It has happened again.
Heartless mass shootings and the terrible aftermath in their wake. It seems like these types of things are
happening with increasing frequency. An
article in the Washington Post say that, as of December 3, 2015, “There have
been more mass shootings than calendar days
this year. News reports collected by a Reddit community show there have been
355 mass shootings in 2015” (1).
Another article in the Washington Post says that the reason
mass shooting will continue is simple, “Americans own more guns per-capita than
people in literally any other country on earth” (2). However, is that true? Is the reason some people choose to kill
others simply because guns exist?
More often than not, someone will say that we need stricter
gun laws to curb this kind of tragic behavior. However, stricter gun laws will
only insure that law-abiding citizens will be unarmed and that criminals, who
are law-breakers by definition, will still be armed…and dangerous.
Only when the evil heart of humanity is changed by the love
of God will these kinds of senseless and brutal acts cease.
Jesus addressed this very issue, in one of His discourses
recorded in the Gospels, when He said, “For out of the heart come evil
thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders”
(Matthew 15:19, see also Mark 7:21). A
heart in rebellion against God is an evil heart, out of which come evil
thoughts and oftentimes evil actions.
Humanity’s natural inclination is to selfishness and lust; without some
sort of powerful restraint, our natural human condition will foster these types
of tragic behavior.
In the New Testament book of Romans, the Apostle Paul speaks
of this ‘heart condition’:
“What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have
already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; as it is written, “There
is none righteous, not even one; There is none who understands, There is none
who seeks for God; All have turned aside, together they have become useless; There
is none who does good, There is not even one. Their throat is an open grave, With
their tongues they keep deceiving, The poison of asps is under their lips; Whose
mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; Their feet are swift to shed blood, Destruction
and misery are in their paths, And the path of peace they have not known. There
is no fear of God before their eyes.”
(Romans 3:9-18; see Psalm 14:1-3; 53:1-3). While this paints a bleak picture of the
heart of humanity, we must remember that this is God declaring the truth about
our condition. We tend to think that we
“aren’t so bad”, but God gives us an accurate account.
God has already judged the entire human race once; and what
was the reason for this judgment? Genesis 6:5 tells us, “Then the Lord saw that
the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the
thoughts of his heart was only evil continually”. Watching the evening news, one could get the
idea that we aren’t all that far from being in the same condition today as those
folks were in Genesis just before God’s judgment fell on them.
“Transgression speaks to the ungodly within his heart; There
is no fear of God before his eyes” (Psalm 36:1). The reason people act so
terribly is that they are in rebellion against the Holy God who created
them. When we refuse to live as God
prescribes, the only result we can hope for is a dysfunctional, self-absorbed,
lustful, violent culture…much like the one in which we currently live. As long
as we deny that the human heart is wicked and in need of radical change, the
kind of change only Jesus Christ can provide, these mass shootings and other
terrible evils, will continue.
Resources:
All Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible
(1) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/02/the-other-mass-shooting-that-happened-today-in-the-united-states/
(2) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/02/the-simple-reason-why-the-shootings-wont-stop/
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