Today, I want to take a detour off of our normal path to address the tragedy that took place on Friday. In the morning hours of an otherwise normal day, an evil, heartless gunman walked into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut, and opened fire on a room full of kindergarten children killing everyone in that class. Before he was finished, he had killed 20 children and 6 adults.
The obvious question coming to everyone’s mind is WHY? Why would this happen? Why would a loving God ALLOW this to happen to such innocent little precious lives? While we may never really understand the “Whys” of this incident, we can better understand “why” in general. Why is there so much evil in the world created by a loving God? In short, the answer comes down to two words: FREE WILL! When God created man in his image in the garden of Eden, he created us with free will...the ability to choose our own path. The opportunity to choose right from wrong. So why wouldn’t God have created us only to do good? Why would he ever even give us that choice?
Think of it this way... for those of us that are parents... what do we want most from our children? To be loved! So, when we wanted to be to be parents, why didn’t we just go to a toy store and buy a baby doll that we could pull a string and hear: “I love you mommy...I love you daddy”? If all we really wanted was to be loved, we could have been told that by a mechanical doll. The difference is that it means significantly more to us to have a child choose to love us and choose to say it rather than to repeat it out of a sense of mechanics. There is nothing that warms my heart quite like the way my daughter greets me, hugging me really tightly after she had been gone a while. God really isn’t any different. God wants to be loved...truly, genuinely loved. But it only means something when we choose to love God on our own. If he would have created us without choice, we would have been no different than a mechanical doll, only stating the words: “I love you God” out of a sense of mechanics. He wants us to CHOOSE to love him and then to demonstrate it to him.
Because we have a choice, freedom of choice has extremes. We can then choose to love or to rebel and to do those things that are at the most extreme limit of evil. That was exactly what was demonstrated on Friday.
We have to know, that as badly as we hurt and mourn for those precious little lives and their families, God is hurting even more. He is broken hearted by the pain that his children are suffering. And he is broken hearted at what one of his children has done.
So what’s the answer? How do we deal with this? First, we have to realize that these kinds of tragedies will always exist. They always have, they always will. It is a fact of life. Death is a part of living. The only way that we can minimize it in our society is to have a society that looks to God for guidance and the sense of right and wrong.
Deuteronomy 4:7-9 For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for? (8) And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day? (9) Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ sons;
If we search for a reason for why so much tragedy in world, in our culture, in our society today, it is because we continue to push God out of it. We are a great nation or society when we draw near to his statues. We lose that when we draw away from him. The farther that we get from God, the closer we get to evil. The only answer is to individually and societally better live by the ways of God.
What would this world be like if everyone followed the teachings of Jesus? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Love your neighbor as yourself. Go the extra mile and on and on. If everyone simply lived as God has directed us, we would NEVER have to experience this kind of tragedy again. But the truth is, as a nation, as a society, we are running from God, and as long as we do, we will have to endure the actions of those that choose to do evil.
Reflecting the SON,
Dennis Hogan
Questions, comments or further explanation? Contact me at: dennis.hogan@icloud.com
If you have friends, family, or acquaintances that you feel could benefit from RTS, please forward
their e-mail address to me and I will add them to my mail list.
No comments:
Post a Comment