Another day, another random shooting in the American heartland. Today at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, another disenchanted young man took his own life, killed at least 10 others, and wounded at least 20 others. When will enough be enough?
I am not talking about the debate on gun control that will no doubt have all of the talking heads screaming at each other passionately. We have seen that the real issue isn’t guns.
While we have seen a number mass murders where guns were the instrument used, we have learned that to a killer, anything is an instrument to kill. We learned that in 1995 when a young man named Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. We saw it with the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, who murdered three people and injured 23 others between 1978 and 1995, using simply made pipe bombs mailed to his intended victims. We saw it on September 11, 2001 when three groups of terrorists killed over 3,000 people by crashing high-jacked airliners into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. We saw it when the Tsarnaev brothers detonated two crockpot bombs during the Boston Marathon killing 3 people and wounding over 200 others. We see it in Israel where automobiles have become the murder weapon of the day.
We can argue about gun control all we want, but I want to look past that. Doing so is like two doctors staring at a patient having a heart attack, and arguing on whether we should give him an Aspirin or a Tylenol to treat the left arm pain. Sure, we can treat the symptom, but we are ignoring the root cause diagnosis at our peril.
This isn’t a gun problem. Statistics show that fatalities due to guns are zero percent. Guns wielded by a person with the intent to kill or harm another person, well that’s another matter… It’s the person behind the gun we have to address.
Legislation can’t fix this. Congress and the various State Legislatures can’t pass laws to change people’s hearts. This is a spiritual problem. Until we start to address the spiritual issues at the heart of America, we are only putting a band-aid on a mortal wound.
I can’t begin to understand why this man did this. Maybe he was mentally ill. It is clear that many of the incidents in the recent past have been perpetrated by those who are mentally ill. But that doesn’t address the multitude of other murders that happen every day that aren’t claiming the lead news spot on CNN or Fox News.
This may not even ultimately be attributable to the actual murderer in this case, but the following quote was taken from CNN just moments ago. It discusses a thread from a social network site thought to have been posted by the killer:
“According to the source close to the investigation, authorities are looking at social media posts between a person they believe may have been the shooter, and others.
In it, the writer talks about planning to carry out a shooting. Others egg him on, giving him suggestions on how to do it, and the type of weapons to use.
The responses are mixed -- with some users characterizing the would-be gunman as a pathetic loser. Others called him a twisted hero.
In the posts, there is a reference to the UC Santa Barbara shooter, who wrote a manifesto and videoed himself before opening fire a year ago.
‘This is the only time I'll ever be in the news. I'm so insignificant,’ reads an apparent post by the would-be Oregon gunman.”
I don’t know what is sadder, the statement that the person feels so insignificant that this is the only time he can ever be noticed, or the reaction of those who are reading his cries for help. How could our hearts possibly be so calloused?
I have to think that this person didn’t get this way overnight. This is a person who over the course of years has lost all hope. This is a person who people like you and I have walked past every day not noticing the hurt this person is experiencing, or worse yet, purposely ignoring it because it is uncomfortable. In some cases people have obviously gone out of their way to inflict greater harm. We have failed.
One time as I was talking to my pastor, he pointed me to a Bible verse that I think is appropriate here. “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” - 1 Peter 3:15.
I understand this may be preachy. But that doesn’t change the fact that this needs to be said. Here is the hope that I have:
I believe in God. I believe in an almighty God who out of love spoke the world into existence. This God created a universe of incalculable beauty and grandeur. This same God spoke and life was created in all of its forms: plants, and birds, and fish, and animals. This same God then made man, and gave him meaningful labor and a partner to labor with.
He formed us in the womb and knows each of us by name. He has numbered the hairs on our heads, and knows all of the days of our lives even before one of them comes to be.
This God gave man freedom. He gave him freedom to choose to follow him and choose life; or to disobey God and set himself up in God’s place and choose death. Man chose wrong and since we have struggled with sin and death, each of us.
Each of us, through our own sin, have added to the terrible price we all owe. We have all done things we should not have done, and failed to do things that we should have done. We have said things to hurt and destroy, and failed to say things to build one another up. We have harbored evil thoughts in our hearts that burst out in our words and actions, or prevent us from using those words and actions to help others. The result is the world we see now.
But God, in his love, didn’t leave it that way. He sent his Son to teach us, guide us, and set an example of selfless love. And then, when it was said and done, he paid the full price of our sin for every single one of us. Then after paying that price he rose from the dead declaring that we have been redeemed, bought, rescued from the power of sin and death in our lives.
This same God promised to send us the Holy Spirit to live in us and guide us, to shape us, teach us to follow him, and share that hope with others. We have been blessed to be agents of redemption in this world.
That is the hope that I bear.
The God who formed the universe, who knows all of our days, who sees and knows all of our sin, was willing to bear the price for that sin, and then dwell within us. If we know this, if we truly know this, then how can any person be insignificant?
How can we, if we know this, truly know this, walk by the people in our lives and let them believe that they are insignificant?
Maybe it’s time we take a few moments from the legislative debate that is no doubt to be raised and start weighing in on the spiritual work that we have in front of us. Maybe it’s time we follow the only two laws that ever brought life into this world:
But it all starts with knowing God and practicing the first. Because if we can’t get that right, then we won’t truly recognize the others around us as significant.
