DAYTON’S SHOOTINGS: THE EVIL BEHIND THE EVIL

Not that my opinion would matter, but I have been asked what I think about the recent shootings in our city of Dayton. I think a lot of things. Multiple thoughts about the shootings are rolling around in my head like many balls of different colors of yarn unwinding in different directions their different colors of the thread. I find it overwhelming to try to untangle one thread of thought from another. The balls won’t stop moving and the threads won’t stop intersecting one another. Yet, if I ask what keeps those balls of thought moving, it’s this: That folks are totally getting two things wrong--why the shootings are evil and what caused them. They also cannot see—and would never admit—that legalization of abortion has caused getting both of those things wrong. Folks are not addressing the evil behind the evil. They are calling everything evil but the evil. They are pointing to everything as the cause but the cause. Much of this misdirection is caused by the protestors. I am sure some are genuinely moved by grief and sympathy and a desire to make a difference. Many others, inspired by politcizers of the tragedy, simply enjoy feeling righteous for having protested. Yet, most are protesting all the wrong things. I cannot help but note the violence of those protesting violence; the hatred of those protesting hatred; the hypocrisy of those protesting hypocrisy; and, the racism of those protesting racism. What caused the shootings? Guns? Mental illness? The President’s tweets? No. Evil imbedded in the human heart. Why were the shootings wrong? Of course, the visceral answer is because they took human lives. But, why do human lives matter? Because they are valuable. Why are they valuable? Because they are God-given, God-valued, and God-sanctioned. God codified all three of those things in a command, “Thou shalt not kill (murder).” The wrong is that the greatest disregard of human life is to take it, and to take a life one must violate God’s command not to do so. Violating God’s commandment is sin, an offense against God. Many do not like those answers—there is evil embedded in the human heart and that humans are capable of actions that are sins against God, but until these answers are accepted, there will be no end to these killings. Until the disease is rightly defined, no drug can be found to counter it. For all modernity’s insistence that there is no evil, when things like the shootings happen, something still has to be evil, someone still has to be culpable. Since to say that the evil is the evil embedded in the human heart that violates God’s Word is too bring the reality of sin and God into the discussion, the gun is made evil, and the President and his words are made the cause. (A political cartoon this morning showed the gun coming from his mouth.) Mental disease instead of moral degradation becomes the focus. There are definitely factors that influence the emergence of the evil embedded in the human heart, but they only have that influence because they appeal to or unleash the evil in the heart. Perhaps, politically one can make new laws that will limit availability of guns. But, laws cannot alter the evil in the human heart. The reason folks keep getting the cause of the shootings all wrong is because they got abortion wrong. No amount of protestations and arguments can deny the fact that at some point a human fetus has a heartbeat. When attempting to ascertain if a non-responsive person is dead or alive, what is the course of action? To check for a heartbeat. For all the protestation, people know that a fetus is a human life. To not value the life of a fetus is soon not to value any human life. When that sentiment prevails in society, it will result in many forms of disregard of human life from assisted suicide to euthanasia to mass shootings. If a baby can be killed in the womb by a scalpel, why should we be shocked when, if he is allowed to grow to adulthood, he is killed in the street by a gun. I am not wholesale against gun-control laws, red-flag laws. But, in the end they do nothing to address the root cause nor define the real evil. The real evil is the human heart and its cause is defiance of God. And, that’s the evil behind the evil.

DAYTON’S SHOOTINGS: THE EVIL BEHIND THE EVIL

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