For there are many rebellious people who engage in useless talk and deceive others. This is especially true of those who insist on circumcision for salvation. They must be silenced, because they are turning whole families away from the truth by their false teaching. And they do it only for money. Titus 1:10-11 (NLT)
I have heard the refrain ‘do something’ over and over in the wake of the horrifying and tragic Uvalde shooting that occurred on Tuesday, May 24, 2022. I hear a society saying to a group of 535 failed people, ‘do something.’ The target (no pun intended) is always guns, because they are easy to attack without dealing with the difficult and underlying real issues. Be clear, this group has done something along with their predecessors who sat in the seats they know fill. Things cannot be done without the majority allowing things to be done. When I speak, I often use the illustration of the mirror and its undeniable truths. You cannot look in a mirror without seeing the truth of who you are, where you have come from, your frame of mind and your expectations for the future. America must look in the mirror in this moment and be honest with ourselves. We have done somethings that has delivered us at this moment of carnage and despair.
Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it. Proverbs 22:6
I hear of the 18 year-old little boy who systematically shot and wounded his grandmother and 17 others while killing 19 children and 2 teachers referred to as a ‘monster’, an ‘animal’, ‘pure evil’ and on and on. His actions are deserving of all of those labels. His life is deserving of labels including tragic, failed, broken, desperate, abandoned. A son of parents with long criminal histories, drug addiction, mother living with a boyfriend who drove him away to his grandparents. A life devoid of example, parents and leading. I have never heard the words God, Christ, Church…faith, hope, love, these things when his life is described.
“Parents, don’t provoke your children in a way that ends up discouraging them.” Colossians 3:21
A little boy desperate for love and acceptance, needing someone to pour into him that his life had purpose and that he was valued. Described as a ‘loner’ by most who knew of him, bullied by kids at school, left to seek understanding on his own. DO SOMETHING the chorus of the mob chants today. If only those in Salvador’s path would have done something to acknowledge that he was created by God for a purpose of good.
Everything is pure to those whose hearts are pure. But nothing is pure to those who are corrupt and unbelieving, because their minds and consciences are corrupted. Titus 1:15 (NLT)
Until 1968 anyone could walk into a story and purchase a gun without filling out any type of form, or worry about their data being stored by the government for a still undermined purpose. Since 1968, there have been hundreds of laws passed pertaining to guns, gun ownership, types of guns that can be owned including preventing the ownership of automatic guns and restricting everything from types/styles of guns, types of magazine, types of ammunition and on and on. Ironically, as gun laws have increased and cities like New York and Chicago have implemented non-constitutional laws that prevent gun ownership, crime and gun crimes have skyrocketed. When London implemented laws that prevented and criminalized gun ownership, violent crime skyrocketed.
I have owned and known gun owners for most of my 58 years on Earth and have yet to see a gun jump up and shoot people. Nor have I seen a knife jump up and stab a person, a car start and kill a family, alcohol force it way into a person, a baseball bat decide to no longer hit balls and decide to harm humans. I have seen a digression in the recognition of the value of life by certain users of all of the aforementioned inanimate objects that I listed. I have seen the purposeful destruction of the parents of kids in our society, reducing the parents rights and encouraging the children to learn from a broken society versus the home that had been the primary source of character, moral and spiritual education in the child’s life. I have seen a government become more intrusive in the lives of every American, reducing rights and removing the influence of values through experimental legislation and societal change for the purpose of satisfying the misguided desires of the very small minority. I have witnessed the removal of God from our schools and society, the demonization of our Country’s pledge of allegiance and flag, the ever increasing and educationally driven confusion over gender, sexual orientation, race shaming, parent diminishing, core curriculum assaulting agendas of the National Education Association, while the National School Boards Association works feverishly to criminalize the rights of parents…through the over reach of our government.
But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests,[a] a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light. 1 Peter 2:9 (NLT)
The tragic destruction of the family and the resulting confusion or outright disdain for the value of life have and are causing the horrifying and immeasurably sad actions of children killing humans. We focus on the disgusting act of a young man, while ignoring the hundreds of similar actions that play out weekly in our most highly regulated and “gun controlled” cities. We focus on the low hanging fruit instead of accepting the brokenness of our society as opposed to focusing on the heavy burden of fixing that which is broken. Creating more unenforceable gun laws is a means to feel better “that something has been done” as opposed to courageously saying ‘we have taken our Country down wrong paths and our children are paying for our wrong leading.’
Because a person decides to drink alcohol to excess and get behind the wheel of a car, too often killing a family or a son or daughter, I don’t think the answer is to remove cars from society and bring back the wagon. America’s educators and far-right political opportunists create in me much greater fear and have agendas that will wreak significantly more destruction through suicide and desperation in the form of “educational or societal reform” than an inanimate object possibly ever could. No child should live in fear of harm either physically, mentally or emotionally. Every child is deserving of love, a home with a man (father) and woman (mother), opportunity and encouragement to pursue the God-given purposes for which they were created as a boy or a girl. Acronyms in our society (NRA, NEA, NSBA, BLM, NMA and on and on) represent the interests of the constituents, most of the time at the cost of too many others, AKA “the majority.”
I agree that our government should do what they are entrusted to do: protect our rights, acknowledge the sanctity of the home and the protected role of the parent and build a society that honors one another while zealously guarding our way and quality of life. Hard things that will diminish the tragedies occurring all around us.
Step one. Let’s recognize the gift and purpose in every life around us.
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” Jeremiah 1:5 (NIV)