Another Mass Slaughter
Another Cry for Political Action
Another Opportunity to Use the Victims
News came today about the mass murder in Orlando, FL, at the Pulse Club, a club frequented by gays. The shooter has been tentatively identified as Omar Mateen, with possible extremist Islamic leanings. The President has been briefed and will be continually updated. Unfortunately, this heading has become all too common, all too often.
Unfortunately, if the pattern holds as in past mass murders, those with political agendas will quickly solidify their positions calling for action or no action or whatever their particular political persuasion dictates they do. These innocent people will quickly become symbols for others to use as they see fit to promote their agenda, especially in a presidential election year. But, the victims will be lost and their families paraded before the cameras to justify whatever particular political agenda happens to need their voice. But, the victims will be lost.
Who are the victims? Yes, those slain and wounded are certainly victims of the carnage. The police and others who responded are certainly victims of the responsibility to stop the carnage. The families of these people are certainly victims since they also have to deal with the aftermath whether it be burials, recoveries or even rehabilitations. Yet, in a very real sense, we are all victims because this occurred on our watch. In the military, everything that occurs on your watch is your responsibility if you could have done something to influence the situation. As Americans, we have done, or not done, something to influence this situation. But, what of the victims?
As I recently taught in my study on the sixth precept, do not murder, we are all guilty of this sin from the beginning of our conception (Ps 51:5). We are all murderers at heart. As we permit anger to grow and develop because we envy others for what they have rather than dealing with what we could do and obtain, we grow as murderers in our hearts. As we permit sin to flourish, as we justify those conditions that nourish anger in our hearts such as the philosophy of increased self-esteem in our school, we promote murderers. As we denounce the absolute values of the Bible and promote relative values based on nebulous, ill-defined words such as love as demonstrated by our many transitory impure relationships based on “love”, we promote murders, making victims.
Nietzsche wrote that we, meaning all of us, have killed God. He realized that the goal of modern philosophy was to kill the concept of God and replace God with man which was the promise Satan made to woman in the Garden (Ge 3:5). As he looked at the consequences of his writings he lost his moorings and for nearly the last ten years of his life was lost in the labyrinth of his mind with only his own thoughts to guide him into deeper blackness. He was right. Modern man has replaced God with himself and the result have been catastrophic. The greatest century of mass murders and wars was the 20th century and the young 21st century appears to be walking the same bloody pathway. We have become lost in a maze of our own making because as a society, we have rejected truth and hidden the victims in our various flags.
There will be calls for banning all guns, for banning all assault weapons, for…well, you get the message. As long as we ban something then we are going something even if it is not related to this incident but promotes one’s ultimate agenda, a defenseless population. There will be calls to have death penalties and longer sentences and march on radical Islam, wherever that is, to stop the killing of Americans. But, who are these people? Are they not people who live in terror of death raining down upon them at any moment if the wrong person should come to their house? One nation’s defense may be another nation’s terror. Surely we could look back to Dresden and see how effective terror bombing was only to discover that bombing does not break a people’s will but appears to only harden its resolve.
Can we cover ourselves in our flag, point to the Constitution and demand our rights to guns? Well, it depends on how you view this document. It is not the Bible. It was not written by infallible men; in fact, most of the men were not Christian at all and several were certainly outspoken atheists. I have searched the Scriptures and I cannot find any biblical grounds to justify dying for the Second Amendment. I remember those who did die in their belief of this amendment in places such as Ruby Ridge and Waco, TX, and the Malheur Wildlife Refuge standoff. These people died to “protect” their rights at the hand of the federal government, the same government that people believe will protect their Second Amendment? I am amazed at the gullibility of folks. And would banning all weapons protect us? It did not protect the victims in Edmonton, ON (Canada) which bans guns nor does it protect citizens in China where the biggest perpetrator of mass murder is the government for even exercising improperly.
The fact that this may have been another Islamic terrorist, homegrown, act also complicates the issue. The government has been reluctant to use this label for such incidents in the past even when said incident took place on a military base with the assailant yelling, “Allah Akbar”! Will the government be able to be objective or will its own political agenda once again direct its rhetoric for its own ends? The victims? They are just convenient props to promoting one’s political agenda. The fact that they were also gay is just icing on the cake. Who remembers the victims?
The true issue is that each person murdered who was not saved has forever lost the opportunity to hear and respond to the Gospel of Christ. They truly died the victims at the hands of a person who sought to act as god because he has been taught that he is god (increased self-esteem or Islamic jihadist). Yet, by taking life rather than protecting life he has proven that he is not god at all but a dupe of Satan consigned to the same fate as he consigned his lost victims (I do not imply that all were lost or even that they were lost simply because they may have been gay; that is irrelevant in this discussion). They were murdered because their society sought to remove the constraints of godly behavior and allow free expression of one’s inner self. The caveat that it should not hurt others has no basis for one cannot have absolutes in a relative value system. One has to borrow from the Bible to have absolute values and once one has absolute values one must prove that the basis for absolute values is also absolute; that is, has God as its author since He changes not.
We have allowed this to occur in our lifetimes with hardly a whimper. We have screamed over guns, howled over tax exemptions and demanded our rights just as the lost have over their pet issues; but, we did not cry as the people became increasingly more violent. This is the result of removing the boundaries of behavior. It is not freedom, it is a nightmare. Releasing the sinful heart is to promote increasing levels of senseless violence that defy imagination just a generation ago. We have allowed this. In a democracy “we the people” are responsible because we voted and allowed these policies and laws. Now we are reaping a frightful harvest and it is only just beginning. Remember the victims? We are all the victims and who will remember us as we gave away our protection in favor of insatiable appetites. Who remembered Nietzsche, lost in the darkness of his sinful mind? Who remembered the victims? Who will remember us?