So,
yesterday something horrible happened. Today we’re all searching for answers,
for causes, for something to make some sort of sense out of it. I don’t have
any of those answers.
Some
are going to dive headlong into various debates about public policy, rights,
and administration. This will, no doubt, spark conversations about gun control,
school policies about security, and maybe even human rights discussions
concerning mental health issues, records, disclosure and therapy. These
discussions are important and need to be tackled; but I don’t think that they
can really address the root of what is happening in our nation.
This
year we have had three major shootings in our nation. Over the past 15 years or
so, public shooting rampages have become somewhat of an epidemic.
Two
days ago I committed a sin. It was a behavior that many would not consider out
of the ordinary, but for me it is a sin. This behavior hurt me, hurt my family,
hurt my relationship with God, and will no doubt hurt my friends, even if they
never realize it.
My sin
and this shooting epidemic are indirectly linked[1]
because they are products of the same culture. We have a problem in America;
and it is not our policies, our politics, our parties, our classes, or our
laws. Our problem is in our hearts.
I have
found, with my own sinful tendencies, that character cannot be molded by rules
and regulations. Character may be suppressed by laws for a time, but, like
alcohol during prohibition, it will always find a way to express itself. We
will never be able to make enough rules to change who we are; and no matter
what kind of policy changes we make, new security measures we enact, or
opportunities we take away, a mentally unstable individual will be able to find
a way to act out on his or her delusions. I have found that there is only one
answer to the problem of evil; and that is God.
Evil is
not something that is external to us. It is not embodied by Satan. It is not
rooted in the oft-maligned “them,” nor is it the exclusive policy of either democrats
or republicans. We cannot defeat evil through the ballot box or on the
congressional debate floor. Just like the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Evil
exists within our hearts; it is in us; and it is in our hearts that evil must
be conquered.
The
problem that our nation is experiencing is a problem of culture. Culture is
really nothing more than the collective weight of a million individual
decisions made by millions of individual people in individual situations. The
only way that culture changes is for those individual people to make different choices.
School
shootings are a product of our culture, and as such, they are a product of
those millions of individual decisions. It is a monumental mistake to think
that we as individuals are not at fault for the shooting epidemic that has
gripped our nation because our individual choices are part of that collective consent,
a collective complicity. My own poor choices from just two days ago are part of
the tilled cultural ground from which our cultural problems grow.
I am
not defined by the mistakes of yesterday, but by the forgiveness of today. We
are not defined by the good we failed at, but by the good we attempted to do. I
am not defined by my poor choices, but by God’s grace. We are not defined by
how we have fallen, but by the one who was raised up, on a cross, for us. Now, with
the after-image of evil still burning in our vision, it is time to let that
forgiveness, that grace, that love flow through us and define our world; it is
time to let our individual choices be determined and defined by the same love
that gave itself up for us. That is the only way in which evil is conquered;
that is how we change the world.
[1] I
should make it clear that my sinful behavior has nothing to do with guns,
shooting, depression, physical violence or anything else remotely a part of
these shooting rampages.
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