Another school shooting. We've all heard the news. Children killed and teachers, too. Young children, all from one Texas classroom. Shocking. Horrific. Brutal. Savage. Not human . . .
. . . wait a minute. Not human?
No, no it really is quite human. Why? Because of a problem inherent to every single human who has or does or ever will exist: sin.
Sure, it sounds like a relic, sin, a religious term that isn't relevant anymore. However, nothing could be less of a relic, less irrelevant than the notion of sin.
Romans 12 describes sin entering the world and death as the result, an eternal separation from God and all that is Holy and Good. The chapter goes on to describe the provision of reconciliation through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This is good news!
The bad news is that as long as this old world keep turning, as it has since God set it all in motion, as long as sin exists here, there will be one single problem which mankind cannot eradicate, hard as it may try through politics, philosophy, psychiatry, eastern religion, and humanism. Within the heart of every human is darkness, a foulness which rots the soul. Its name is sin. Enmity against God, who is the source of goodness and love.
But there is that good news, remember? There is hope for each and every one whom God calls to Himself. God will work in our hearts to soften them - the Bible refers to this as changing a heart of stone to a heart of flesh, metaphorically, of course. Ezekiel 36:26 says, "Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh."
Isn't that marvelous and beautiful! Generous is the love that moves the Heavenly Father to offer a sort of heart transplant to His children. He has an answer to the problem. The answer is Jesus. You have probably heard this verse, well-known to Sunday school children: "For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life." (Yes, I memorized it in King James, back in the 1960's. It's been with me a long, long time.)
Now, back to the school shooting.
A recoiling reaction reverberates throughout the world, as well it should. Things like this ought not to happen. Ever.
But they do. Why? The problem.
During His Beatitudes talk with the crowds in Matthew 5, Jesus said, "'You have heard that the ancients were told, 'YOU SHALL NOT MURDER,' and 'Whoever commits murder shall be answerable to the court.' But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be answerable to the court.'" The passage goes from there to describe other sins and Jesus' idea of justice concerning them. Suffice to say, He makes it quite clear that obvious wrong-doings are only the tip of the iceberg. It's the garbage in our hearts that needs attention, for that garbage - sin - is the root cause of evil in all its degrees. Heart garbage must be evaluated. It must be addressed if a person has any chance of coming to grips with the dichotomy of his or her human heart.
School shootings and other loathsome behavior and events are stark reminders to anyone with eyes to see that something is terribly wrong. In heinous events, evil is not hidden, it presents itself unfiltered. We are horrified, as we should be. But constant sin in our hearts ought to horrify us as well. It is just as bad.
I know. I know, it doesn't seem as bad. What's a little anger, a lustful glance, a white lie. I'll tell you what it is. Within every evil thought, every evil impulse, every evil deed, hidden or not, there exists complete sinfulness. One virus from a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan, China, replicated and infected the entire world, or most of it, probably all of it by the time it finishes running its course. One little virus had the power to grow and mutate and survive and harm and kill millions of human beings for two and a half years and counting. It began in a small vial. It exploded over the entire Earth.
Sin behaves in the same way. One evil thought uncaptured, can harm many, infect many, mutate and grow. Take envy. One thought of envy. "I envy the car she drives." Capture it and that is that, it is killed. "I shouldn't envy her for her car. I have a perfectly good car. I am not her. She is not me. I can work to acquire a car like hers if I really want. She is a nice lady, and I don't want to feel anything negative about her." Captured.
Uncaptured? "I envy the car she drives. Man, is she haughty, full of pride. Got to have a fancy car! Drives it around like she's a celebrity or something. She can't possibly be a good woman. A person who is so attached to material things like that shouldn't be a Sunday school teacher. She is an awful person." Pass around that she is an awful person who shouldn't be a Sunday School teacher and her reputation is maligned. She may never get it back. The cat's out of the bag and running around the city spreading disease. Uncaptured envy results in the disease of sin left to itself to replicate and infect.
How did the school shooter come to carry out his odious act? Evil took root in his heart, infected him. He didn't notice, therefore he didn't evaluate. It grew. It altered his thinking. He lost touch with whatever morals or goodness he may have possessed. Evil conquered him, compelled him to act. Multiple murders occurred. Of tiny children and caring teachers.
As heartbreaking - unimaginable! - as it is to think of little children dying in pools of their precious, young blood, how heartbreaking is it to realize that all over the world sin infects human hearts and carries out evil every single day. Every. Single. Day.
Sex slavery. Kidnapping. Fentanyl trafficking. Cartel murders. Pedophylia. Political corruption.
Now take it down a notch, seemingly: lust, greed, anger, hatred, perversion. Those don't seem as bad, right? But they are each the one virus that infects the world, you see? Left unchecked, they become the sins that shock us. Those sins begin with thoughts, small thoughts, small potent nefarious thoughts, left unnoticed and unchecked until they grow, quietly at first, then tantalizingly until they take over the heart and mind of a human being.
From looking evil right in its repulsive face, we can learn to evaluate our own hearts, to check them, to create antibodies against evil, if you will. No, we can't kill it entirely. Sin is here to stay, until the next age in Heaven. But we certainly can stop much of what we currently allow to live and grow and change us for the worst.
As Jakob Dylan's song lyrics say, evil is alive and well. But Jesus is alive and well and everlasting. And He is Good. He has conquered eternal death, given us new life after our mortal bodies cease. It's up to us to live those lives with conviction, determination, and to persevere in our battle against the sin that so easily besets us. (Hebrews 12:1)
If we will allow evil events to push us into self-evaluation, into calling evil in our hearts by its name - sin - into curbing some of the darkness in the world by crushing it within ourselves, well, then something good can be born from the foulness.
Those little children and their teachers deserve at least that from us, don't you think?
