After another horrific event, the usual shock is setting in amongst my fellow Americans. The usual rounds of "How could somebody do this?" are beginning.
It's possibly more horrific that some of us, myself included, are jaded to all this. I expect war, and tragedy, and murder. Some people believe in the basic goodness of people, in the face of evidence like this. Like Anne Frank, they believe that people are good even when they are faced with evil in one of its most purely obvious forms. I, on the other hand, often believe in the overwhelming power of the wickedness of people, even in the face of God.
I believe in the Fall. I'm surrounded by its evidence, and I don't have to look to a campus in Virginia for that evidence. I see it in my preference for the comfort of solitude over the messiness of community. I see it in my quick scorn for those who cross me, even accidentally. I see it in the way I judge my self-worth by others. I see it in my readiness to cede ground to the devil--in a land increasingly devoted to the pursuit of what feels right at the time, what's another school shooting? Can't we expect that's going to happen more and more?
It is only the sustaining hand of God, I say, that keeps me from doing just what that student did today. And although I don't know where it ranks alongside mass murder, I know the casual hatred for others I feel spring up in my heart all too often is called murder, and it is odious in the sight of God.
I know it is by the Lord's mercy we are not consumed. I am not surprised when I witness, in myself or others, the evidence that we need every bit of that mercy.
This is what amazes me--that in the face of all the evil in the world, and even in His people, He has not consumed us. "His compassions fail not. They are new every morning." Great is His faithfulness.
Wickedness shows us we need drastic measures to be saved.
Christ shows us there is a God who is willing to take those measures to save us.
How could something like this tragedy happen? How could it not, on this side of heaven? But remember and believe: this side is not all there is.
1 comment:
So true, and my elderly mother was sort of talking along this thought train just this morning. Looking back over her long life, she now wonders how she could have done certain things, how she could have been so sinful, how people can get so caught up in their desires and selves. Sin just doesn't make sense the closer she gets to the other side of her life, the closer she gets to God's glory.
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