has never been so rich, and paradoxically so bankrupt. We are an unstable, double-minded nation, especially when we condemn the bloody advance of another world power. Fortunately for us, there is no new thing under the sun (Eccl 1:9), so our core curriculum remains the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb 13:8). We need to get back to the Book, in order to learn about Christ’s perfection and our own treachery.
Void from our mass murder commentary is the ever-obvious truth that the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23). We have sinned and brought a culture of violence and death upon ourselves. Stated simply, our sins are finding us out. It matters not who is this year’s version of king of the mountain.
Imagine into the future, what it will be like when we make ourselves in our own image and then multiply and fill the earth with robotic minds and hearts. I suspect those robot men, made in our image, filled with artificial intelligence will do the same as us…rebel against their maker and wish him dead. What would Sarah Connor do?
In closing, my hope is that everyone killed in the school shootings in America, was Christian. I hope the same for those casualties of war. The alternative would be the systematic sending of students, citizens, and soldiers’ souls to eternal hell (Mt 25:41, 46; Jude 7; Rev 20:14–15), and that is just one more thing I won’t read about following the latest mass shooting and genocide of war.
David Norczyk
Spokane Valley, Washington
February 25, 2022
