Thoughts On The Newtown Shooting

Encase you didn't know, 26 people were murdered by a lone gunman  in an elementary school not too far from my house. The nation is pretty disturbed by the news.

 I have a problem with the way people are responding to this. Evil finally rears it's head and what do we do? We cry, and collect donations, and pray for the souls of the kids who are already dead. What are we thinking? all those things are important but honestly when evil shows itself the answer isn't too cry about it, the answer is to get rid of it. Everyone who has felt their heart ache for the families of those slain shouldn't go cry for an hour until they feel better. They should fall to their knees and in prayer search themselves to know whether any of the evil which showed itself in Newtown resides in them as well. Teachers should seek to teach more than just information but teach character so that the students they produce will be like the third grader who told his teacher during the evacuation, "don't worry I know Karate I'll lead the class outside" Parents, in addition to "hugging their kids close" should learn to love them and discipline them to keep them far from evil.
It seems an imbalance exists between things that are of secondary importance and things that are of primary important. Secondary level priorities are, tributes to those who are already dead, trying to convince ourselves that those who died are in heaven, (wherever and whatever place these news anchors believe heaven actually is I have no idea) passing legislation to ensure such acts don't happen again. Primary priorities are taking responsibility as parents for our kids, as siblings for our siblings and as teachers for our students to ensure that we are being influences who fight evil wherever we see it. Evil reared it's head in Newtown but it's poison is everywhere and being the sort of person who seeks out the evil first in themselves than in the people and situations around them should be the top level priorities.

It's frustrating for me to hear people say, "we don't have all the answers but we do have each other" or something similar to that. Now I'm not frustrated because the statement isn't true, I'm frustrated because people take that statement and use it as an excuse for circumstances in which they do have answers but the answers are too hard to deal with. The answer to evil is not gun laws, or mental illness treatments or greater security at schools. The answer to evil is every man searching himself for the evil that resides within. It's amazing how most sane people have no conception of what goes on beneath the surface of their own mind or soul. Until each individual takes it upon himself to know himself and the nature of humanity, evil will have the upper hand because evil has complete control over the areas within you which you don't seek to understand. I suppose this is getting off topic and I don't fault President Obama or Governor Malloy, for the speeches they had to give, I fault the common citizen all throughout this great country who will feel bad but do nothing, who will donate money but refuse to offer actual help. Evil is like a vast army destroying everything in its path. It comes, devours a land and departs. The people left in it's wake, rather than try to build an army and stop the evil will just rebuild, go back to life as normal and try to forget that evil is still a vast army pillaging the land. What we need is people who do more than rebuild we need to go out, find evil and destroy it as ruthlessly as it killed 26 people in Newtown. 

Don't worry about things you can't fix. Most of us can't change the facts that 26 people were murdered and that their families are now broken and a whole community is shocked. What we can change is our own reaction to evil and how we will defend ourselves when it comes knocking. Rather than crying or feeling depressed next time we remember the deaths of small children, let them be catalysts for us to do the right. Remember that the same evil which killed those children is the same evil that makes you self centered and proud, it's the same evil that makes you lazy and makes you argue with your parents or spouse. We can honor the dead and strike at their killer through the systematic extermination of evil in our own lives. Is it terrible 26 people were shot? yes! absolutely. However I think it's more terrible that 26 people were shot, thousands of dollars can be spent on community events, speeches will be made and hardly anyone will give thought to the finding and eliminating the killer as far as it is in their power to do so.

You can tell by the repetition and incoherence of this post that I didn't plan this out, it's just been an outflow of my frustration as I've watched the news and such.

Can a Good God Command Genocide?

An interesting question was posed at church last week by our pastor. He asked the congregation to break up into small groups for a few minutes and discuss this question: How could a good God command Joshua to massacre the entire population of Jericho. We are working through the book of Joshua in church and obviously this is an issue that it's not easy to just skip over. After we discussed the question for a few minutes we had an open mic time for people who wanted to share what their group had come up with.

Obviously I shared my opinion and predictably my thoughts sounded much better as thoughts in my head then they did as words coming out of my mouth for the whole church to hear. Anyway, I've thought more about the question and am hoping that perhaps I can put my thoughts better into a blogpost then I did into what I said on Sunday.


Question: How could a good God command the Israelites to kill  everyone in Jericho? (Joshua 6:21)

A difficult question for sure and one which often pricks sensative nerves. To answer it properly and to answer most important questions we must first be able to acknowledge the sensativity of the question but not let fear of being wrong, or of emotional pain be a hinderance to us finding the truth. When we have put our reason in authority over our flesh to gurantee our questioning won't be undone by improper feelings we can proceed. After thinking about it it seems that the question itself is nonsensical. By this I mean the question answers itself. Because if God exists then He must be good. He must be good because an absolute good can not exist outside of God. Therefore if good exists then God must exist and God must be the source of good. Try figuring out where an absolute standard of good can come from if God does not create it. You can't, the best you can come up with is a human standard of goodness that seems right based on your personal experiance and what you know about the world but ultimately it contradicts itself.

In essence the quesiton is asking, can a good God do something evil. This is simlar to asking can you be you and not you at the same time. So in summary I think its simply a bad question that non Christians have invented to confuse Christians who aren't confident enough to say the question is a lame one.

Now I'm not trying to ignore the issue, I'm simply saying that specific question is not a fair question to ask because of the wording. To try to answer it is like to try and fight someone with your hands tied and blindfolded. Some Christians are fit enough that they could still win such a fight but for the rest of us we need to change the question. Questions I think we should ask relating to this topic are these, " What are some reasons why a good God might destroy Jericho?", "Why is God good?" "Did God really tell them to kill everyone in Jericho?" Was killing everyone in Jericho an evil action?" These are questions that have clear answers. Which I'm not going to give because I'm already bored and if I'm bored of writing I'm sure you're bored of reading.

If none of that made sense then the most important thing I learned from thinking about this question is this, sometimes when a quesiton is too hard to answer, rewording it often makes it easier. It's like math, oftentimes the fastest way to solve a problem is to simplify it first.




 

Some Cool Truths.

       If you study mathematics you know that to understand the more complex mathematics of Phsyics and calculus you need a foundational knowledge of things like addition and subtraction. Likewise in Christianity there exists certain foundational truths which are necessary for the understanding of Christianitys more complex beliefs. My brother in sixth grade math came over and watched for a little bit as I was studying College Mathematics. It would not be fair for me to expect him to graph polar functions or calculate standard deviation. In Christianity it's often the case that people try to answer really hard questions without understanding the foundational peices necessary to actually understand the answer to a difficult question. If I told my brother step by step how to calculate standard deviation he wouldn't understand, not because the words aren't english or because I explain it poorly but simply because  his mind hasn't reached the mathematical height capable of understanding such things. Just this past week in youthgroup one of the girls, in eight grade asked, "if Jesus pays for all my sins why do I have to repent of my sins and try not to do them anymore?". It is a fantastic question and a necessary question but the answer is not easily understood by a girl who spends most of her time at school or ins ome form of entertainment. Similarly with Atheists, they ask questions like, "how can God be all loving and still send people to hell forever?" And it's not that answers don't exist but rather that they aren't capable of processing the answer.

In light of this common problem because its something we all struggle with. I've come up with three foundational truths which will help us when trying to answer harder questions.

Statement 1: Somethings are more important to God than a human life.
Statement 2: Jesus was not a pacafist
Statement 3: A more holy life is a happier life.

I'll prove these very quickly.

     Statement 1: Somethings are more important to God than a human life. Three examples. First, God sacrafices an Israelite man to teach everyone who reads the bible the importance of trusting God to provide for us. (Numbers 15:32-35) Second, God killed Ananias and Sapphira to teach all of humanitiy that we must not test God and lie againts the Holy Spirit. (Acts 5) Third, God killed His own Son Jesus that all of humanity might find life through the death of His son. (Matthew 26-27) Basically God has made some commands which must be kept, some promies which must not be violated and certain ideas which are so important that taking a human life is justified in defense of them. I'm not writing this to lessen the value of the human life. It's easy though to get our values imbalanced when we place a human's life above God's will.

 

Statement 2: Jesus was not a pacafist. We have two examples in scripture of Jesus coming to earth before he was incarnated in a physical body. Judges 6:11 and Joshua 5:13-15. In both these examples Jesus comes to earth and commands his followers to wage war againts certain peoples. Because of our current culture which is very much weak and very much self destructive we are afraid to think of Jesus as a passionate, oppiniated, intolerant person. We forget passages like Matthew 10:34 do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace but a sword. If these examples do not fit your eartnest study of scripture just remember that Jesus is one with the Father and between them there can be no discord. When God commands people to be killed as we've seen above Jesus is an approval.  

 

Statement 3: A Holy life is a happier life. It's sadly prominent in our culture for Christians to ask questions, how much of _____ can I do before God says it's sin. Ranging in everything from the words we use to the thoughts we think to the shows we watch and the people we hang out with. "Balance is the key" or something similar to that are phrases very popular because they seem to reconcile our love for the world and our desire to do God's will. "Some people will perhaps object that all these rules of holy living unto God in all that we do, are too great a restraint upon human life; that it will be made too anxious a state, by thus introducing a regard to God in all our actions; and that by depriving ourselves of so many seemingly innocent pleasures, we shall render our lives dull, uneasy, and melancholy." I'm not in the mood to write tons more tonight and this post is already long. Basically I think anyone who will deny themselves of the innocent pleasures of life for the sake of seeing God more clearly will not regret the sacrafice.

 

That is all goodnight friends. :)